Dance

San Francisco Chamber Orchestra Artistic Director Ben Simon always concocts a hook that appeals to me and puts me in the mood to hear a concert.

The San Francisco Symphony and Chorus, conducted by Charles Dutoit, perform Hector Berlioz’s Te Deum in colossal mode, along with the Pacific Boychoir.

Artistic Director Ashley Wheater leads the venerable Chicago-based Joffrey Ballet into Zellerbach Hall Jan. 26-27 with Christopher Wheeldon’s After the Rain, Edward Liang’s Age of Innocence and Kurt Jooss’ antiwar classic, The Green Table.

Funny and irreverent, surely, yet Mark Morris’Hard Nut is also a tremendous example of direct, emotional, musical storytelling. 

Alonzo King's new evening-length work Constellation takes his Lines Dance Company ballerinas off-pointe and away from the naturalistic environment of last year’s stunning Resin.

British choreographer Russell Maliphant's evening-length After Light, a meditation on the artistry and influence of Vaslav Nijinsky, touches on Nijinsky’s role as one of classical ballet’s greatest dancers, as well as the breakaway invention of his hotly controversial Afternoon of a Faun.

Akram Khan, who credits his international brigade of dancers as collaborators, draws inspiration from Sufism and the Persian poet and mystic Rumi.

The Kirov Ballet, based in St. Petersburg (formerly Leningrad), has reverted to calling itself the Mariinsky Ballet, but its Swan Lake, choreographed in 1950 by Konstantin Sergeyev and based, of course, on the 1895 Petipa/Ivanov version, prevails, uninterrupted by the vagaries of history.

Mardi Gras, Nubian arabesques, garden insects, enchantments: All great subjects for evocative works of orchestral wizardry at the S.F. Symphony, deftly conducted by Stéphane Denève and superbly performed.

In “Story/Time” Bill T. Jones uses chance, dance, music, and narrative to make every minute count.