History helps dancer plot future

Matthew Rushing spent months getting his solo choreography into presentable form for the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater.

Terribly beautiful

French actress Astrid Bas has adapted Marguerite Duras' award-winning novel "The Lover" into a monologue.

Day's events spur improv

For performance artist Nina Wise, the everyday stuff is enough to ignite a humorous story line for her series of improvised shows.

A cheeky tale of consumption

The themes of desire, consumption, beauty and status run through Monique Jenkinson's (a.k.a. Fauxnique) "Luxury Items."

Bringing it home

Don Reed is bringing Oakland back to Oakland, though his homeboy show "East 14th" has taken a circuitous route home.

Jeanie Tracy gets into the spirit

The veteran R&B and dance-music performer's role in "Mahalia: A Gospel Musical" gets her down deep.

A sexy puzzle

In Naomi Iizuka's scintillating "Concerning Strange Devices From the Distant West," every picture tells pieces of a thousand stories.

Provocative and funny

"Learn to Be Latina" is crude and rude in a manner that tickles ribs well beyond the comfort zone.

Not quite alive

The textures and ambiguities of the characters don't translate well from page to stage in "An Anonymous Story by Anton Chekhov."

Hard to focus

Some stagings in "The Caucasian Chalk Circle" at ACT don't so much serve the story as derail it.

Singing can't save 'Mahalia'

Lorraine Hansberry Theatre finally has a home, but it's new production isn't worth the effort.

What makes a family?

Robert Moses' "The Cinderella Principle: Try These On, See If They Fit" is a sometimes engrossing, sometimes enigmatic new work.

A feast of dance

The Black Choreographers fest drew a full house, but not all the performers were capable of fusing social concerns and appealing theatricality.

First-rate 'Wozzeck'

Budget opera in the Bay grew even fuller, as the new-music group Ensemble Parallèle unveiled its canny and musically first-rate production of Berg's "Wozzeck."

Splendid and loving

The Lamplighters' production of "Patience" boasts fine choral singing and well-chosen comic bits.