Performing arts

Dancers from the Joffrey Ballet perform on stage

Arts & culture

Cal Performances announces its 2025-26 season

This year's Illuminations theme, Exile & Sanctuary, focuses on how issues of displacement can inform bold new explorations of identity and community.

A performance on stage of the chamber opera The Great Yes, The Great No. There is a projected image of a woman on a backdrop with three performers with spotlights on them in three corners of the stage.

Arts & culture

William Kentridge’s ‘The Great Yes, The Great No’ is a voyage of chaos and creativity

Two actors, who play Jinzo and Catherine in the opera Both Eyes Open, kneel together, holding hands

Arts & culture

For 50 years, he’s written about the Japanese American internment. Now, he’s turning to opera.

Two musicians in the UC Nu Jazz Collective play guitar onstage in the emsemble at a performance at Wu Hall, a new venue in Morrison Hall. The students are seated with music stands in front of them and their amplified guitars in their grasp.

Arts & culture

Musical gifts: New campus performance hall, an unprecedented surge in music majors

about a dozen dancers in the nutcracker suite perform on stage. six are wearing rat masks and dancing around a group of dancers who look frightened.

The Sugar Rum Fairy? A freewheeling, jazzy reimagination of ‘The Nutcracker’

A traditional Indonesian musical ensemble performs

New 100-seat performance hall opens on campus

Seven acrobatic performers dressed like pro wrestlers perform a scene in a ring

Circus arts meet pro wrestling in a raucous theatrical performance

Performers on stage in the Broadway show,

Two centuries later, performance spaces still struggle with ‘soft censorship’

UC Berkeley musicology professor Nicholas Mathew sits for the camera, next to a still photo of an Olympian.

Watch a UC Berkeley professor break down the origins and stories behind national anthems

Camilo and five other AileyCampers practice a dance on stage in 2009

Dance prepared him for the NFL. It began with a Berkeley summer camp.

Jeff Davis, the retiring university carillonist, sits on the bench of the grand carillon on the observation deck of the Campanile. His body is turned toward the camera and he's wearing eye glasses, a beard, a short-sleeved plaid shirt and a smile.

Retiring University Carillonist Jeff Davis reflects on ‘the coolest job in the world’

Professor Nicholas Mathew holds up a 500-year-old manuscript to a group of visiting middle school students

Middle school students explore musical treasures from special Berkeley collections

Two actors interact on stage, bathed in a reddish orange light. One actor, wearing a wedding dress and a veil, turns away from the other actor, who is facing her back and appears to be pleading with her.

Student designers build a magical realm for Brazilian folktale ‘The River Bride’

Saagar, with short dark hair and glasses, wearing a powder blue suit, holds a viola to his chin while standing in a courtyard

Berkeley Voices: Medieval song holds clues to lost dialects

Machine Dazzle, dressed in a huge wig made of bright red and a few yellow fake roses, a red, white and blue tinsel dress and long red velvety gloves with bright makeup covering his face, poses for a portrait

Meet the designer behind the out-of-this-world costumes of ‘Bark of Millions’

four dancers wearing black shirts, shorts and shoes perform a live dance in a museum gallery

Tender and aggressive: Student dancers embody Asian American Greek life

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