The Pilot Dance Project Presents Paraiso

The Pilot Dance Project Presents Paraiso

A special, one-night performance/dance party experience mining the contemporary gay experience

HOUSTON (May 6, 2026) – The Pilot Dance Project presents Paraiso, the latest dance work by Adam Castaneda, with original music by Uliya, Aniya, and DANGERbabe. This one-night event premieres Saturday, May 23 at The Interchange (1815 Cleburne Street, 77004). The dance, performed by an all-male queer-identifying cast, dissolves into an informal dance party DJ’d by DANGERbabe member Uliya.

Paraiso is Houston-based choreographer Adam Castaneda’s exploration of “queer euphoria” in a time of growing anti-LGBTQ sentiment and legislation. An imagining of a time and place that revels in the aesthetic of gay manhood, Paraiso features an all-male cast of dancers, including Jai Alexander, Adam Castaneda, Soren Rivero, and Drahnier Schmidt with live accompaniment by queer music collective DANGERbabe (Uliya, Aniya, and Nate Drop). Presale tickets can be purchased here. 

This new dance work is a postscript of sorts to Adam’s 2021 evening-length project, Lazarus in the Promised Land, a reconciliation with his upbringing as a third-generation Jehovah’s Witness. One of the principal tenets of this religious order is that mankind will be restored to an idyllic paradise where friends and family will live together in perfection forever. Paraiso is an attempt to build a future out of a void created by this loss of faith.

 Through lush, circular movement, Adam attempts to build an experiential paradise built from the specificity of his queer perspective. What does paradise look like for a gay man? What does paradise look like, feel like, sound like through this valence? This new dance/music collaboration is an effort to generate a euphoric moment of community, love, beauty, and color.

Paraiso culminates in a dance party DJ’d by Uliya, urging the audience to join the cast onstage for a fleeting moment of queer union and allyship. Paraiso is costumed by Adam’s longtime collaborator Ashley Horn and incorporates her fashion-forward design practice to illuminate the sexiness, daring, and audacity of gay male adornment.

Paraiso is supported by a Let Creativity Happen! Grant from the City of Houston through the Houston Arts Alliance.

ABOUT The Pilot Dance Project

The Pilot Dance Project is a professional Modern dance company based in Houston under the executive and artistic direction of Adam Castan͂eda. In addition to producing his own work through the company, Castan͂eda commissions new dance works by some of the region’s most celebrated choreographers. The company’s annual season includes a robust festival program, including the Texas Latino/a/x Contemporary Dance Festival, the Houston Fringe Festival, and for the first time in 2024, Bayou City Dances, a showcase of the city’s most prolific dance companies at the Miller Outdoor Theatre. The Pilot Dance Project has received funding from the City of Houston through the Houston Arts Alliance, the Texas Commission on the Arts, the Mid-America Arts Alliance, Houston Endowment, Bunnies on the Bayou, EmcArts, the BIPOC Arts Network & Fund, the Morales Foundation, the Woodlands Arts Council, Dance Source Houston, and the Midtown Management District.

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