San Diego Weekend Arts Events: From 'Rhapsody in Blue,' To Grampadrew

Speaker 1: 00:00 This weekend marks one year since California enacted the COVID-19 stay at home order live performances and arts events were shut down and their future remained in limbo. But as we've seen over the past year, San Diego artists and performers have found ways to keep creative. This milestone weekend is no exception with plenty of dance, art and music to keep us entertained and connected. Joining me is KPBS arts editor and producer Julia Dickson Evans with all the details. Welcome Julia. Speaker 2: 00:32 Hi Maureen. Thanks for having me. Speaker 1: 00:34 First city ballet has an on-demand production of staged ballet performances. Tell us a little bit about these. Speaker 2: 00:41 Yeah, so it's a collection and a nice mix of traditional ballets and some new choreography. I'll set two familiar pieces of music, whether classical or they're more popular jazz of Gershwin. It opens with this, the ultra familiar Rhapsody in blue and a stage full of dancers and pretty high octane kind of quirky performance, but new choreography by the companies, Jeff Gonzalez, and then they move into some traditional duets like Tchaikovsky's black Swan, Prokofiev Cinderella, also a lovely take on Samuel. Barber's very familiar Adagio for strings. It's all a really approachable collection and you could really see the delight on these dancers faces just forgetting to dance together on a stage again, Speaker 1: 01:32 City valets Rhapsody in blue program streams on demand through March 21st Saturday, we have some projected photography and an artist talk. We can actually attend outdoors. What can we expect? Speaker 2: 01:47 Yeah, this is part of the medium festival of photography, which is locally based. And the closing weekend is this weekend. This is a hybrid option. You can view it from home virtually, or you can snag a ticket to view it outdoors at the Lafayette hotel in North park. This is where the festival is usually held on a normal year. And this projection work isn't just some pandemic compromise or pivot. The photographer, Phillip Schulz Ritterman is known for his projected photography. He'll often layer different images of the same object or a landscape onto itself in this case, the hotel. And it's kind of a way of examining what we know about place and how our perspective as a viewer skews, the objects Ritterman will be in conversation. Uh, on-site with local curator, Kevin Miller they'll tour the works. Uh, I've heard that a perk for attending is that apparently these images are blown up so much that the pixels are large enough to see and, and walk through. You'll have pixels on your faces. So, um, also don't miss the exhibition of photography by artists living in Mexico's border States. It's called Northern exposure. And that is on view during business hours at coffee and tea collective just down the street, that's all part of the medium festival of photography, Speaker 1: 03:12 Phillip Schultz, Ruderman's projected photography exhibition, and the artist talk takes place Saturday at 7:00 PM at the Lafayette hotel. And while we're on the subject of outdoor art Sunday afternoon, there's an outdoor screening of a new set of dance films made right here to commemorate a year of social distancing. How can we attend that? Speaker 2: 03:34 Yeah, so it says disco riots a year of distance, uh, play on the word. Uh, it's a contemporary dance company. They commissioned reflective works from six of their dancers and these pieces run the gamut of everything we've gone through this year from trying to find a meditative center while listening to news broadcasts and mincing herbs in the kitchen. That one almost sounds too real to me, to also grieving the loss of seeing people in person to desperately seeking joy. However, we can find it. I know I've talked this genre of dance, film up a lot in the space, but I'm really loving it. Dance film lately. And I've been finding a lot of comfort from watching dance. So I asked disco riots, artistic director, it's Zakia, Mahler, Salinas a little bit about why that is here's Lackey. Speaker 3: 04:29 Yeah. One of the things that I find most important about dance is that it's an embodied art practice, which means that like I have a body and I'm doing whatever, you know, dancing that I'm doing. But you as an audience member also have a body. And even if the bodies are different, something about watching another human being processed through something in movement, we get this thing called kinesthetic empathy from that where we have some space hopefully to reflect or see ourselves reflected in some way in what's happening. Speaker 1: 05:03 Disco riots a year of dis dance screens Sunday afternoon at cinema under the stars or virtually on Tuesday. And finally what's on stage at the Casbah this weekend. Speaker 2: 05:15 Yeah. I'll leave you with a little out country there. Local steadfast rocker, grandpa Dru will host his famous and beloved flim flam review from the empty Casbah live-streamed right to you on Twitch on Saturday night. And I've picked a pretty wistful and sad song here. This is wishes by grandpa drew from his 2012 album, but for the most part, it's impossible to be in a bad mood when you're at a grand Pidgey, drew will be joined by a whole host of guests and bandmates [inaudible] Speaker 4: 06:06 Grandpa Druze Speaker 1: 06:08 Clam review live streams from the Casbah Saturday at eight for more arts events or to sign up for Julia's weekly KPBS arts newsletter go to kpbs.org/arts. I've been speaking with KPBS arts editor and producer Julia Dixon Evans. Julia. Thank you. Thank you, Maureen. Have a good day Speaker 4: 06:28 Weekend.