Dance Visions 2023

An annual highlight for lovers of dance, this showcase presents new choreography created by students from UCI Claire Trevor School of the Arts MORE

♦ Theater ♦

Stage Door Closes Its Doors, For Now

The theater landscape is littered with the corpses of small-sized companies forced to close for a variety of reasons – for example, running out of steam creatively or losing manpower or seeing audience support gradually evaporate over time.

Add Stage Door Repertory Theatre to a list of recent casualties that includes Stages Theatre and the Attic Community Theater. SDRT, as it’s known to patrons, weathered unpredictable ticket sales and the pressures of continuous annual rent increases before hitting the same wall as its peers – the COVID-19 lockdown and the economic pressures the pandemic exerted on theaters everywhere.

From late 2011 to December 2022, Stage Door produced a total of roughly 80 shows, the bulk of which were musicals, the theatrical genre that came to define the company.

♦ Food ♦

Panoringan: Santa Ana’s Culinary Scene Is Trending

Recently, Yelp came out with its Top 100 Restaurants in the U.S. and Santa Ana was the humble recipient of two spots: Trust (#18) and OmG Omakase by Gino (#44). This got me thinking about the city in general and how much it’s evolved in the past decade. 

Home to my favorite distillery, Blinking Owl, and previous Michelin Bib Gourmand honoree, Mix Mix (now closed), Santa Ana’s food and beverage scene has faced the tensions that come along with gentrifying a neighborhood, combined with the recent construction of a streetcar system and its effects on long-standing businesses. Setting these issues aside, the changeover of older brick-and-mortars with ones curated for the updated surroundings means new interest by residents and locals in these cultural neighborhoods. I researched a few of the newer destinations to learn more about what makes them special.

Trio Céleste

Experience classical sounds in an intimate setting in Lake Forest from this acclaimed ensemble; presented by Chamber Music | OC MORE

Anthology Reading at LibroMobile

Presented by downtown Santa Ana's LibroMobile, local authors read from the personal essays they contributed to the new collection "Nonwhite and Woman: 131 Micro Essays on Being in the World." MORE

Dinosaur Party at Tustin Library

Stories, crafts, and a scavenger hunt will all be part of the fun in this free evening of activities themed around the giant animals of prehistoric Earth MORE

For the Love of Dottie

For years, beloved local artist Dottie Simeon has stayed young at heart by painting on canvases, around her home, and around Balboa Island - now the Island's Museum hosts a special exhibition celebrating Dottie, still going strong at 96 MORE