Here’s an outline to plan your
ticket-foraging with. Scatter a few of these evenings through the season like
little culture outposts and absorb some of the talent — both local and bussed
in — at hand this season. The show’s about to begin.
For dance, you’re in a hotspot: the quality dance program at SUNY
Brockport (www.brockport.edu, 395-2797) schedules several concerts throughout
the year. Catch Jane Comfort and Company sharing its “dance theater” on
February 16 and 17 and the Dance Awareness Days, with events scattered
throughout studios, classrooms, and theaters, on February 23 and 25.
NazarethCollege (www.naz.edu, 389-2170)
brings the Trinity Irish Dance Company — people can’t get enough of that
percussive Irish step — on January 28 and MOMIX — dancers engaging props,
light, and shadow — on March 3. And for the first time, the Rochester City
Ballet will dance at Nazareth on
March 25 and 26. The ballet?Peter and the Wolf.
At the Center for the Arts at UB
(www.ubcfa.org), the Neglia Ballet Artists will
perform Don Quixote on March 18, and
Elisa Monte Dance — with its intense, physical style of modern dance — will
perform on Friday, March 24.
In theater: Geva (www.gevatheatre.org,
232-4382) has opened Vigil, by
Canadian Morris Pynch, and it will continue through
February 5. The “vigil” is a deathbed one, a nephew by his dying aunt’s side,
but don’t expect the Movie of the Week. After that (February 21 through March
19) is Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee’s 1955 Inherit the Wind, an American classic still relevant: a high school
science teacher is jailed for teaching evolution. And Geva
Comedy Improv continues bring the laughter on Geva’sNextstage one weekend a
month for mere pennies (700 of them).
Blackfriars
Theatre (www.blackfriars.org, 454-1260) will open the perspective-shifting
comedic drama Nickel & Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America,by Barbara Ehreneich,
March 10 through 25. Shipping Dock (232-2250, www.shippingdocktheatre.org) will
have Soldier’s Heart March 3 through
April 2, about a WWI veteran who, six years after coming home, has to talk
about the war to save his relationship with his 16-year-old son. And the JCC Centerstage presents two musical winter shows: Berlin and Bernstein February 2 through
5 and A Class Act in March.
(461-2000, www.jccrochester.org)
Downstairs Cabaret Theatre has
scheduled musical comedies The Water
Coolers and I Love You, You’re
Perfect, Now Change to continue, along with appearances by the Nuts &
Bolts comedy improv group. www.downstairscabaret.com
There’s an exciting season at the
Auditorium Theatre. George Carlin on January 20; David Copperfield on February
2; that wacky Australian, the one and only, Dame
Edna February 14 through 19; and… drumroll…
finally, finally, The Lion King on a
healthy local run at the Aud, March 9 through April
16. (www.rbtl.org, 222-5000)
For the family: The Harlem Globetrotters never get old, they’re at Blue
Cross Arena February 11. (232-1900) Geva’s Big
Theatre for Little People program continues with Noodle Doodle Box — about two clown friends who need to learn to
share — February 7 through 19.
Two old favorites: RAPA (325-3366)will perform The Wizard of Oz January 27 to February
12. The School of the Arts (242-7682) has Our
Town February 9 through 12; and the Dazzle Theater (288-0050) — home base
for the Dazzle School of Performing Arts — presents a Christian family
musical called Stop the World, I’m
Getting Off February 3 through 5. A Magical Journey Thru Stages (935-7173),
a multi-generational community theater group, starts a new season of its Broadway Musical Revue, January 27
through March, upstairs at the Auditorium Theatre. Each performance benefits a
different charity.
Sesame Street Live is
at the Auditorium Theatre February 10 (www.rbtl.org, 222-5000) Rochester
Children’s Theater will perform And Then
They Came For Me: Remembering the World of Anne Frank March 18 and 19 at NazarethCollege.
Also at Nazareth is Berenstein Bears on Stage on April 1, by the
visiting Omaha Theater Company. (www.naz.edu)
This article appears in Jan 11-17, 2006.
