Barnstorm Turns Five: A Celebration of Identities and Dance Forms

Summer is an exciting time for dance audiences. With performance season ending for those more traditionally structured companies, summer offers an opportunity for dancers and choreographers to travel and experiment with movement and artists they aren’t able to during other parts of the year. These explorations often make it to the festival circuit, with dance […]

AIRs Present New Work at Barnstorm Dance Fest

Barnstorm Dance Fest, a citywide dance festival presented by Dance Source Houston, will take place June 19-23 at MATCH – Midtown Arts & Theater Center Houston. Among the twenty companies and choreographers selected to perform are four artists chosen for Dance Source Houston’s Artist-in-Residence program. What makes this residency unique is that DSH particularly selects […]

Dance Salad Festival Will Again Serve Houston Audiences Distinctive Dance Dishes

Now in its twenty-fourth year in Houston, Dance Salad Festival will again serve audiences a feast of contemporary and classical dance, with at least two US premieres and three world premieres from nationally and internationally-recognized choreographers. I had the privilege to connect with Valentina Marini and Sussanna Leinonen, and our exchanges reflect both an appreciation […]

Closing the Loop: Jefferson Pinder’s Fire and Movement

I first met Ashley DeHoyos, Assistant Curator for DiverseWorks, Jefferson Pinder, the director of Fire and Movement, and Joseph Lefthand, who led drill instruction for the performers, on a balmy summer day in midtown Houston at a coffee house that was once a gas station. It seemed the perfect location to discuss with the Fire […]

Gentle/Men – John Beasant and Dancers

The notion of men dancing is often met with mixed reactions, not equally positive and negative. In too many cases, a presumption of homosexuality is made—and indeed, there is a history of prominent gay male dancers. Many male dancers report the awkwardness of often being the only male in a dance class, or at least […]

Delving Into History In Order To Move Forward

Delving Into History In Order To Move Forward: the unnamed three’s Hatch, and Brother(hood) Dance’s HAWA (The Ride), in collaboration with the Pilot Dance Project I will not have my life narrowed down. I will not bow down to somebody else’s whim or to someone else’s ignorance.—Bell Hooks If I didn’t define myself for myself, […]

Bodies of Light – A Review

I’d watched the construction of Nestor Topchy’s inner Loop art compound, Facebook post by Facebook post, but had not visited until the April 13th performance of  Bodies of Light, choreographed by Rebecca French. Few venues would have been as well suited as the Glass Crescent, one of the performance spaces on the property. I sat […]

“I Don’t Know Who This Is For”: In the loosening grip, jhon r. stronks explores gender performance

As a biracial, queer, nonbinary writer and artist, I always ask a person upon first introduction what pronouns they use. Although I’d met dancer/choreographer jhon r. stronks before, we’d never spoken at any length in person. Over email I asked Stronks what pronouns to use in this review (among other questions), but to this question, […]

The Dance Gallery Festival/Texas Experience: Offering a Taste of the Trajectory of Contemporary Choreography in New York and Texas

For two nights at the Gaertner Performing Arts Center Dance Theater at Sam Houston State University (SHSU), audiences partook of ten pieces by ten different artists chosen from over 300 submissions, reflecting a tightly woven network between Huntsville, Texas, and New York City. The duet-heavy show offered a progressive dance dinner to the nearly-full house, […]

Constructing Life Among Art: Karen Stokes Dance Premieres Multi-layered Work at MATCH

Imagine a world so largely consumed by art that people move among masterpieces as mere ants in nature. There is an intimate connection between creative forms of expression, as well as art and our everyday existence that choreographer Karen Stokes explores in her latest work, “Gallery Construction.” By turning stationary creations into an intriguing and […]