Dancers of a multitude of disciplines wowed audiences along Pacific Avenue last week, delivering everything from ballet and classical dance to hip-hop and folk styles on a gorgeous April evening.
City Life
Posted inCity Life
New novel means daughter-mother bonding at Bookshop for Molly Prentiss, Nikki Silva
Author Molly Prentiss returns to Santa Cruz County on May 4 to talk about her latest novel, “Old Flame.” She’ll be in conversation at Bookshop Santa Cruz with someone who knows her well: radio journalist Nikki Silva, her mom.
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Surviving Santa Cruz’s most Secret Film Festival
What’s it like to watch 12 hours of new films starting at midnight at downtown Santa Cruz’s Del Mar Theatre? Correspondent Christopher Neely endured from “Polite Society” through “Sisu” before reemerging onto sunlit Pacific Avenue at noon Sunday. As longtime SFF theatergoers told him, it’s all in the biorhythms, “breakfast” timing — and what you could snag at the unusually supplied snack stand.
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The ‘Hush’ homecoming of Santa Cruz’s jazz twin forces Pascal and Remy Le Boeuf
Remy and Pascal Le Boeuf have each carved out an impressive career as a composer, instrumentalist, band leader and teacher, including 2023 Grammy nominations for each. They reunite Thursday at Kuumbwa Jazz, a favorite haunt since their formative years.
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It’s Two Gents of DeLaveaga for Santa Cruz Shakespeare with changing of guard atop company
Longtime artistic director Mike Ryan, a steady hand in Santa Cruz Shakespeare’s transition from UC Santa Cruz to DeLaveaga Park, is sharing that role with Charles Pasternak, himself a familiar face to local theatergoers, this summer. After that, it’s Pasternak’s ship to steer. “I see my role in expansion as a sort of daring but careful one,” he says of what’s to come.
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Son of the San Lorenzo: Rising country music star Jesse Daniel returns to Catalyst on Friday
Ben Lomond native turned Texan transplant Jesse Daniel plays a homecoming show Friday in support of his new live album, “My Kind of Country Live At the Catalyst,” recorded at the downtown Santa Cruz music venue last year. The album has drawn praise from Rolling Stone and Billboard. It’s an amazing trajectory for Daniel, whose career almost never happened because of an opioid addiction.
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Chronicling a ‘miracle’: The quest to remember fading 1960s counterculture and its influence in Santa Cruz
The Hip Santa Cruz History Project is the brainchild of longtime UCSC professor Ralph Abraham and Cabrillo College teacher T. Mike Walker. They recently released Volume 6 in their “Hip Santa Cruz” series — essays, poems and more about the hippie era and its long aftermath in Santa Cruz, largely written by people who lived through it, to be released April 8 with a gathering at the Santa Cruz Art League.
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The story of Mak Nova: How a small-town girl transformed into a fearless free-spirit performer
Mak Nova, the stage persona of 31-year-old Makana Curtiss, will be honored as Santa Cruz’s Musician of the Year on Friday at the NEXTies. “I don’t want to leave any rock unturned,” she says of her path forward. “So that’s gonna get weird sometimes, for sure.”
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With Jewel prepared to take final bow, what’s the future of theater, other performing arts in Santa Cruz?
Where Jewel Theatre Company struggled to revive its audience numbers after the COVID shutdown, Santa Cruz Shakespeare had a banner season in 2022. Indoors vs. outdoors is certainly a factor, but what of shifting demographics, economics, attention spans in the smartphone age? And is there a secret sauce in local audiences’ tolerance for new or unfamiliar styles? Wallace Baine explores.