What’s new in the arts this week

Explore City Ballet’s ‘Dark Room Series,’ go on a ‘BINGE’ with La Jolla Playhouse, revisit ‘Jaws’ and more

Imagine yourself a dancer who can’t dance. Like a bird that can’t fly. City Ballet resident choreographer Geoffrey Gonzalez imagined just that, which led him to creating a virtual ballet of four dance works, “The Dark Room Series.”

“We’re all in a dark room right now,” Gonzalez says of this time when performance art of all kinds is in indefinite intermission. For the dancers recruited for the 17-minute-long “Dark Room Series” video, the opportunity to indulge their craft, even without a live audience, was liberating. As for Gonzalez: “Watching them jump to the project, their connection to movement again and to presentation, made me feel a sense of normalcy.

“I wanted them to express what they are going through right now. Just watching them become revived was reviving to me. It was therapy in a weird way.”

The video, shot with just one camera in “an old attic kind of studio,” benefits from its sheer

deconstructed feel. Unlike many dance companies’ virtual presentations I’ve watched over the past few months, this one exudes intimacy and artistry. Though Gonzalez admits that the video-making was a “trial and error” undertaking, you wouldn’t know it. The individual dances are presented elegantly with shifts in angle and light, and to music as diverse and emotional as “Ave Maria” and Chopin’s “Prelude in E Minor, Opus 28, No. 4.” Even those who know very little about dance should intuit the emotion of “The Dark Room Series.” (The dancers, by the way, are Emily Elwell, Anna Barnes, Megan Jacobs, Ariana Gonzalez, Nera Holland, Chelsea Kuhn, Jaroslav Richters and Lucas Ataide.)

City Ballet’s Geoffrey Gonzalez has created a virtual ballet of four dance works, “The Dark Room Series.” Above: dancers Megan Jacobs, Chelsea Kuhn and Ariana Gonzalez.