This Saturday, October 15th, 2011, at 7:30 pm, in a non-San Francisco Ballet related charity event that will raise funds for the Children of Uganda’s music and dance program, five of SFB’s finest Principal Dancers will be dancing their hearts out in three of our favorite Ballet Gala Pas de Deux. The performance event in which these artists are donating their considerable talents is called ‘Dancing for Uganda’, will be at the Cowell Theater at Fort Mason, and will be preceded by a Pre-Performance wine and cheese gathering, as well as a Post-Performance reception and silent auction. 

The ‘onstage’ artists are just a small percentage of a larger group of other Bay Area dance professionals (many easily recognizable faces and names for those of you familiar with our local dance scene), all donating their time and labor ‘behind-the-scenes’ to make this event a success.  

Why you should go:

1. For selfless reasons:

To support this extremely worthy cause

(Per their web site: “All proceeds go to Children of Uganda’s music and dance program, and particularly to support their upcoming ‘Tour of Light’ in January 2012. Children of Uganda (COU) serves hundreds of orphans and vulnerable children, providing them with clothing, food, shelter, medical care, and education-including a strong program in traditional African music and dance. The ‘Tour of Light’, which has visited the U.S. 7 times in COU’s 16 years, aims to raise awareness of the plight of orphaned children in Uganda today, while sharing African culture with American audiences.”)

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2. For selfish reasons:

To quench your hefty off-season Ballet thirst a tad before ‘Nutcracker’ and well before SFB’s 2012 Season Gala.

The program that will make you eagerly part with a mere $25.00 ($10.00 for students through today) will include:

Frances Chung & Joan Boada in San Francisco Ballet Artistic Director Helgi Tomasson’s Chaconne for Piano and Two Dancers

Sarah Van Patten & Pierre-Francois Vilanoba in Christopher Wheeldon’s iconic After the Rain

(If you haven’t seen ^this ballet, this one alone is worth the price of admission)

Frances Chung & Gennadi Nedvigin in everyone’s favorite classical display of bravura and brilliance, Le Corsaire Pas de Deux

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All the details are

here.

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Also, please visit Courtney Elizabeth’s blog here to read more about supporting Uganda’s AIDS orphans through the love of Dance.  

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If you are discovering this event through Odette’s Ordeal, or this is where you found the Casting info you’ve been waiting for, please give credit where it’s due when you run off to the ballet discussion boards or social media sites. Though the event has been somewhat publicized, permission has just been obtained from the dancers to name the dancers participating in this event, or it would have been published earlier. 

“See You at the Ballet!”