Lorraine Vivian Hansberry was an American playwright and writer. She was the first African American female author to have a play performed on Broadway. Her best-known work, the play A Raisin in the Sun, highlights the lives of black Americans in Chicago living under racial segregation. The title of the play was taken from the poem "Harlem" by Langston Hughes: "What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?" At the age of 29, she won the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award — making her the first African-American dramatist, the fifth woman, and the youngest playwright to do so. Hansberry's family had struggled against segregation, challenging a restrictive covenant in the 1940 U.S. Supreme Court case Hansberry v. Lee.
Lar Lubovitch is an American choreographer. He founded his own dance company, the Lar Lubovitch Dance Company in 1968. Based in New York City, the company has performed in all 50 American states as well as in more than 30 countries. As of 2005, he had choreographed more than 100 dances for the company. In addition to the company, Lubovitch has also done creative work in ballet, ice-skating venues, and musical theater, notably Into the Woods. He has played a key role in raising funds to fight AIDS.
California is rich in dance history. In classical ballet, California is home to the oldest professional ballet company in the United States. The San Francisco Ballet, founded as the San Francisco Opera Ballet in 1933, predates both American Ballet Theatre and New York City Ballet. Barbara Crockett founded the Sacramento Ballet in 1954 and hosted the first festival for the Pacific Western Region of Regional Dance America in 1966. In modern dance, Ruth St. Denis established her second school in the Hollywood area of Los Angeles in 1940 while Lester Horton created the Horton Dance Group in 1934, also in Los Angeles. Ann Halprin founded the San Francisco Dancers’ Workshop in 1950 and continues to live and work in the San Francisco Bay Area. The Bay Area in also home to Alonzo King's Lines Ballet and Oberlin Dance Collective.
Michael Smuin was an American ballet dancer, choreographer and theatre director. He was co-founder and director of his own dance company, the Smuin Ballet in San Francisco.
The Isadora Duncan Dance Awards or Izzies honor San Francisco Bay Area dance artists for outstanding achievements in a range of categories including: choreography, sustained achievement, individual performance, company performance, costume design, and set design. The awards are presented annually and named in honor of Isadora Duncan. The awards began in 1986 and were revitalized in 2004 via a partnership with Bay Area National Dance Week after a slump due, in part, to a perceived lack of credibility.
AXIS Dance Company is a professional physically integrated contemporary dance company and dance education organization founded in 1987 and based in Oakland, California. It is one of the first contemporary dance companies in the world to consciously develop choreography that integrates dancers with and without physical disabilities. Their work has received nine Isadora Duncan Dance Awards and nine additional nominations for both their artistry and production values.
West Side Story Suite is a ballet suite choreographed by Jerome Robbins. Robbins conceived, directed and choreographed the 1957 musical West Side Story, then co-directed its 1961 film adaptation, before including parts of the choreography in the anthology Jerome Robbins' Broadway. Robbins developed the latter to the ballet West Side Story Suite for the New York City Ballet, which premiered on May 18, 1995, at the New York State Theater.
Martin Pakledinaz was an American costume designer for stage and film.
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.
Joan Boada is a Cuban retired ballet dancer, teacher and ballet master. His career started at the Cuban National Ballet, where he was promoted to principal dancer at age 16. He defected to France in 1994, then performed with several companies and as a guest, before joining the San Francisco Ballet as a principal dancer in 1999. After he retired from performing in 2016, he worked as a guest teacher and répétiteur. In 2019, he joined the Spanish National Dance Company as ballet master and choreographic assistant. In 2021, he became the artistic director of both Conservatory Ballet and Kirov Academy of Ballet. In 2022, Boada became the associate director of Boston Ballet II.
Tina LeBlanc is an American ballet dancer, teacher and ballet master. She joined the Joffrey Ballet in 1988. In 1992, she joined the San Francisco Ballet as a principal dancer. She retired in 2009, then joined the faculty of the San Francisco Ballet School, before returning to the San Francisco Ballet as a ballet master in 2019.
Danielle Rowe is an Australian-born ballet dancer and choreographer.
The Lorraine Hansberry Theatre is an African-American arts institution located in downtown San Francisco. It is named after Lorraine Hansberry, who wrote A Raisin in the Sun while living in Bay Area. Since being founded in 1981, The Lorraine Hansberry Theatre has mounted productions that have included performances by Ruby Dee, Ossie Davis, Danny Glover and Ntozake Shange.
Edward Scissorhands is a contemporary dance adaptation of the 1990 American romance fantasy film Edward Scissorhands, created by Matthew Bourne, with music by Terry Davies. The screenwriter and composer of the film version, Caroline Thompson and Danny Elfman, helped to develop the dance version, which is set in the 1950s. The story is told entirely through music and dance with no discourse although the plot is similar to the movie.
Val Caniparoli is an American ballet dancer and international choreographer. His work includes more than 100 productions for ballet, opera, and theater for over 50 companies, and his career as a choreographer progressed globally even as he continued his professional dance career with the San Francisco Ballet.
Smuin Contemporary Ballet, formerly known as Smuin Ballet, is a touring ballet company based in San Francisco, California. Smuin Ballet performs its season in multiple venues: the Dean Lesher Center in Walnut Creek, the Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts in Mountain View, the Sunset Center in Carmel, the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts and The Palace of Fine Arts Theater in San Francisco.
San Francisco Playhouse is a non-profit theater company in San Francisco, California, founded in 2003 by Bill English and Susi Damilano. The theater stages nine plays yearly, including Broadway plays, musicals, and world and regional premieres.
Marcus Shelby is an American bass player, composer and educator best known for his major works for jazz orchestra, Port Chicago, Harriet Tubman, Soul of the Movement: Meditations on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and Beyond the Blues: A Prison Oratorio. He has led the Marcus Shelby Jazz Orchestra since 2001 and has recorded with artists as diverse as Ledisi and Tom Waits.
Kathleen Hermesdorf was a dancer, teacher, choreographer, improviser, producer, and curator, born in Wisconsin, USA, and a long-time resident of San Francisco.
Amy Seiwert is an American contemporary ballet choreographer and artistic director. She is the founder and artistic director of Amy Seiwert’s Imagery, a contemporary ballet company in San Francisco.
