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Beyond the Stage
Stories Reimagined: Six Performances Explore Traditional Tales with a Creative Twist!
Stories Reimagined: Six Performances Explore Traditional Tales with a Creative Twist!
—i.e., not your grandmother’s fairy tales!
One of the most incredible powers of the performing arts is their ability to bring stories to life, immersing us in completely different realms or realities. During the 2025–26 season, Cal Performances is presenting a large selection of performances that offer a fresh take on traditional and well-known works of fiction—in other words, not your grandmother’s fairy tales! Whether through added musical elements, trippy visuals, or new mediums of storytelling, these programs offer something both familiar and radically distinct at the same time. In this article, we’ve highlighted six such offerings, adding context about the original works as well as the bold new interpretations in store this season.
The Inspiration: Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
You would be hard pressed to find someone completely unfamiliar with Lewis Carroll’s iconic children’s novel, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Written in 1865, the Victorian fantasy has its origin in a story Carroll made up to entertain his friend’s young children (including one Alice Liddell) during a long boat ride. The elaborate tale—embellished during the writing process—follows a young girl who comes across a handsomely dressed White Rabbit bearing a pocket watch and lamenting his own tardiness. Astounded by the spectacle, Alice chases after the rabbit, falls down a rabbit hole, and lands in Wonderland, a new world where nonsense is the law of the land. During her time there, Alice encounters an outrageous cast of characters, including a disappearing Cheshire Cat, a hookah-smoking Caterpillar, the nonsensical [Mad] Hatter and March Hare, the villanois Queen of Hearts, and the dancing Griffin and Mock Turtle. The colorful story chronicles Alice’s attempt to make her way through this fantastic landscape, and to define herself at a time when her self-image, her physical being (who can forget the classic treat that makes Alice grow and shrink in turn?!), and the world around her is constantly shifting in new and unexpected ways.
A Fresh Take
In November, MOMIX—led by company founder and the work’s choreographer, Moses Pendleton—will deliver a new interpretation of Carroll’s beloved tale, told through lively dance and gravity-defying acrobatics. While the troupe is not intending to retell Alice’s full story, it does use the original text as inspiration for the series of bright, psychedelic vignettes that make up the performance. According to the company, “The Alice story is full of imagery and absurd logic—before there was surrealism, there was Alice. Alice is an invitation to invent, to let imagination run and play outside.” Because the story itself is so closely tied to concepts of transformation and defying logic, it provides an incredible canvas for movement and illusion that are seemingly magical. Pendleton shared, “I want to take this show into places we haven’t been before in terms of the fusion of dancing, lighting, music, costumes, and projected imagery.”
The Inspiration: The poetry of Emily Dickinson
Emily Dickinson was a beloved American poet who lived from 1830–1886, and is known today as much for her poems as for her unorthodox approach to writing and living. Dickinson was a prolific writer, creating more than 1,800 poems, though very few were published during her lifetime. She experimented with various forms of poetry (though most commonly utilized lyric frameworks), as well as altered meter, capitalization, and even punctuation, with many associating the writer with her use of dashes at the end of lines. Over the course of her life, Dickinson became increasingly reclusive, rarely leaving her bedroom. However, the world within her poems extends far beyond those four walls, and touches frequently on concepts of nature, life and death, and emotional connection to oneself and to others. Some of her most popular works, each of which is identified by its first line, include “If I can stop one Heart from breaking” and “Because I could not stop for Death—.” The title of Joyce DiDonato and Time for Three’s performance is pulled in part from one of her poems that reads:
No Prisoner be—
Where Liberty—
Himself—abide with Thee—
A Fresh Take
Though “lyric” poems do not directly refer to song lyrics, composer Kevin Puts has expanded the application of Dickinson’s poetry by setting 24 of her poems, both better and lesser known, to music. Mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato and vocal and string ensemble Time for Three will engage with poems including those mentioned above as well as “‘Hope’ is the thing with feathers,” “Wild Nights—Wild Nights!,” and “I felt a Funeral, in my Brain,” among many others. By lifting the poems off of the page and into the world of music, the performers are able to interpret and layer a complex emotional soundscape that is inspired by the text, and to deliver the poems in a manner that creates a shared experience for all in attendance.
The Inspiration: The Kid film (1921)
Released in 1921, The Kid is a popular silent film that was written, produced, and directed by Charlie Chaplin, who also stars in the film alongside Jackie Coogan. The plot follows Chaplin’s character, “The Tramp,” as he finds and eventually adopts a young orphan, despite having his own pre-existing financial troubles. The unlikely pair engage in hilarious antics, including their scheme of having the child break windows so that The Tramp can be hired to repair them. The story focuses on the pair’s imperfect and endearing relationship, and features Chaplin’s trademark slapstick humor as well as more sentimental and deeply emotive acting. At the time of its release, the Chicago Herald and Examiner published a review that read, “The Kid settles once and for all the question as to who is the greatest theatrical artist in the world. Chaplin does some of the finest, most delicately shaded acting you ever saw anywhere… The Kid is two fisted. Its right glove is packed with the pearls of tears, its left with the horseshoe of laughter.”
A Fresh Take
In March, guitarist Marc Ribot gives the silent film an entirely new soundtrack during a screening with live music in Zellerbach Hall. With 25 albums published under his own name and many more for which he has been a key collaborator—not the least of which is Tom Waits’ legendary 1985 Americana album Rain Dogs—Ribot has performed across a wide range of genres, including roots, jazz, rock, and no-wave/punk/noise, to name just a few. In developing his own score for the film, Ribot draws from many musical influences, as well as one modern historical reference point: the aftermath of the US economic crisis in 2008 (given the film’s depiction of The Tramp and his adoptive son’s financial difficulties). Ribot’s score has been praised for perfectly capturing the movie’s tonal shifts between humor and sentimentality, and its multitude of emotional highs and lows. This performance uniquely reflects Ribot’s intentional “reading of this film as a contemporary film,” and offers audiences a new and nuanced interpretation of this treasured classic.
The Inspiration: Shakespeare’s Macbeth
William Shakespeare’s Macbeth was written in 1623 and takes its inspiration from historical figures of Scotland (most notably, Macbeth MacFinlay, King of Scotland) who were active during the 1030s–1050s, though resemblance to these figures is certainly tenuous. In the tragic play, we follow the Scottish General Macbeth who receives a prophecy from three witches (also known as the Weird Sisters) that he will one day become King of Scotland. Fueled by ambition, Macbeth kills the current king in order to claim the throne, and allows his greed and paranoia to inspire further acts of violence and tyranny at both a personal and state level. It can also be interpreted that the witches fuel Macbeth’s eventual demise: With assurance from the witches that he cannot be killed by “any man born of a woman,” Macbeth begins to feel invincible and is emboldened to take on his enemy. It is only when he comes face to face with Macduff that he learns his challenger was born by cesarean and, as such, is technically an exception to the limitations put forth in the witches’ (very literal) prophecy, allowing Macduff to behead the Scottish King.
A Fresh Take
A troupe of otherworldly imagination, Manual Cinema is renowned for utilizing bold techniques—including shadow puppetry, actors in silhouette, immersive sound design, and live music—to bring engaging stories to life. Of their new production, Co-Artistic Director Drew Dir shared, “I started to wonder, oh, wouldn’t it be interesting to tell a story about someone who is impacted by Macbeth’s tyranny? And to follow their psychology and maybe how they lose themselves, and maybe it’s a way to mirror Macbeth’s own journey?” The subject of this exploration is a young girl who finds herself displaced and orphaned as a result of Macbeth’s military pursuits chronicled in Shakespeare’s play. Facing a sharp severance from her past and a deep loss of all that once defined her world, she embarks on a journey of self-discovery within the safe and welcoming community offered to her by three witches—who just so happen to be the very three who prophesied Macbeth’s rise (and eventual fall). In the safety of her new adoptive family, she must learn how to make sense of her loss as she grapples with a strong desire for revenge on the Scottish King. Though the production alludes to Shakespeare’s classic tragedy, The 4th Witch centers itself on questions of identity, personal history, and the comfort and growth allowed for by a strong community.
The Inspiration: La Belle et la Bête film (1946)
Philip Glass’ renowned opera La Belle et la Bête takes its inspiration from the 1946 French surrealist film of the same name (which is itself taken from the French fairy tale written in 1740), written and directed by Jean Cocteau. The film follows a fairly similar plot to the Disney adaptation that serves as the popular reference point for most individuals today, with minor alterations: A merchant is caught picking a rose from the Beast’s garden, for which the Beast demands his life. The merchant’s daughter, Belle, offers to live in the castle with the Beast in exchange for her father’s freedom, and over time develops feelings of tenderness and eventually love toward her captor, who turns out to be a cursed Prince. By the end of the film, the curse has been lifted, and Belle and the not-so-beastly prince decide to wed. The overall aesthetic of the film is opulent with Baroque-style sets and costuming, though the fearsome beast wears a mask modeled after a production member’s pet husky, looking in the end part dog, part dear, and all beast.
A Fresh Take
Philip Glass, one of today’s most influential composers and a cornerstone of the “minimalism” style that first emerged in the 1960s, originally developed a new score for the 1946 film with the idea that his music would be played and sung over the original as a sort of “reverse lip-syncing.” He first premiered this work in the 1990s, though when Opera Parallèle reached out a few years ago about collaborating on a revitalized project, the entire concept expanded. The opera that will come to Zellerbach Hall in March will involve actors onstage, as well as elements of projected film—mostly original, though some newly recorded and interwoven into Cocteau’s film—to immerse audiences in the production. Staying true to the movie’s surrealist nature, this one-of-a-kind production blurs the lines between film and opera, calling into question: “What is real and surreal? Who is singing and where? What is conscious and unconscious?”
The Inspiration: Sophocles, Ovid, etc.
As with any ancient myth, defining the true origins of a libretto developed over one thousand years ago—and an accompanying operatic production developed hundreds of years later… well, that’s complicated! To go back to the very beginning, Heracles was the Greek demigod born of Hera and Zeus, who appeared across many ancient myths. The same character was adopted in Roman mythology as Hercules, and made appearances in heroic tales of this tradition as well. Handel’s composition, which premiered in 1745, includes the character Hercules, but in fact centers more on his wife, Dejanira (or, Deianira), a mythological Greek princess whose name translates to “man-destroyer.” The libretto for Handel’s work is adapted primarily from Women of Trachis, penned by the Greek tragedian Sophocles around 450–425 BC; additional material was pulled in part from the Roman poet Ovid’s Metamorphoses from 8 CE. In the primary text, Women of Trachis, Deianeira feels her husband growing distant from his family; he is always off on yet another heroic adventure. Heracles has left Deianeira alone for 15 months when she learns that his most recent siege was motivated by his desire to capture a younger woman, Iole, whom he hoped to take as a lover. Distraught and riddled with jealousy, Deianeira takes advantage of a charmed coat given to her by Lichas, who promises her that, if worn by her husband, it will redirect his affection for other women. It is only after Deianeira finds Heracles in a near-death state that the truth is revealed: the coat, unbeknownst to Deianeira, is poisonous, and proves to be her husband’s undoing.
A Fresh Take
As Handel envisioned it, Hercules was not intended to be a full opera, but instead a “musical drama” without staging. The libretto for the work was developed by an Anglican clergyman, Thomas Broughton, and though he used the aforementioned texts to provide general structure, his version (and, accordingly, the version we now attribute to Handel) restores Hercules’ heroism and virtue, which, as a result, makes Deianeira’s jealousy seem unreasonable and unjust. Though the work has been considered exceptional from the time of its premiere in 1744, today it is rarely performed. The English Concert, considered the world’s foremost interpreters and performers of Handel’s dramatic works, is now bringing one of its renowned concert performances to Zellerbach Hall, inviting audiences on a powerful musical journey that brings this ancient story straight into the present.
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Defining Courage Through Music and Theater: The Story of America’s Nisei Soldiers
Defining Courage Through Music and Theater: The Story of America’s Nisei Soldiers
“These guys were great heroes. They could not have done what they did without immense courage… ”
By Kimia Adibi, Cal Performances’ Public Relations Assistant
“[It] was an accident.”
This is what Emmy Award-winning journalist David Ono says of the journey behind creating Story Boldly’s Defining Courage, a multimedia live stage production that commemorates the struggles and sacrifices of the Nisei soldiers of World War II. Cal Performances presents the production on Friday, April 4 at Zellerbach Hall.
Despite decades of experience as a television journalist (he is an anchor on KABC-TV in Los Angeles), and even with his own Japanese American heritage, Ono had never fully grasped the magnitude of this legacy—American soldiers of Japanese ancestry who became some of the most decorated troops in U.S. military history.
“It didn’t really come to me all at once,” Ono reflects. “In the first two or three years, I understood—just through people I trusted—that this is an important story. But to understand all the nuances, how important it is to a generation of people, how much they sacrificed, how great soldiers they were—there was a huge volume of information that I had to learn along the way.” This gradual discovery process shapes how he presents the story to the public. From this, Ono hopes the audience will “grasp in one sitting what took me years to understand.”
The seed that grew into the project of Defining Courage today came initially from Go For Broke, an educational center in Los Angeles dedicated to preserving the Nisei soldier legacy, which had asked Ono to deliver a keynote speech at an event. At first, he actually turned them down. “I am in the program every year. I felt, being elevated to the keynote speech, I would just be regurgitating everything I learned from them back to them.”
Yet, later that year, while filming a proposed documentary about Nisei soldiers on European battlefields, standing on the very ground where these Japanese American heroes had once fought, the distance between then and now collapsed. Seeing these historic sites and meeting people who still remembered the soldiers sparked an idea: why not bring the audience there?
What started as a filmed presentation accompanied by familiar songs (borrowed pieces from Coldplay and John Legend) eventually grew into a full-scale production. Story Boldly’s production team composed original music, working to capture specific emotions for each segment of the story, mirroring the soldiers’ journey. The upcoming Berkeley performance holds special significance for Ono: “Berkeley was one of those things that was unreachable and unattainable for me at one point in my life, so now I’m super proud to be there.” Joining Ono at Zellerbach Hall are the gospel-pop group Raise, multi-platinum songwriter and performer Harold Payne, and the UC Berkeley Chamber Chorus in combinations with the show’s ensemble, creating what Ono describes as “the biggest sound we’ve ever had.”
“Music is almost like a secret weapon,” Ono says. “You let [the audience] hear the music before you say a single word about that chapter. The music sets up how you’re going to feel.”
While the music helps guide the audience through difficult moments in the story, Ono is mindful of not overwhelming them. “People need relief,” he notes. “You can’t just be downtrodden; you have to uplift people.”
This balance between acknowledging hardship and celebrating triumph resonates for generations of Japanese Americans. For younger people, particularly young Asian Americans, the impact can be profound. “One common comment I get from members of the audience, especially young people who are less familiar with the story, is, ‘I’ve never felt so proud to be an Asian. I’ve never felt so proud to be a Japanese American,’” Ono shares.
The Nisei soldiers’ experience remains deeply relevant today, as America continues to wrestle with questions of identity, loyalty, and belonging—themes that Cal Performances aims to investigate as part of its Illuminations: “Fractured History” series, of which this production is a part. These segregated units fought against Hitler’s regime even as their own families were confined in US incarceration camps.
“This is an American story,” Ono insists. “These guys were great heroes. They could not have done what they did without immense courage… We all have those moments when we’re tested, when we need to speak up, when we need to face something that’s extremely difficult. And I think about these guys and how courageous they were, running up the hill with bullets flying, their families incarcerated, knowing that they may not survive this, but it’s for the greater good.”
As Story Boldly’s Defining Courage comes to UC Berkeley, Ono hopes it will contribute to making the Nisei soldier story as widely known as other celebrated chapters of American military history. He notes that Hollywood has avoided telling this story for eight decades despite its extraordinary military significance, believing Asian faces wouldn’t draw audiences, according to Ono. “It needs to be studied,” Ono emphasizes. “It’s one of the greatest military stories we’ve ever heard of.”
Beyond the historical significance though, he also sees it as an inspiration for students to explore their own family histories. “Even though this is a story about Japanese Americans, the value of learning the previous generation’s story is immense,” he says. “For students out there, their own personal story probably has tremendous drama in it, if they interview their parents, interview their grandparents… They’ll find similarities. They’ll find equal drama. They’ll find tragedy. They’ll find beautiful ways that their ancestors have overcome and searched for the American dream.”
*********************
Cal Performances presents Story Boldly’s Defining Courage at Zellerbach Hall on Friday, April 4 at 8pm. Following the performance, creator David Ono will participate in an Illuminations: “Fractured History” panel discussion entitled “The Legacy of Nisei Soldiers, Storytelling, and the Fight for Justice,” moderated by Michael Omi, professor emeritus of UC Berkeley’s Department of Ethnic Studies. The talk is free and open to all ticket holders that evening.
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Mahler Chamber Orchestra Performance to Be Dedicated to Alex Pines
Mahler Chamber Orchestra Performance to Be Dedicated to Alex Pines
“…chemistry brought together the rigor of mathematics, the beauty of music, the prospect of scientific progress.”
By Krista Thomas, Cal Performances’ Interim Director of Communications
Cal Performances has announced that the Mahler Chamber Orchestra’s performance with Mitusko Uchida (pianist and director) on March 23, 2025, will be dedicated to an internationally regarded figure in the scientific community and a lover of classical music, Alex Pines. At the time of his passing in late 2024, Pines had already served on the Cal Performances Board of Trustees on two separate occasions for a combined six years, and had maintained his commitment to the organization as a Sustaining Trustee since 2019.
Though he is remembered by most as a revolutionary mind in the field of chemistry, Pines exemplified a dedication to both the arts and sciences from an early age. Born in Tel Aviv in 1945 and raised in what is now Zimbabwe, Pines grew up in a vibrant and intellectually stimulating household alongside his three brothers and his mother and father, who met during WWII in Egypt where they both served with the British Army. Pines’ childhood was marked by particular affection for chess, science, and music, all of which was cultivated by his parents.
In an interview with Pines Lab in 2009, Pines shared, “My father had pursued law and mathematics but was excluded from further study by anti-Semitic restrictions. …He was a brilliant mathematician and chess player—for many decades he was the national champion of the Federation of Rhodesia [later Zimbabwe] and Nyasaland [later Malawi].” Pines was a quick study at chess as well, and was the under-21 champion of his local chess club growing up. Pines’ musical inclinations, on the other hand, grew from his mother, who performed locally as both a vocalist and pianist. Pines himself displayed a voracious appetite for classical music, excelling at the piano from the early years of his childhood and giving public performances by the age of 13.
Rounding out his passions, Pines’ connection to science was incredibly personal. At age 11, Pines contracted polio during the epidemic that swept the globe during the 1950s. “I was disabled for quite a while and spent many months in a convent isolation ward,” he shared with Pines Lab. And while this was a dark time in Pines’ life, he was ultimately able to recover thanks to the innovations produced by medical research scientists. Later on as he was plotting his career path, his exposure to Linus Pauling’s book The Nature of the Chemical Bond served as “the catalyst that allowed me to see how chemistry brought together the rigor of mathematics, the beauty of music, the prospect of scientific progress.”
Pines’ path to pursue chemistry took him from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where he studied mathematics and chemistry, to MIT, where he earned his chemistry PhD. By the time he arrived on the UC Berkeley campus in 1972—having been hired as a professor the same year he completed his doctorate—he had already been published as an author on a “landmark paper” on the topic of nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), according to Berkeley Lab. As defined by the Pines Magnetic Resonance Center, NMR refers to “a technique that uses magnetic fields and electromagnetic frequencies to study the chemical structure and dynamics of solids, liquids, and gases. …NMR is a non-invasive technology that has an extraordinary range of applications—in physics, chemistry, materials science, engineering, and biomedicine, with direct implications for its perhaps more widely known related technology, MRI (magnetic resonance imaging).”
For the next nearly-five decades, Pines continued his NMR research at UC Berkeley with the Materials Science Division (MSD) and the Chemistry department, propelling the field of resonance imaging forward. In interview with Berkeley Lab last year, MSD Director Peter Fischer shared, “For over 45 years, he led an enormously impactful… program on Nuclear Magnetic Resonance in MSD. This program produced close to 500 publications, including numerous papers in the highest-impact journals, as well as close to 30 patents and five R&D100 awards. He was also a dedicated mentor, which is reflected by his many students and postdocs who moved on to become world-recognized scholars in their fields.”
As Fischer referenced, Pines not only transformed the field of chemistry with his own groundbreaking research, but also through his cultivation of young scientists, who have affectionately referred to themselves as “Pinenuts.” A passionate educator, Pines worked with a wide range of students, from those with specialized expertise all the way to introductory chemistry students (Pines was a longtime lecturer for Chemistry 1A, an introductory chemistry course often taken by first-year undergraduates). Throughout his career, Pines was honored with a deluge of awards for both research and teaching, including the Michael Faraday Medal, The Royal Society (U.K.); Dickson Prize, Carnegie Mellon University; ACS Irving Langmuir Award; F. A. Cotton Medal for Excellence in Chemical Research; Russell Varian Prize, European Magnetic Resonance Society; Wolf Prize in Chemistry; and the Distinguished Teaching Award, University of California. In November 2023, UC Berkeley opened the Pines Magnetic Resonance Center, which continues to build on his legacy.
While Pines stayed busy with his official appointments and research, he never lost his appreciation for or direct connection to his other childhood passions of music and chess. During his time as UC Berkeley professor, Pines became a frequent Cal Performances attendee with his wife Ditsa. Cal Performances Executive and Artistic Director Jeremy Geffen shared, “Alex and Ditsa were voracious consumers of the arts and understood them—particularly orchestral music, great instrumental and vocal soloists, opera, ballet, and chamber music—on a level I have rarely encountered.” In 2001, Pines became even more closely intertwined with the organization when he volunteered to serve on the Cal Performances Board of Trustees, giving generously of his time and resources behind the scenes to ensure long-term success and steady direction for the organization. This included, among many avenues of support, Alex and Ditsa personally opening up their home to host events for Cal Performances and performing artists, just as they hosted for the College of Chemistry, Pinenuts groups, and visiting scholars.
Pines served on the Cal Performances board from 2001–2004, and then again from 2016–2019, before becoming a Sustaining Trustee. As a highly engaged board member and audience member, Pines was known to and beloved by many in the Cal Performances community. According to Geffen, “He was among Cal Performances’ most enthusiastic supporters and was in the audience for our greatest triumphs. …I will remember Alex most for his boundless humor, insights, generosity, and warmth, and especially for his booming voice that would both amaze us with his insights and leave the room in stitches.”
Pines’ passing last November was recognized internationally, but felt particularly acutely on the UC Berkeley campus where he had been a generous and prolific contributor in so many spaces, with Cal Performances being no exception. In recognition of his lasting legacy, Cal Performances has selected Mitsuko Uchida’s performance with the Mahler Chamber Orchestra as a special moment of recognition—in part because it is a tentpole performance on the current season, and in part because of Pines’ affinity for great pianists. Cal Performances is grateful for all that Pines contributed to making the live performing arts possible in our halls over the course of decades, and is looking forward to this opportunity to celebrate his continued impact.
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The Spasms of History: Inside William Kentridge’s The Great Yes, The Great No
The Spasms of History: Inside William Kentridge’s The Great Yes, The Great No
“the spasms of history”: abrupt moments of transformation—perhaps even of illumination—triggered by the unresolved traumatic memories of those who have been colonized
By Thomas May, Cal Performances-commissioned writer, critic, educator, and translator
A new production by William Kentridge is always a major event. Few other artists at work today span so many media while at the same time reimagining them: drawing, painting, sculpture, printmaking, animated film, and musical-theater performance are all encompassed within his practice. But what makes Kentridge especially resonant for a global audience is how his innovations push beyond merely aesthetic considerations to pose big, open-ended questions about history and identity.
Following his inspiring Cal Performances residency in 2022–23, which culminated in the first US production of Kentridge’s chamber opera Sibyl, the internationally acclaimed South African artist returns in early spring to present the Bay Area premiere of his latest live performance work, The Great Yes, The Great No (March 14–16, Zellerbach Hall). The highly anticipated production, which was co-commissioned by Cal Performances, is the linchpin of this season’s Illuminations programming on the theme of “Fractured History.”
With its splicing together of recorded events and associative fiction to generate provocative new narratives, The Great Yes, The Great No seems almost tailor-made for this season’s Illuminations programming. The passage from Marseille to Martinique undertaken by a group of refugees from the Nazis serves as the initial premise of the storyline. In Kentridge’s treatment, however, this factual source readily opens up to accommodate multiple layers of connection and inquiry.
“The historical specificity is a launching pad for broader questions,” Kentridge said in a recent interview from his studio in Johannesburg. The Great Yes, The Great No grapples with issues that remain urgently significant, including artistic, philosophical, and political critiques of the enduring legacy of colonialism; experiences of migration and displacement; and what Kentridge terms “the spasms of history”: abrupt moments of transformation—perhaps even of illumination—triggered by the unresolved traumatic memories of those who have been colonized.
Rather than offer an “historical reenactment of an event,” The Great Yes, The Great No “becomes a commentary on the themes that were running through the world at that time, as well as contemporary reflections on the historical event,” says Jeremy Geffen, executive and artistic director of Cal Performances.
Audiences who experienced Sibyl during Kentridge’s previous Berkeley engagement will encounter a markedly different approach here. “Though it will be recognizable as a William Kentridge artwork, the style is very different from that of Sibyl,” says Geffen. Because it takes off from an actual historical event, The Great Yes, The Great No becomes “a much more narrative work, but even the color palette has changed and the Surrealist elements of the piece take you out of the story that it tells in multiple ways; as a result, you can have different perspectives on it.”
Geffen continues, observing that The Great Yes, The Great No “ventures into absurdity in a very Kentridge-ian way. It’s sometimes difficult to distinguish between what is actual history and what is reflection. There is drama, but there is a lot of humor as well. All of it is so engaging.”
From Marseille to Martinique: A Story of Wartime Escape
If you’ve seen the Netflix miniseries Transatlantic (2023), you’ll already be familiar with the historical context of the refugees depicted in The Great Yes, The Great No as sailing aboard the Capitaine Paul-Lemerle—a long-haul cargo ship repurposed to transport passengers from Marseille to Martinique in the eastern Caribbean. These individuals were fleeing the grim prospect of capture by the Nazis, with whom the Vichy government in control of southern France was actively collaborating.
Inspired by a paper on the historical voyage by the South African sociologist Ari Sitas, Kentridge became intrigued by the presence of prominent artists and intellectuals among the several hundred refugees who set sail on March 24, 1941 (two months before such rescue missions on behalf of those in imminent danger were forced to cease operations).
Especially notable passengers on this famous crossing included André Breton, the poet and exponent of Surrealism, with his second wife (Jacqueline Lamba) and their daughter; the Afro-Cuban painter Wifredo Lam, who collaborated on a project with Breton; the social anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss; the Russian Communist novelist, poet, and historian Victor Serge; and the German-Jewish antifascist writer Anna Seghers, who had published a novel warning of the Nazi danger the year before Hitler seized power. Of these figures, The Great Yes, The Great No homes in on Breton and the dissident power of Surrealism to challenge the established narrative of rationalism undergirding colonial power.
Because Martinique was a French colony, the strategy was to regard it as a stopover point that was still legal, from which refugees unable to attain coveted visas could eventually obtain access to the US or elsewhere in Latin America. (Nowadays, Martinique is governed as an “overseas department” of the French Republic.)
Imaginary Fellow Travelers
The irony that these passengers were escaping Europe by sailing toward a destination it had colonized is fundamental to Kentridge’s vision. “The journey across became a way of thinking about the relationship of Martinique to France,” he explains. “The question of the connection between the colonies and the center is an ongoing question in my work.” Kentridge’s 2018 hybrid performance piece The Head & the Load, for example, sets out “to recognize and record” the forgotten role of African porters among the colonizers in conflict during the First World War.
To center the issue of colonialism, The Great Yes, The Great No expands the ship’s roster, blending passengers who were actually on board the historical voyage with a list of 20th-century figures pivotal in the development of anti-colonialist thought and activism. As imaginary fellow travelers, Kentridge includes the Martinique-born writers Aimé and Suzanne Césaire, both of whom had made the journey from Marseille back to their homeland two years before Breton & Co.
Aimé Césaire’s “Cahier d’un retour au pays natal” (“Journal of a Homecoming”) from 1939—nothing less than “one of the great poems of the 20th century,” according to Kentridge—provides the “bedrock” of his concept for The Great Yes, The Great No. Kentridge’s title, which he envisioned from the start (even before he hit upon the historical angle of the ship’s journey from Marseille to Martinique), is taken from the 20th-century Greek poet Constantine Cavafy, a writer he has long admired. Cavafy in turn was expanding on a phrase he found in Dante (“che fece … il gran rifiuto”—“he who made the great refusal…”).
The title’s stark opposition implies the ambiguity of meaning that lies between dogmatic certainties, or, in Kentridge’s formulation, “between words at the edge of meaning.”
“Cahier d’un retour” served as a foundational text of the literary and political affirmation of Black identity that Césaire dubbed the Négritude movement while living in Paris in the 1930s. “It becomes a way of looking at questions of the racial-colonial divide with Africa,” Kentridge observes. Other leading members of this circle who enter into the world of The Great Yes, The Great No include the Martiniquais sisters Jeanne and Paulette Nardal, Léopold Sédar Senghor, and Léon-Gontran Damas.
Also accompanying this transatlantic journey is the anti-colonialist political philosopher Frantz Fanon, a former student of fellow Martinican Aimé Césaire. In actual historical terms, Fanon would sail a few years later in the reverse direction, from Martinique to Morocco, and then on to France to fight the Germans during the Second World War. Profoundly disillusioned by his experiences of racism, Fanon rose to prominence in the 1950s and early 1960s through his groundbreaking work on the devastating legacy of colonialism—a body of work that continues to wield enormous influence today.
The simultaneous layering of different timelines is a signature of The Great Yes, The Great No and extends backward to bring on board Joséphine Bonaparte, who was born in Martinique in 1763 and became the first wife of the French Emperor Napoleon—another wrinkle in “the strange connection between France and this tiny island Martinique,” as Kentridge puts it. She is “twinned” with the US-born dancer, singer, and actress Josephine Baker, another transplant to Paris. Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera also appear, as do Leon Trotsky—though he had been assassinated in Mexico City a half-year before the voyage—and even Stalin.
Collective Creativity
Kentridge stresses that The Great Yes, The Great No is an intensely collaborative work built through exchange with his creative colleagues at the Centre for the Less Good Idea—the studio he founded as an “incubator space” for cross-disciplinary artistic experimen¬tation in Johannesburg (where Kentridge was born, in 1955, to a prominent anti-Apartheid activist couple). The studio’s peculiar name derives from a Tswana proverb: “If the good doctor can’t cure you, find the less good doctor.”
In contrast to the familiar model of a composer setting a ready-made libretto to music to create an opera, which is then brought to the stage through subsequent contributions by performers, directors, and designers, Kentridge says “the whole process of construction of the piece happens together.” He has a team of collaborators such as the theater maker Phala O. Phala, dramaturg Mwenya Kabwe on the libretto, Greta Goiris on the distinctive costume designs, and Sabine Theunissen on staging and set design. Text, music, stage direction, and images are all developed side-by-side.
Obviously defying categorization, The Great Yes, The Great No might be termed a chamber opera—with the understanding that, like Sibyl, it posits a radical new form of opera that mirrors the give-and-take of collaboration. The composer, vocalist, and choreographer Nhlanhla Mahlangu worked with the chorus of seven women singers who perform in the piece to try out polyglot settings of the textual fragments Kentridge proposed. The women translated these into their mother languages (among them isiZulu, siSwati, Sepedi, and Setswana) and developed the music together with Mahlangu.
Kentridge describes how they tried out “which versions are the most melodious. That’s not something an audience that doesn’t speak any of these languages will pick up, but it is there in the deep structure of how the music flows with the chorus.” They also experimented with a variety of rhythmic deliveries and “harmonies that come from overlaying different rhythms.”
The music for The Great Yes, The Great No, which unfolds without intermission in about 80 minutes, was thus created from a mixture of inputs: from the seven choral singers and vocalist/actor Xolisile Bongwana, from Mahlangu, and from the ensemble led by percussionist and music director Tlale Makhene. “The variety of music that comes from a very small instrumental ensemble is virtuosic and inspiring,” says Geffen. “It refers both to European cultures and to the sound worlds of the colonies.”
Flexibility is an essential part of this process. Geffen recalls that “the piece had changed considerably” between a workshop he saw in Johannesburg in September 2023 and the dress rehearsal for the world premiere in France last summer at LUMA Arles. “There’s a continuous development.”
The never-finished creative process of molding a work like The Great Yes, The Great No resembles the variability of history itself and how it becomes increasingly fragmented as we attempt to make more certain sense of it. “There are incontrovertible historical facts and events,” says Geffen, “and then there is how we process those facts and how we link them together.”
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Q&A: The Making of Kodo’s One Earth Tour 2025: Warabe
Q&A: The Making of Kodo’s One Earth Tour 2025: Warabe
“We want to think through what we want to portray in every piece, [physical] movement, and sometimes even breath.”
Interview of Taiyo Onoda, Kodo troupe member, by Kimia Adibi, Cal Performances’ PR Assistant
For 40 years, Kodo has evolved the ancient art of taiko drumming through rigorous physical discipline and spiritual connection while maintaining deep roots in Japanese cultural heritage. When the group returns to Cal Performances January 25 and 26 for One Earth Tour 2025: Warabe, audiences will see San Francisco native and UC Davis alumnus Taiyo Onoda performing with them.
In a recent conversation with Cal Performances PR Assistant Kimia Adibi, Onoda offered his insight into the behind-the-scenes of Kodo.
Q: Kodo’s 40th anniversary productions, Tsuzumi (which came to Cal Performances in 2023) and Warabe (coming to Cal Performances this month), each explore different facets of Kodo’s identity—one centered on the drum itself, the other on maintaining a child’s perspective. What inspired this dual exploration?
A: Our ensemble name “Kodo” is a coined term, which consists of two kanji characters. The kanji character for “Ko” can be read as “Tsuzumi,” and the kanji character for “Do” can be read as “Warabe.” Thus, we identify ourselves as “Children of the Drums.” We want to explore the limitless potential that taiko has, with the spirit similar to the never-ending curiosity that a child has.
Q: Kodo’s performances are known for their physical and spiritual intensity. How do the artists prepare, both individually and as an ensemble, to create such a deep connection with audiences?
A: Individually, we prepare for production rehearsals by digging through our database of past recorded performances. The next crucial step is to communicate with everyone to polish the pieces. For example, we can ask the composers of pieces if there were any specific instructions to keep in mind when performing. We also talk with the artistic director to have a better understanding of the atmosphere we want to create in certain scenes. But many things can change once the ensemble practices start due to aspects like team chemistry, and updated “trends,” to name a few. We want to think through what we want to portray in every piece, [physical] movement, and sometimes even breath. We need to analyze and understand what we as an ensemble want to perform in order to have a deep connection with the audience.
Q: The holistic experience of a Kodo performance is extraordinary. How does the company work with venue acoustics, spatial arrangements, and staging elements to create this immersive atmosphere?
A: We have our stage setup and soundcheck routine meticulously orchestrated. We have performing members sit in the audience to give instructions on how to place certain props or instruments on stage to utilize the whole stage, on every single performance on tour. We also have performers listen to pieces during rehearsal to give the others on stage feedback of the sound we create. We can then adjust how we play our instruments by relying on our ears and tactile feedback, and memorize them for our actual performance. However, that cannot be perfectly recreated because having all the audience sitting in the theater changes the acoustics slightly, and the audience may respond to our performance in certain ways. We listen and feel for those responses and reactions we get in our actual performance and may possibly make subtle adjustments in real time.
Q: Many of Kodo’s pieces incorporate physical interactions between performers as well. How do you develop these movement sequences?
A: Movements in a piece, like dances, are choreographed. There is constant communication between the drummers and the dancers when creating the piece. The movements themselves are mostly borrowed from folk/festival pieces from all around Japan, and especially from our home island of Sado. For example, the dance movements in the piece “Okoshi” incorporate movements from traditional folk arts native to Sado Island, categorized as oni daiko, or ondeko. Every village on the island has their unique style of ondeko, and when creating this piece, we visited the villages to learn their local ondeko dance.
Movements that happen outside of pieces, like moving drums from one place to another, or even simply walking on stage, are not necessarily choreographed. However, because we have communicated all the minute details of how we want to perform, we all have a general consensus of how we should be moving on stage in certain scenes.
Q: Kodo’s Earth Celebration festival, designed to create “an alternative global culture through musical and cultural collaborations,” has become Japan’s longest-running music festival. How has creating this artistic meeting space over the years influenced Kodo’s own artistic development?
A: We believe that constant collaborations with other artists are essential for our growth. As professional performers, we want to hone what we have already, but it is equally important to input new ideas and concepts from artists aside from Kodo in order to create something new. We are an ensemble that explores the limitless possibilities of taiko. We hope to further expand our knowledge of taiko by looking through a different lens, which is made possible in such collaborations.
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Cal Performances presents One Earth Tour 2025: Warabe, Saturday, January 25 at 8pm and Sunday, January 26 at 3pm at Zellerbach Hall. Learn more about the performance and how to attend.
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Judith Jamison’s Life and Legacy—at Zellerbach Hall and Around the World
Judith Jamison’s Life and Legacy—at Zellerbach Hall and Around the World
“She taught me a lesson, too. When you put something out there, you have to go for it, stay on it, and stick to it.”
By Krista Thomas, Cal Performances Interim Director of Communications; with special thanks for the contributions of Robert Cole and Sylvia Lindsey
Photo: Judith Jamison. Photo by Andrew Eccles.
In November 2024, the world lost a dance legend. Celebrated for her talents as a performer, choreographer, company leader and founder, and overall visionary, Judith Jamison has had an international reach, and inspired many generations of dancers and dance-lovers. And, though her impact was elevated to a global scale, it is felt intimately here at Cal Performances as well.
Ms. Jamison was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1943 and, by her own account, was “filled” with the arts as a child, both as an audience member and practitioner. Her formal dance training began at age six and blossomed into a career that, in her early 20s, would land her a role as company member at Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater.
While Ms. Jamison had been a remarkable dancer since the beginning of her time at the company, it was six years after she joined that she starred in the work that would propel her to international stardom: Alvin Ailey’s “Cry” (1971). Created in only about one week as a tribute to “all Black women everywhere — especially our mothers,” the work saw Ms. Jamison—for and alongside whom the work had been developed— in a solo role, embodying generational hardships and unmatched perseverance. According to Ms. Jamison, “In my interpretation, she [the dancer] represented those women before her who came from the hardships of slavery, through the pain of losing loved ones, through overcoming extraordinary depressions and tribulations. Coming out of a world of pain and trouble, she has found her way—and triumphed.”
Her deeply emotional performance was met with significant enthusiasm. The New York Times review from the following evening reported, “Because ‘Cry’ is a solo, even though a formidably long one [15 minutes], its importance could easily be overlooked. But it certainly wasn’t by the first-night audience, which applauded and cheered it for nearly 10 minutes.”
From 1965 until 1980, Ms. Jamison saw her career grow even further. During this time, she remained at Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater and performed many works as a company member as well as alongside other national and international dance companies (especially ballet companies) as a guest performer. In 1980, she temporarily left the company to pursue other ventures, including performing on Broadway and founding her own company, the Jamison Project, through which her output as a leader and choreographer flourished.
Ms. Jamison returned to Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater in a leadership position in 1988 and assumed the title of artistic director in late 1989 following the passing of the company’s founder and her longtime artistic collaborator, Alvin Ailey. In 1993, Ms. Jamison choreographed Hymn as a tribute to “Mr. Ailey’s incredible contributions to dance and humanity,” per the company.
Ms. Jamison’s tenure as artistic director of Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater lasted from 1989 until 2011. During that time, she choreographed many renowned works, secured a permanent home for the company, asserted the significance and expanded the influence of Mr. Ailey’s legacy, and oversaw the growth of AileyCamp to inspire middle school children through dance.
At the time Ms. Jamison began leading the company, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater had already been performing at Cal Performances annually, though generally only for a few performances during each engagement. It was with Ms. Jamison that Cal Performances cemented a much stronger partnership that would span 7+ performances each season, eventually making Cal Performances the company’s most performed-at venue outside of New York. What is fondly referred to as “Ailey Week” at Cal Performances has become a beloved tradition. What is more, the company’s pronounced presence across each season has undoubtedly given shape to Cal Performances’ overall dance profile and, as a result, has shaped the ways our Bay Area community has come to experience life-enhancing dance performance.
Robert Cole, who was Cal Performances’ artistic director for much of the same time that Ms. Jamison led Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, reflected, “Judith was a very strong leader. She had a driven personality, which I related to and appreciated. But I think the main thing about Judith, why she was so successful: her gift was that she shared Ailey’s vision. She shared it, and she made it grow.”
At Cal Performances, this growth was visible not only in the increased frequency of engagements with the company, but also through the creation of Berkeley/Oakland AileyCamp, which will celebrate its 23rd year next summer. AileyCamp was developed by Mr. Ailey in his final year of life as a free summer program for middle school children that uses dance as a means of teaching personal development. Along with classes in company repertoire and styles like ballet and African dances, the program teaches positive self-image, conflict resolution, and self-expression, among other invaluable skills. At the time that Ms. Jamison assumed leadership of the company, AileyCamp was just getting its legs. However, Ms. Jamison was incredibly dedicated to extending opportunities to the youth, and invested her energy into seeing this program expand. In recent years, she shared, “I was filled as a child, so that’s what’s so important to me still to this day—will always be—that children see it [the arts]… because if they don’t have my background but they get a chance to see, in a theater, live people trying to convey spiritual art to you… it’s wonderful, because they have a whole other world open to them.”
AileyCamp dancers on stage in the Final Performance at Zellerbach Hall
Sylvia Lindsey, who has been a longtime supporter of arts throughout the Bay Area and especially of Berkeley/Oakland AileyCamp, recalled Ms. Jamison’s vision and ensuing determination to get an AileyCamp on the West Coast. “She was motivated because she saw what AIleyCamp was already doing elsewhere, and she wanted a camp on the West Coast. The company was coming to Cal Performances every year already. She was the first person who talked to me about AileyCamp, and I remember her saying something like, ‘I know we can get this camp here.’” And in 2002, thanks to the support of Ms. Jamison and the Ailey company, numerous dedicated donors and community advocates and trustees—most notably Ms. Lindsey, Maris Meyerson, and Susan Marinoff—and a “wonderful [Cal Performances] staff” who could support the vision, per Mr. Cole, Berkeley/Oakland AileyCamp officially launched.
Ms. Lindsey, who considered Ms. Jamison a friend and inspiration, shared that, through this process, “She taught me a lesson, too. When you put something out there, you have to go for it, stay on it, and stick to it.” Ms. Lindsey recalls Ms. Jamison being steadfast in checking in on the program’s development, and personally invested in the camp’s success.
Since Berkeley/Oakland AileyCamp’s founding, the camp has impacted more than 1,300 individuals, and AileyCamp more broadly has expanded to serve 10 cities across the country. So much of what we know and admire from Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater today was intentionally nurtured by Ms. Jamison’s visionary leadership. And as a result of her singular and exceptional work—her choreography, her artistic guidance, her investment in the Ailey company and dancers of the present and future—we can see a real human impact.
Ms. Lindsey said, ”She was such an interesting and delightful person to know. A no-nonsense person; a genuine, for-real person. She has left a legacy, and especially for all young Black women—and for all women, period.”
Though Cal Performances’ current Executive and Artistic Director Jeremy Geffen did not know Ms. Jamison personally, he has been touched by the legacy she has left at Cal Performances and beyond, and the ways that she has supported the healing power of the arts for decades. Giving voice to the sentiments that many admirers of the icon have shared since her passing, Mr. Geffen shared, “To say that Judith Jamison was a trailblazer is an understatement. A role model for generations of dancers, an inspiration for audiences, and a beacon of light in an often dark world, she made us all better through the brilliance of her talent, leadership, and strength of character. Cal Performances will always view her as part of our family, and she will continue to inspire us for decades to come.”
Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater has dedicated its entire current season to Ms. Jamison, and Cal Performances is dedicating April 2025 Ailey Week and AileyCamp to her legacy as well.