The realm of Rosin Box Project’s “Ghost Light Masquerade” is inhabited by spirits and superstitions and magic. It’s one that stretches the boundaries of what dance can be.
“I would best describe it as a unique performance for the audience in the sense that they become a part of the show,” said Carly Topazio, founder and artistic director of the San Diego-based Rosin Box Project. “They cross over from being just viewers to being submerged in not only the performance but the world that’s being created during the show itself.”
Today through Sunday, “Ghost Light Masquerade” will be haunting the confines of Bread & Salt in Logan Heights. It’s a masked — and I’m not talking KN95s — program of contemporary ballet that is mystical, sexy and surprising.
Rosin Box Project first presented “Ghost Light Masquerade” in 2020, virtually under the circumstances, from the 10th Avenue Arts Center downtown. Then live outdoors at Liberty Station last year. The Bread & Salt shows are the first indoor performances. “It has evolved a bit,” Topazio said. “The bones are still there, for lack of a better way to describe it. No pun intended.”
No description from me can do justice to what you’ll see and be part of should you go masquerading at the warehouse space. But as Topazio said: “It resonates and sticks with you longer than just a regular proscenium stage performance.”
Tickets are $60-$70. There will also be a virtual-experience “Ghost Light Masquerade” that you can watch from home, available for streaming between June 24 and July 1. Tickets for this start at $35.
Ghost encounters of another kind are guaranteed beginning tomorrow and happening all weekend when Monsterpalooza takes over the Pasadena Convention Center. I’m getting excited for Halloween, and it’s only June.
Besides all the monstrous exhibits, books, makeup artists and swag onsite, this year’s Monsterpalooza is hosting some special guests. They include Tim “Frank N. Furter” Curry from “The Rocky Horror Picture Show,” Neve “Scream” Campbell, Doug “Hellraiser” Bradley and a grown-up Matthew De Meritt, who, as a child, wore the “E.T.” suit in the famous film of the same name.
Tickets for Monsterpalooza are $30-$40 depending on which day you go. Not counting the gas money to get you to Pasadena. Now that’s frightening.
The Blue Water Institute’s Blue Water Film Festival gets under way today with over 35 films screening through Sunday both digitally and at area venues, including the Museum of Photographic Arts in Balboa Park, the Media Arts Center downtown and the La Paloma Theatre in Encinitas.
Full-length features, film shorts and animated films are among the offerings. This festival is a celebration of United Nations World Oceans Day, which is coming up on Wednesday. Here’s a festival schedule.
The way the world’s been going lately, we all could be forgiven for having a case of the blues. But the blues don’t have to be, as James Taylor once wrote, just a bad dream. They can be fun, and they should be on Saturday when the East Village Blues Fest goes down from 4 to 9 p.m. at the Quartyard at 13th and Market.
The lineup includes names you probably know if you’ve followed the blues in San Diego: Casey Hensley, Bill Magee, Sue Palmer (with her Motel Swing Orchestra), Robin Henkel and the Tighten Ups. Tickets are only 20 bucks, which, given the price of most everything downtown, is a bargain. Here’s a preview of what you can expect.
I once interviewed a for-some-reason cranky Joe Jackson, prompting me to wonder afterward how a guy with a chip on his shoulder could play the piano so deftly. But I’ve never held it against Joe, and two of his albums, 1982’s “Night and Day” and “Big World” from ’86, are among my fave listens.
Further demonstrating my magnanimity as well as my appreciation for his talents, I’m recommending Jackson’s gig on Sunday night at 7 at the Magnolia in El Cajon. Jackson’s “Sing, You Sinners!” tour recently postponed its European dates because of COVID concerns, but the U.S. leg goes on. Tickets for Sunday start at $69.
COVID cast outbreaks have affected some San Diego theaters, but mask mandates vary. Here’s what you need to know, according to U-T theater critic Pam Kragen.
San Diego Repertory Theatre has canceled its much-anticipated world premiere production of Ali Viterbi’s “In Every Generation,” citing “financial and personnel” reasons. The play, which was to be the centerpiece of the Rep’s now-underway 29th annual Lipinsky Family San Diego Jewish Arts Festival, was scheduled to open in preview performances on May 26, but it never did. On Tuesday, reviewing critics were informed in an emailed statement that the play’s June 1 opening night would not take place.
READ MORE: San Diego Repertory Theatre cancels much-anticipated ‘In Every Generation’ production
Comedian Joel Kim Booster, whose film “Fire Island” debuts on Hulu tomorrow, is headed for a five-show engagement at San Diego’s American Comedy Co.
READ MORE IN THIS INTERVIEW BY THE U-T’S MICHAEL JAMES ROCHA: ‘Fire Island’ star Joel Kim Booster on being gay and Asian: ‘I’m proud of who I am’
Expectations were high when Tears For Fears co-founders Curt Smith and Roland Orzabal got together in 2015 to record what would have been the once-chart-topping English music duo’s first new album since 2004’s “Everybody Loves a Happy Ending.”
A year and 12 completed songs later, the two were so unhappy with what resulted that they took drastic measures to ensure the public would never hear it.
In short order, they jettisoned their manager and negotiated their way out of their record contract. But that wasn’t the most drastic step by the two frustrated musicians, who first teamed up in their teens in 1978.
“We bought the album from Warner Bros. so it couldn’t be released,” said Smith, whose 2022 Tears For Fears tour with Orzabal includes a San Diego concert Sunday at North Island Credit Union Amphitheatre. “It wasn’t an album we were proud of, but they would have released it.”
READ MORE IN THIS INTERVIEW BY THE U-T’S GEORGE VARGA: Tears For Fears, back with first new album in 18 years, extend a middle finger to music industry conformity
University of California Television invites you to enjoy this special selection of programs from throughout the University of California. Descriptions courtesy of and text written by UCTV staff:
“Hugo Marcus: A Muslim Jew Under the Swastika”: In this Library Channel presentation, Marc David Baer discusses his new book “German, Jew, Muslim, Gay” in which he tells the fascinating story of Hugo Marcus and reveals new aspects of the interconnected histories of Jewish and Muslim individuals and communities, including Muslim responses to Nazism and Muslim experiences of the Holocaust. Hugo Marcus (1880–1966) was born a German Jew but converted to Islam and took the name Hamid, becoming one of the most prominent Muslims in Germany prior to World War II. Renamed Israel by the Nazis, he was sent to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp before escaping to Switzerland. In exile, he fought for homosexual rights and wrote queer fiction under the pen name Hans Alienus.
“’The Art of Change’: Celine Parrenas Shimizu”: See how the arts can transform lives in a new series from UC Santa Cruz, “The Art of Change.” In this episode, UCSC film scholar and Dean of Arts Celine Parreñas Shimizu shares her personal history as well as her vision for inspiring students to follow their dreams. Says Dean Celine (as she likes to be called): “I believe that higher education can make us free from the restrictions that have bound us and imprisoned our minds to behave as if we don’t have access or right to our power.” The daughter of political refugees from the Philippines who immigrated to the U.S. when she was a teenager, Shimizu is well known for her work on race, sexuality and representations, and is the first Asian American female arts dean in the UC system.
“What Causes Cancer?”: Cancer has been around for as long as we have. And yet, the landscape of cancer today looks very different than in years past. In this new Mini Medical School series, you’ll hear from leading scientists and world-renowned oncologists about the causes, prevention, diagnosis and treatment of cancer, as well as the latest developments offering new hope to those afflicted by it. In this episode, Dr. Katherine Hyland of the University of California, San Francisco, discusses the genes that prevent and cause cancer and how cancer-causing mutations occur, as well as the difference between sporadic verses inherited forms of cancer.
Here are the top events happening in San Diego from Thursday, June 2 to Sunday, June 5.
Coddon is a freelance writer.
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A San Diego insider’s look at what talented artists are bringing to the stage, screen, galleries and more.
You may occasionally receive promotional content from the San Diego Union-Tribune.
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