For a portion of the audience at The Pilot on Navigation (formerly Frenetic Theatre), myself included, Youth of a Nation: A Dance Retrospective of the 90s is a chance to relive the past a little. Music before and during the production brings on waves of nostalgia and the costumes are amusingly pinched from the wardrobe of […]
October 20-22, 2016, Zilkha Hall, The Hobby Center by Neil Ellis Orts DEEP: Seaspace was already in progress as the audience filtered in. Audio interviews with Houston Ship Channel captains play as performers in white, baggy jumpsuits take slow, stiff steps across the stage. They pause, turn to the audience, and offer enigmatic stares before […]
Ash Danceworks, one of Houston’s newest contemporary dance companies, made its inaugural debut with BEETHOVEN RECNSTRCTD last Friday evening with a repeat performance on Saturday. Though the company is new, its director is certainly familiar to anyone who has been paying attention to the fringier perimeters of the Houston dance scene for the last decade […]
NobleMotion Dance seems to have created a winning formula for its annual fall concert at the Hobby Center’s Zilkha Hall: hold a summer intensive for advanced students, cast a dozen or so the most compelling movers, then create (and promote) a sleek and polished mega-dance designed to dazzle. I think it’s a sensational premise that gives […]
20 years ago, what’s now known as a hashtag was still just the pound sign on your cell phone. That is, if you even owned a cell phone 20 years ago. Last evening at Honored Guests, the 4th celebratory program of METdance company’s 20th anniversary season, audience members were encouraged to use their cell phones […]
by Adam Castaneda This year’s Valentine’s mayhem was marked by a number of love-themed dance concerts by several companies, including CORE Performance Company, METdance, VauLt, and Houston City Dance. The trend is not surprising. Love means many things to many people, and the physicality of dance certainly has a lot to say on matter. One […]
by Nancy Wozny American identity is in the air, thanks to a gaggle of presidential hopefuls who rant endlessly about immigration, American values, and what makes this country great. Leave it to the modern dancers to take their own more nuanced stance, which is exactly what happened on the Open Dance Project stage during their […]
New Works by Jesus Acosta, Catalina Alexandra, and Jennifer Mabus. By Adam Castaneda Choreographers Andy and Dionne Noble are still flying high from their work on ABC’s American Crimes, which premiered earlier this week. Athletic, visceral, and wholly human, the four-minute dance possessed all of the qualities of the Nobles’ best work. But the artistic […]
Frame Dance Productions at Asia Society by Nancy Wozny When something is happening, acting on you, but you have yet to notice, that is a particular phenomenon in human experience, which like many things, is magnified on a performing arts stage. That exact experience occurred while watching the opening passages of Lydia Hance’s Drift, presented […]
Clara, sugar plums, and the rest of the Land of Sweets have the monopoly on winter holiday ballets, so when I heard about FrenetiCore Dance’s new version of The Snow Queen, I was all ears. I’ve been sugared out for years. The narrative ballet opened December 4 at Frenetic Theater and runs through December 12, […]
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