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| Address | Berkeley, California United States |
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| Designation | Berkeley Landmark |
The Ashkenaz is a live music and dance venue located in Berkeley, California in the United States. It is a non-profit organization. It focuses on world music. In 2011 it was voted the best place to dance by readers of East Bay Express . [1] It has been listed as a Berkeley Landmark since September 8, 1992, under the name Ashkenaz Music and Dance Community Center.
Ashkenaz opened in 1973 and was founded by performance artist and activist David Nadel. After relocating from Los Angeles to attend University of California, Berkeley, Nadel formed a dance troupe. The troupe started renting spaces on San Pablo Avenue. Nadel, along with six other people, would go on to buy the building where Ashkenaz is located today. He named the organization after his Ashkenazi Jewish ancestry. The original building was a series of old retail shops. Nadel and friends built the wooden facade that is seen today. [2] It is supposed to resemble an Eastern European synagogue. [3] It totals 5,000 square feet. [4] In 1993, the city of Berkeley named the Ashkenaz a city landmark. [5]
On December 19, 1996, Juan Rivera Pérez was kicked out of the club by Nadel in-between sets. The patron returned during the second set and shot Nadel point blank in the head. Nadel died from the gunshot wound at the hospital and Pirez was never found. In wake of the shooting, a group of Ashkenaz patrons bought it and then formed a nonprofit. [2] It re-opened six months later, on June 21, 1997. [6]
It caters to world music, both local and international. Music genres range from hip-hop to Cajun music. [2] They also host events focused around Judaism, including holiday celebrations and klezmer concerts. [4] The majority of concerts start with a dance lesson based around the style or genre of the music. [2] They host benefits for local organizations and activists, such as the American Indian Movement and Nature Conservancy. [6] The organization aims to be a zero waste business. They recycle everything and provide customers glasses of water instead of water bottles. They have a television program on Berkeley Community Television called Ashkenaz Live, where they showcase performances and history of the performers' genres. Ashkenaz has a live children's program where musicians play to local children on Sundays. [2] The venue has a stage, a dance studio, and a café serving beer, wine and vegetarian food. A space upstairs where Nadel used to live is an office space. [4]
Forum or The Forum may refer to:
International folk dance includes Balkan dance, Middle Eastern dance, contra dance, Hungarian dance, polka, Chinese dance, and Japanese dance. Clubs featuring these ethnic dance genres are enjoyed by non-professional dancers for entertainment. Many clubs that use collections of ethnic folk dances will use the term "international folk dance" or similar in their name.
The Alternative Music Foundation located at 924 Gilman Street, often referred to simply as "Gilman", is a non-profit, all-ages, collectively organized music club. It is located in the West Berkeley area of Berkeley, California.
Claremont Canyon Regional Preserve is a small regional park mainly located in the city of Oakland, California, and administered by the East Bay Regional Park District. The park is named for the canyon in which it is situated, Claremont Canyon, out of which Claremont Creek flows on its way to its confluence with Temescal Creek. Previously the canyon was named Harwood's Canyon, and then later as Telegraph Canyon. The name was changed to Claremont by a developer of the nearby Claremont district.
The East Bay is the eastern region of the San Francisco Bay Area and includes cities along the eastern shores of the San Francisco Bay and San Pablo Bay. The region has grown to include inland communities in Alameda and Contra Costa counties. With a population of roughly 2.5 million in 2010, it is the most populous subregion in the Bay Area.
Amoeba Music is an American independent music store chain with locations in Berkeley, San Francisco, and Hollywood, Los Angeles, California. It stocks media, primarily music, but also films and television programs via DVD and VHS. Its music selection includes rock, pop, blues, soul, funk, rap, and jazz. It is popular as a tourist destination for fans of physical media or music in general. It was founded in 1990 in Berkeley, California, and remains in operation, having survived the decline of CD sales in the 2000s. Amoeba stores generally focus on vinyl and compact discs.
West Berkeley is generally the area of Berkeley, California, that lies west of San Pablo Avenue, abutting San Francisco Bay. It includes the area that was once the unincorporated town of Ocean View, as well as the filled-in areas along the shoreline west of I-80, mainly including the Berkeley Marina. It lies at an elevation of 23 feet.
Rebecca Moore is an American musician, actress, and animal rights activist. Notable for her participation at a very young age in performance art and experimental theater productions, and for her own music, she is also known to some as a muse of the singer Jeff Buckley. She is the daughter of Peter Moore, a photographer of experimental art and artists in NYC and his wife, Barbara, an art historian. After slightly over two decades of work devoted to experimental art, music and activist realms in NYC (1984–2007) Moore went to work in areas of animal rescue & care and animal rights advocacy.
The UC Theatre is a music venue on University Avenue near Shattuck Avenue in Downtown Berkeley, Berkeley, California, United States. From 1976 until 2001, it was a movie theater known for a revival house presentation of films. In 2013, The Berkeley Music Group was formed as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization with the mission to renovate and operate the UC Theater as live music venue. It reopened its doors on April 7, 2016.
The Uptones are an American ska band, based in Northern California. Formed in 1981 by a group of high school students in Berkeley, California, The Uptones were influenced by the English 2 Tone sound, as well as the British mod scene, punk rock, and the original Jamaica ska sound. The Uptones were one of the first U.S. bands devoted to playing ska and were an influence on the burgeoning West Coast punk/ska scene. The band reformed with core founding members in the early 2000s and continued to play live shows throughout the Bay Area until 2018.
Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (YBCA) is a multi-disciplinary contemporary arts center in San Francisco, California, United States. Located in Yerba Buena Gardens, YBCA features visual art, performance, and film/video that celebrates local, national, and international artists and the Bay Area's diverse communities. YBCA programs year-round in two landmark buildings—the Galleries and Forum by Japanese architect Fumihiko Maki and the adjacent Theater by American architect James Stewart Polshek and Todd Schliemann. Betti-Sue Hertz served as Curator from 2008 through 2015.
The Museum of Performance + Design, formerly the San Francisco Performing Arts Library & Museum, is located in the Bayview District of San Francisco, California at 2200 Jerrold Avenue, Ste. T. The Museum collects and makes accessible materials about the performing arts, with a special emphasis on documenting and preserving the San Francisco Bay Area’s rich and diverse performing arts heritage from the Gold Rush to the present. The museum produces public and educational programs, provides library services to researchers, and conservation and archival services to performing arts institutions. The Museum's collection includes personal papers of prominent artists, original costumes and design renderings, audio-visual recordings of live performances, original artwork, other artifacts, and ephemera. The Museum also serves as the official archives for many local performing arts organizations including the San Francisco Ballet, San Francisco Opera, Stern Grove Festival, and the San Francisco Ethnic Dance Festival.
The Ashkenaz Foundation is a non-profit organization based in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Its purpose is to increase awareness of Yiddish and Jewish culture through the arts. The foundation organizes and sponsors a biennial festival, and has a year-round programme which showcases the work of contemporary artists from Canada and around the world, with a particular focus on music.
Turfing is a form of street dance that originated in Oakland, California, United States, characterized by rhythmic movement combined with waving, floor moves, gliding, flexing and cortortioning. It was developed by youth from West Oakland and organized by dancer Jeriel Bey, who coined the name "turf dancing," or "Turfin" and named his Organization The Architeckz™. Bey named the dance form as an acronym for "Taking Up Room on the Floor." The style was originally known by the terms "having fun with it" or "hitting it", but these names didn't seem marketable. However, another claim for the nomenclature considers the acronym as a backronym and that turf dancing originated as a way to describe dances that different "turfs" from Oakland performed to represent where they were from. The dance form had its earliest influences in the Boogaloo movement of the mid-1960s, but it developed into a distinctive dance style.
La Peña Cultural Center, or La Peña for short, is a multicultural center in the United States. It was founded in 1975 by Latin American and Californian allies in Berkeley, California in response to the 1973 coup d'état in Chile, or golpe de estado. The center was a focal point for the opposition-in-exile to dictator Augusto Pinochet during his rule, and later evolved into a nonprofit organization whose mission is to promote peace, social justice and community action through cultural arts, education and community action. La Peña is located at 3105 Shattuck Avenue in the Ashby neighborhood of South Berkeley, California.
The California Jazz Conservatory is a private conservatory in Berkeley, California. It is the only independent music conservatory in the United States devoted solely to jazz and related styles of music. Located in the Downtown Berkeley Arts District, the CJC offers Associate, Bachelor's, and Master's degrees in Jazz Studies. The conservatory also offers community education classes and workshops for instrumentalists and vocalists and precollege youth programs for beginning, intermediate and advanced musicians. In July 2024, the conservatory announced that it would end its degree programs due to "significantly decreased enrollment and financial constraints."
The Center for Arts in Natick, also known as TCAN in Natick, Massachusetts, is a regional community arts organization serving the cities and towns of MetroWest Boston. It has been in existence in various locations since 1997. The organization presents more than 300 events, classes and performances annually attended by over 28,000 patrons. TCAN was established as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization in 1997.
Dance Mission Theater is a nonprofit performance venue and dance school located in the Mission District of San Francisco, California.
Cal Performances is the performing arts presenting, commissioning and producing organization based at the University of California, Berkeley in Berkeley, California.
El Rio is a gay bar located at 3158 Mission Street, San Francisco, California. It was the first gay bar to debut queer salsa in San Francisco. El Río was established in 1978 as a Leather Brazilian Gay Bar and has been recognized as a Legacy Business by the San Francisco Small Business Commission. El Rio is best known for supporting the community by providing a space for community gatherings, LGBT performances, diverse forms of music and dancing, and offering a space for community fundraising events.
| Authority control databases: Geographic |
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