By Emma Krasov. Press images
Traveling in Northern California attracts visitors from near and far for many reasons. Year-round mild weather, the beauty of surrounding nature, the endless allure of Pacific Ocean and Sierra Nevada Mountains, Napa and Sonoma wine country, the bounty of organically grown crops, and the abundance of top-notch restaurants, remarkable museums, theaters, and concert halls are some of these reasons.
Cal Performances, founded in 1906, after the San Francisco’s catastrophic earthquake and fire, to preserve the performing arts tradition at the University of California, Berkeley, has grown into a major arts organization that brings the best of music, dance, and theater from around the world to familiarize its audiences with the best examples of international art scene.
With approximately 80 performances per season, from classical music to jazz and folk, and from ballet to contemporary dance and pantomime, Cal Performances excels in the unmatched quality of spectacle, and variety of programming with a vision of “a world where the performing arts inspire a life filled with wonder, empathy, curiosity, and enjoyment for all,” and a mission to “unite exceptional artists, ideas, and audiences through live performance to enlighten and enrich lives.”
A recent highlight of the current season was The Joffrey Ballet’s “Midsummer Night’s Dream” played upon the famed Zellerbach Hall stage for three nights, invariably to a full house. As the choreographer Alexander Ekman (Sweden) explained, his creation wasn’t based on Shakespeare’s play, but on its very spirit of the deceitful world of dreams with all its absurdities, summer loving, lover’s stories, and celebratory alcohol-induced magical happenings with a healthy dose of humor. To fully engage with the idea, and bring it closer to [his and other co-creators] home, the choreographer collaborated with a composer Mikael Karlsson, who used Swedish folk references in his music, and a pop singer, Anna von Hausswolff in the role of a narrator and observer of the ballet action, which unfolds around the Swedish national celebration of summer solstice under the prominently carried around flag of Sweden with a yellow Nordic cross on a blue field.
Hay (as in “rolling in hay”) plays a big role in the first act of the show, making waves under a traditional maypole, around which the impeccable Joffrey Ballet dancers, crowned with flowers, fill the stage with their high-voltage energy and outstanding technical skill. The longest day of the year turns into night, the endless libations continue by candlelight, and in the second act The Dreamer (Dylan Gutierrez) and The Hostess (Victoria Jaiani) engage with their “real-life” friends as well as with fantastical figures of Lovers (Amanda Assucena, Stefan Gonçalvez), Two Friends (Assucena, Jeraldine Mendoza), Mr. Canon (Xavier Núñez), A Bubbler (Hansol Jeong), A Chef en pointe (Fernando Duarte), A Man with a Flag (Scott Reed), Headless Men (Edson Barbosa, Aaron Renteria), and multiple “guest” characters, wonderfully synchronized and performing at the height of inspiration.
Live accompaniment musicians, half-hidden in the dark depth of the stage, provided an incomparable feeling of immediacy, playing two violins (Dovid Friedlander, Janis Sakai), viola (Beatrice Chen), cello (Mara McClain), piano (Jorge Ivars), and percussion (Niklas Brommare).
To learn more about the Cal Performances programming, and to plan your visit to one of the upcoming shows, visit https://calperformances.org/2025-26-season/.
Real Travel Adventures 