Culture
At the Malonga Casquelourd Center for the Arts in downtown Oakland, Portsha Jefferson and the Rara Tou Limen Haitian Folkloric Ensemble use dance and performance to educate the Bay Area about Haitian culture. The ensemble is organizing a fundraiser this Wednesday, October 21, at San Francisco’s Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts.
Oral histories of Oakland residents collected by Laney College students are woven together in the original production, “The Miseducation of Oakland.” Director Michael Torres says that the overall message of the show is that, “everyone should get an education and nobody has the right to take away education.”
At least once a month on a Saturday night, the singles scene in Oakland is less about saving up the cash to wine and dine and more about brushing up on your UNO and Connect Four skills. This weekend, people gathered at the Marriott Hotel in downtown Oakland to show their love for doing things like rolling the dice to get past GO and trying to get their left knee on yellow and right hand on green. PlayDate, a monthly…
An hour before kickoff at the Oakland Raiders football game Sunday, many silver-and-black clad Raiders fans did something that on any other day might peg them traitors – they showed support for the opposing team’s new quarterback, Michael Vick.
Twenty years after the powerful earthquake, Oakland residents recall the day everything changed.
For talented 7-12 year olds in Oakland, October 5th was a big day. Fifteen of them were chosen from a group of thirty to become part of a hip-hop, dance and spoken word Junior theater company created through Destiny Arts Center, a North Oakland based non-profit that teaches hip-hop, kung fu and conflict resolution to youth.
Twenty four of the most talented graffiti artists from California, Chicago, Hawaii and New York battled in West Oakland last Saturday.
Eight choirs. One night. Fifteen thousand fans. Watch the singers of Oakland’s Genesis Worship Center as they take the stage in the “Best Choir in America” competition.
Midway through the rock opera “American Idiot,” the main character Johnny, his rebel girlfriend Whatsername, and an ensemble of urban youth belt out their message of isolation in the city: “My shadow’s the only one that walks beside me, my shallow heart’s the only thing that’s beating, sometimes I wish someone out there will find me, till then I walk alone.” The song, “Boulevard of Broken Dreams,” was written by Oakland-based Green Day, a band that’s succeeded on a global…