Adam Castañeda is a dancer, writer, and arts administrator based in Houston, Texas. He is the artistic director of The Pilot Dance Project, and when not performing with his own company, he dances with the Michele Brangwen Dance & Music Ensemble. Outside of dance, he is a proud full-time faculty member of the English department at Houston City College.
Dr. Lindsay Gary, founder and artistic and executive director of Dance Afrikana, started her company with the simple objective of protecting the work of her fellow dancers. “We were not being advocated for,” she says, recalling her early years as a backup dancer for Afrobeats and Afro-Caribbean music acts. “There were situations where we weren’t […]
Everyone needs a helping hand, but if there’s one thing I’ve learned after ten years in the non-profit producing world, it’s that artists very often need more than that. We need lifelines – a grant, a commission, a gatekeeper’s favor – something to propel us to the next stage of our artistic careers, and, by […]
The great Indian subcontinent celebrated seventy-five years of independence from British colonial rule on August 15, 2022. To commemorate this significant milestone, Silambam Houston, under the executive and artistic direction of Lavanya Rajagopalan, presented Waking Up Free: India’s Journey, on March 31, 2023. The evening-length production, created in collaboration with Shri Silambam Academy in Chennai, […]
Speaking with the eloquent and worldly Nao Kusuzaki about her new ballet, Genji, it occurred to me that I had experienced this quiet, yet, charged presence before. As our conversation progressed, I remembered that I had written about Kusuzaki’s performance in Stanton Welch’s Madame Butterfly more than a decade ago. As a young dance writer, […]
Joel Aguilera is a choreographer who has been gradually making his mark in Houston over the past few seasons. His work has appeared in several high-profile showcases, including Dance Source Houston’s Barnstorm Dance Fest, Dance Houston’s Annual Celebration of Dance, and Dance Source Houston’s Mind the Gap series. I recognized Aguilera’s rising star a few […]
Diavolo is a dance company not for the faint of heart. When you watch Trajectoire, one of Artistic Director Jacques Heim’s signature works, you’re held captive by the gravity-defying assignment at hand. Dancers maneuver a 3,000-pound boat using only momentum to catapult themselves into the air with stunning accuracy, not to mention fluidity and grace. […]
The more I write about dance, and think about dance, the more I realize how much dance has always been present in major moments of my life, even forms that are outside of my own practice. Eleven years ago I spent five-and-a-half months backpacking through India, attempting to read, journal, and experience my way into […]
Listening to the music of D’Angelo is a kind of sensual, indulgent experience that is rooted in the pleasure of being in one’s own body. The crooner’s voice is rich in texture, and sultry in pitch, fully realizing the seductiveness of masculinity while recognizing its potential for softness and comfort. D’Angelo’s music is also a […]
If you’re a Millennial of a certain age, the wellspring of imagination, creativity, and big-kid emotions probably has as one of its many sources the cultural phenomenon that was the Disney Renaissance. For a decade, the famed animation studio produced animated musicals of fairy tales, myths, and literary works that enchanted a generation of kids […]
To say that the past two years have been a cause for reflection is a vast understatement for arts presenters, especially those who have spent years shoring up and solidifying their annual programming. For Dance Salad, Nancy Henderek’s once-a-year gathering of international contemporary dance artists, COVID-19 may very well have marked the end of her […]
Recent Comments