Smuin takes on 'Rite of Spring,' Sinatra

Chronicle Staff Report Thursday, May 6, 2004

Smuin Ballet will offer two world premieres from artistic director Michael Smuin for its 2004-2005 season, including "Fly Me To the Moon," set to music by Frank Sinatra, and a new "The Rite of Spring.''

Smuin's up-and-comers outshine his glitzy homage to Ol' Blue Eyes

Michael Wade Simpson
SF Chronicle

Ravel, Bach, Vivaldi, Dvorak, Sinatra. Top-billing may go to Ol' Blue Eyes at Smuin Ballet's fall program at the Palace of Fine Arts (through Oct. 17) but audiences coming to sing along with Frank will have to be patient -- he's last in line. <a href=http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2004/10/11/DDGLS96AGD1.DTL target=_blank>more</a>

A toe-tapping evening at the ballet

Mary Ellen Hunt
Contra Costa Times

THE EVER-BUSY Smuin Ballet opened a fresh chapter in its 10-year history with four likable premieres -- including three from company mainstays Amy Seiwert, Celia Fushille-Burke and Shannon Hurlburt -- which ranged from sleek to swank Friday night at the Palace of Fine Arts Theatre. <a href=http://www.contracostatimes.com/mld/cctimes/entertainment/performing_arts/9890070.htm target=_blank>more</a>

Making a leap from baseball to ballet

By Jennifer Modenessi

CONTRA COSTA TIMES

The Oakland A's have undoubtedly caused many children to dream of becoming professional baseball players. In John DeSerio's case, they inspired him to dance.

Making a leap from baseball to ballet

By Jennifer Modenessi

CONTRA COSTA TIMES

The Oakland A's have undoubtedly caused many children to dream of becoming professional baseball players. In John DeSerio's case, they inspired him to dance.

Now 24, the Berkeley man is a member of Michael Smuin's company, Smuin Ballet, and is featured in "Fly Me to the Moon," a tribute to Frank Sinatra the troupe will perform Feb. 11 and 12 in Walnut Creek.

Smuin's multitalented dancers fly audience to the moon
By Keith Kreitman, CONTRIBUTOR



THE THING about Michael Smuin's ballet company is that it's a company in every sense of the word. And it's one that clearly adores dancing and loves the boss.
There are no prima donnas, male or female, here. It is a group of handsome and beautiful young dancers who are well matched in size, build and dancing skills.

And those skills are formidable. The program "Fly Me to the Moon" this past weekend at Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts ranged from stark classic to modern steps to tap, danced to the music of Vivaldi, Bach, Dvorak and a medley of Frank Sinatra songs performed in Broadway showbiz style.

Smuin presents pretty paean to the Pacific

By Mary Ellen Hunt

TIMES CORRESPONDENT


With its oceanic lull and lazy, island-themed sway, Eliot Feld's "Pacific Dances," which made its West Coast bow on Friday night at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, is a pleasingly organic, if not entirely riveting, addition to the Smuin Ballet repertoire.

It's the first time the company has performed a major work from a choreographer outside the Smuin family, but in many ways it's not an unlikely acquisition. Eliot Feld and Michael Smuin -- founder and director of Smuin Ballet -- have a lot of similarities in style and surely a mutual admiration thing going on. Both enjoy a diversity of repertoire, from almost corny theatrical stuff to elegantly imagined abstract dances, and even their companies' names have had a certain parallelism -- Smuin's troupe was formerly known as Smuin Ballets/SF while Feld had a company in the 1990s known as Feld Ballets/NY.

It's One More for Sinatra as Dancers Fly to the Moon
by GIA KOURLAS for the New ork Times

The piece officially begins with a group number set to "You and the Night and the Music" (there are eight more songs to come), though what is instantly clear the moment Sinatra's velvety voice fills the theater is that the dancers don't really have any idea what they're listening to.

published: August 11, 2005

Smuin Ballet, Skirball Center, New York
by HILARY OSTLERE for the Financial Times

These days Smuin has combined the worlds of ballet and show business in his own company, presenting Dancin' with Gershwin and the new Fly Me to the Moon, featuring Sinatra songs. The dancers are eager but mostly undistinguished; what they dance is a hybrid of conventional ballet (the women are on toe), swing and a bit of tap executed with the awkwardness of most ballet dancers, who never seem to be able to look natural doing it.

published: August 12, 2005