mercurynew.com
April 28, 2005

What comes next for "Star Wars'' fans is a Bay Area premiere showing of "Revenge of the Sith'' at the Metreon in San Francisco on May 12. Creator George Lucas -- who'll be in the audience, along with "Rent'' director Chris Columbus and Jake Lloyd (the young Anakin Skywalker) -- is donating all proceeds to the Koret Family House at UCSF Children's Hospital. All but about 200 seats already have been snapped up, but if you're quick enough at www.familyhouseinc.org, you won't be left out in the dark side.

Ballet San Jose Silicon Valley vets Karen Gabay and Raymond Rodriguez are hard at work on the company's season-ending program May 5-8, but they've also found time to work in a movie. When choreographer Keith Young needed a pair of dancers for a special tango dream sequence in the aforementioned "Rent,'' he called on old pals Gabay and Rodriguez. They spent hours filming last Friday at a deserted train station in Oakland. "Freezing,'' Gabay says, ''but it was a great time.'' The tango, I hear, is hot.