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Following this wakeup call is “Andante and Hungarian Rondo, Op.35” by Carl Maria von Weber. It’s a showcase for bassoon, and for these performances soloist Deborah Kramer is in the spotlight. Area aficionados will recognize Kramer as the principal bassoonist of Symphony Silicon Valley. She holds the same position with the orchestras of Opera San Jose, Ballet San Jose and Oakland East Bay Symphony. The program ends with Beethoven’s third symphony, the awesome “Eroica.” Take your pick of strong adjectives for this revolutionary work–stormy, extreme, soaring, pulsating. It’s long, brilliant and gorgeous. And the perfect way to send symphony lovers marching out to face the long, hot summer.

CONGRATULATIONS!: The San Francisco Foundation recently awarded Diablo Ballet a $10,000 grant in support of the Ballet’s PEEK (Performing Arts Education and Enrichment for Kids) Outreach Program, Launched in 1995, PEEK provides in-school dance education and free performances to underserved students who don’t have access to the performing arts, In the past decade, PEEK has reached more than 65,000 elementary school students in low-income East Bay communities, CAN I GET AN ‘AMEN’?: The spirit will be flowing Sunday when Ross Dance presents the third annual Bay Area Praise Dance Festival at Berkeley’s Julia Morgan Theatre, 2640 College Ave, An afternoon program at 3 p.m, features FAME, Erik Lee, Covenant ballet and feather earrings Worship Center’s praise dancers, Lauren Pitcher, Ross Dance and Christian Music Award winner Transparent, The gospel-heavy 7 p.m, program includes Oakland’s First African Methodist Episcopal Church, Richmond’s Praise Fellowship Bible Church, Los Angeles’ Passion for Christ, Berkeley’s Covenant Worship and Pittsburg’s First Baptist, The hosannas start Saturday, when Oakland’s Ross Dance offers a full day of workshops, choreography and technique classes to more than 100 youth and adults at Oakland’s Malonga Casquelourd Center (1428 Alice St.), For workshop space availability and price, call 510-828-5760, Tickets for Sunday shows are $12-$17 and can be reserved by emailing tickets@rossdance.com or calling 510-828-5760..

“I’m pretty sure, if you asked people why they loved flamenco, it’s because it’s an expressive form that lends itself to your particular subjectivity as you watch it. It’s passionate. It expresses the range of emotions, all the earthly feelings we could possibly have as humans. It’s both dark and light. It has everything in it that anyone could want. It lends itself to a more theatrical performance, inherently. You don’t have to speak the language to understand what we’re transmitting.”.

The publisher of the Oxford dictionaries said Tuesday that “selfie” saw a huge jump in usage in the past year, bursting ballet and feather earrings from the confines of Instagram and Twitter to become mainstream shorthand for any self-taken photograph, Researchers behind the renowned dictionaries pick a prominent word or expression in the English language each year that best reflects the mood of the times, Previous words of the year have included “unfriend” in 2009, “credit crunch” in 2008, “carbon footprint” in 2007 and “Sudoku” in 2005..

“I said, ‘You can do it, but I’m coming with you,'” she recalls. “Maybe at 13 or 14, I’ll let him do it with a friend.” That said, she encourages her kids to conquer their fears and expose themselves to new experiences, like running for office and trying out for the school band. “If it’s something healthy and productive, go for it,” she says. Because the brain’s executive function (responsible for risk assessment) is still developing in adolescents, parents need to make sure that their teen’s energy is steered into constructive social behavior, like leading, serving and finding their voice, says Peter Benson, a Minneapolis-based human development expert and president of the Search Institute, a nonprofit think tank for adolescent thriving.