Entertainment
At 7 years old, Roux Stunna went viral after a video of him performing the Brookfield, an iconic Bay Area dance move, was uploaded to Instagram. The clip amassed over 1.2 million views and marked his entry into the turf dancing scene. Now 9, Roux is one of the youngest dancers competing and performing in Oakland. This year, Roux is set to perform at “The Night of Main Events,” a showcase hosted by World Wide Dance Association in Oakland. He…
Oakland has taken the first step toward building entertainment zones similar to San Francisco’s to boost foot traffic and support night life in commercial corridors. Oakland City Council last week unanimously approved investing $1 million in an economic revitalization package that will create two types of entertainment zones, including an artificial intelligence hub to advance workforce development and technological innovation. The funding, which was approved in the 2025 budget, will be administered over two years, through a grant to the…
On an early evening in September, a modest crowd entering the Dresher Ensemble Studio received disappointing news at the door: One of the two acts they came to see would not be performing. However, the show must go on, and the West Oakland Sound Series is no stranger to improvisation. Matt Ingalls, Sound Series director, was not going to let his audience go without a second act. In the spirit of this avant-garde musical community, he would later join woodwinds…
Cava Menzies could feel the warm sun pouring into her bedroom as she sat in silence, eyes closed, legs crossed, engaged in meditation. Menzies, a founding faculty member and music teacher at the Oakland School for the Arts, often draws creative inspiration during morning meditation in her downtown Oakland apartment. But this meditation session in February 2022 brought a revelation. After her practice, Menzies wrote CO-LLAB Choir on her whiteboard, her intuition telling her to create an adult ensemble group. …
The siege of Gaza played out before a packed house at Oakland’s Regal Jack London theater, where the documentary “Bisan,” created by Palestinian journalist and filmmaker Bisan Owda about her daily life, had a rare screening Wednesday. Some in the audience cried softly as they bore witness to the horrors of Israel’s 2023-24 siege of Gaza: buildings falling, bombs exploding, children screaming. The documentary was compiled entirely from social media clips shot by Owda. Her posts have found a large…
With Oakland facing a roughly $80 million hole in the city budget, a heralded new program to bring film productions to town is on the chopping block. The Film Rebate Incentive Program, an effort to lure film and television with rebates on production costs, was approved unanimously in July by the City Council. The $600,000 initiative was left out of a contingency budget that was adopted because the city has not yet received anticipated payments from the $125 million sale…
Oakland First Fridays, a monthly festival on Telegraph Avenue featuring food and crafts, will shut down through March because of financial constraints, organizers say, and may be different when it reopens. “This year, we’ve been losing money every month and we need to stop the bleeding,” said Shari Godinez, the executive director of Koreatown Northgate Community Benefit District, the nonprofit that runs First Fridays. On Dec. 1, residents enjoyed “Frosty Friday,” the last First Friday event of the year. They…
Dangling from the sheer face of San Francisco’s Transamerica Pyramid 800 feet above rubbernecking pedestrians, three orange-clad figures swayed gracefully on Monday morning in a gravity-defying dance. This was not a stunt by daredevils. It was the latest public performance by Bandaloop, the expert Oakland dance troupe some might remember for their dance high on the face of Yosemite’s El Capitan in 2018. Bandaloop’s signature technique, which they call “vertical dancing,” combines features of rock climbing and dancing. Performers leap…
Every year, hundreds of costumed children and adults crowd onto handmade benches in an unassuming driveway in Oakland’s Glenview neighborhood to watch “Driveway Follies,” a free Halloween-themed marionette puppet show. This year’s show features psychedelic skeletons stepping out of their skins, a blue-skinned magician, and Mysterious Mose, a creature with the ability to duplicate itself on stage in the most extraordinary way. Closing night is Halloween. At the dress rehearsal, children disguised as unicorns, pirates and ninja turtles squirmed and…