Freebie of the week: The Bay Area is home to an amazing 10-day affair that serves up more than 150 dance classes, public rehearsals, performances and celebratory group events — all for free. It’s called Bay Area Dance Week (never mind the title, it’s 10 days) and it runs Friday through May 3 throughout the region.
Per tradition, the event kicks off at noon Friday, April 24 with One Dance, a joyous participatory group dance put on by dance group Rhythm & Motion at Jessie Square, on Mission Street, between Third and Fourth streets in San Francisco. Anyone can learn the dance moves in advance on the event’s website, dancersgroup.org/badw, but those who just show up and wing it should have no trouble.
“Anyone can learn One Dance,” says Rhythm & Motion artistic director Dudley Flores. “It’s what I love about this event; it really is for everyone.” It’s for those who want to bust their own moves or watch others who do, or those who Moonwalk, or even struggle with the Hokey Pokey. Events include Dancing in the Park SF with Mark Foehringer Dance Project; an UpSwing Aerial Dance and student performance, “Loving the Air”; an apparatus-based dance class organized by Jo Kreiter/Flyaway Productions; a Bhangra dance class; and performances, classes and rehearsals touching on Mexican Folkloric; K-Pop, international folk dance. Indian classical and Bollywood. And that’s just scratching the surface.
Go to dancersgroup.org/badw for a complete schedule and more information.
Songs of ‘Hope’: Angelique Kidjo, the five-time Grammy-winning singer from the West African nation of Benin sings in a variety of tongues, but she has also created her own dialect, which she occasionally uses in song titles. Kidjo is an activist who campaigns for civil rights, African democracy, and empowering women; she has collaborated with artists ranging from Philip Glass to Alicia Keys to Bono; she is the first Black African woman to land a star on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame; and she performed at the 2020 Summer Olympic Games in Tokyo.
This week, Kidjo is releasing a 16-track album titled “HOPE!!” It’s meant to offer encouragement during these challenging times and features A-list musical guests Pharrell Williams, Quavo, Nile Rodgers, Charlie Wilson, and more.
Kidjo is celebrating the album with a limited concert tour that touches down at Stanford’s Bing Concert Hall at 8 p.m. Saturday. Tickets are $68.04-$106.92; the show is sold out, but presenter Stanford Live says additional seats may well be released closer to concert time. Go to live.stanford.edu.
Local kid cracking wise: It’s great to see entertainers from the Bay Area gain a foothold in the ultra-competitive world of professional comedy. And San Jose native Frankie Marcos seems to be knocking at the door (if he hasn’t already knocked it down).
He might not be as well-established as Marga Gomez or W. Kamau Bell, but Marcos is definitely getting noticed. It doesn’t hurt that triumphed at the 2024 San Francisco International Comedy Competition, or that he has been invited to the Don’t Tell Comedy series and is a regular at the Chocolate Sundaes show at Hollywood’s iconic Laugh Factory club. Marcos’ frequent touring and appearances in comedy festivals take him all over the world, from New York to Melbourne, Australia, to Edinburgh, Scotland. But on Friday, he’ll be in his own back yard with a headlining gig at the San Jose Improv.
The show starts at 9:45 p.m. and tickets are $31.14 to $101.65. Go to improv.com/sanjose.
An 11th-hour switch: Daniel Hope, the esteemed music director and concertmaster of the New Century Chamber Orchestra, has just been involved in an accident from which he is fully expected to recover. Taking his place at the last minute in the ensemble’s upcoming season-closing concerts this weekend is Blake Pouliot, a rising young New York-based Canadian violinist who plays on a 1729 Guarneri del Gesú and who appeared last July playing the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto with the San Francisco Symphony in both Davies Hall and the Guarneri del Gesú at Stanford.
As concert leader, Pouliot will preside over a program that also highlights Spanish guitar virtuoso Pablo Sáinz-Villegas playing both the famed “Concierto de Aranjuez” by Joaquín Rodrigo and Michael Daugherty’s “Bay of Pigs,” a three-movement elegy for Cuba’s past and present for guitar and strings. Also on the program are “Fuga y misterioso” by Astor Piazzolla; Alberto Williams’ “Primera Suite Argentina”; and the world premiere of the commissioned work “Blues Variations” by Henry Dorn.
Concert times are 7:30 p.m. Thursday at the Green Music Center in Rohnert Park, 7:30 p.m. Friday at Berkeley’s First Presbyterian Church and 2 p.m. Saturday at the Presidio Theatre in San Francisco. Find tickets, $35-$80, at ncco.org.
A double dazzler: Gifted pianist Yuja Wang, a renowned fashion plate who often switches one glamorous gown for a shorter, more eye-popping outfit after intermission, brings even more flash to her keyboard technique, proven once again at the San Francisco Symphony’s season opener in September, when she dashed off a Tchaikovsky concerto and three — count ‘em — three encores.
Wang returns to Davies Hall on the Great Performers series at 7:30 p.m. Sunday with the Mahler Chamber Orchestra as both the concert director and the headline soloist, performing the thorny but exhilarating Piano Concerto No. 2 by Prokofiev. The same composer’s witty, endearing Symphony No. 1, dubbed the “Classical” by the very young Prokofiev himself, opens the program, which then continues with Wang and the MCO, led by concertmaster Matthew Truscott, collaborating on Russian composer Alexander Tsfasman’s 1945 Suite for Piano and Orchestra (Jazz Suite).
Tickets, $225-$349, are going fast, but a handful are still available at www.sfsymphony.org.
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