How to Keep Moving when the World Gets Smaller: Pilot Dance Project Streams Mettle/Tether

For all of us, 2020 is about adaptation, about continuing onward as the COVID pandemic limits the choices that we can make in the world with our bodies in concert with one another. For dancers, who spend their lives expanding past the limitations of one’s body and what dance can create in the world, it […]

Dance at the J: Celebrating 40 Years of Commitment to Dance in Houston

The Evelyn Rubenstein Jewish Community Center is a Houston gem presenting world-class dance in an intimate theater. For forty years, the leadership at the ERJCC has presented premier artists like Gus Giordano Jazz Dance Chicago, Koresh Dance Company, Ohad Naharin, and this year, Ido Tadmor. The ERJCC is dedicated equally to education and the support […]

A Transcendent Re-Invasion: Mark Morris Dance Group Presents its Kaleidoscopic Interpretation of the Beatles in Pepperland

Next weekend, the Beatles will re-invade Houston in the form of Mark Morris Dance Group’s (MMDG) Pepperland. The Society for the Performing Arts (SPA) invites audiences to experience this kaleidoscopic world for two nights, January 30 and 31, 2020, in the Cullen Theater at the Wortham Center.  Pepperland premiered in 2017 at Liverpool’s Sgt. Pepper […]

Dance Gallery Festival’s Eleven Course Texas Experience

After marking its 13th year in New York City just last weekend, the Dance Gallery Festival (DGF), made its annual leap to Texas, celebrating its tenth year at Sam Houston State University (SHSU) in Huntsville on Oct. 4 and 5. Held at the hilltop James and Nancy Gaertner Performing Arts Center, the sold-out Friday evening […]

Ashley Horn’s The Long Stay—The Pilot Dance Project

The Pilot Dance Project began its new season of projects by various choreographers with a site specific performance created by Ashley Horn. The Long Stay took place across three floors and several rooms in the distinguished downtown edifice known as the Hotel Icon. There were five performances across one Saturday afternoon, start times between 1:00pm […]

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, […]