insider notes
April is the cruelest month, except in Texas, where it’s a month of firsts, festivals and other cultural wonders.
Nancy Wozny
Monks, KungFu and Raining Rice
A shimmering stream of rice pours down on a monk during the entire 90 minutes of Songs of the Wanderers, which will be performed here in Houston when Cloud Gate Dance Theatre of Taiwan makes a Society for Performing Arts stop on April 5 at Jones Hall.
Antena @ Blaffer
Writers, artists, literary translators, bookmakers and activist interpreters Jen Hofer and John Pluecker make up Antena, a language justice and language experimentation collaborative.
Spring Forward
Women Choreographers On Texas Stages IMAGE ABOVE: MET Dance in their new Houston Studios. Photo by Ben Doyle....
A Swan Returns
When I witnessed Samantha Lynch catapulting across the stage at Houston Ballet in Jiri Kylián’s ode to the power of the sea, Forgotten Land, I knew she was going places.
After the Flood
The UK-based multi-media movement troupe returns to Texas with shows at ARTS SA (April 9, San Antonio’s Carver Center), Texas Performing Arts (Austin, April 11 at Bass Concert Hall) and TITAS in Dallas (April 12-13 at Dallas City Performance Hall).
Acting in Texas: Kaitlin Hopkins at Texas State University
Kaitlin Hopkins is head of the Musical Theatre program at Texas State University, where her over 25 years of work on and off Broadway, and in regional theater, film, television, opera, and radio inform her work with Texas State's aspiring young actors.
Houston Ballet Soars in a Welch Wonderland
Houston Ballet celebrated its leader's tenth year at the helm by performing three of his works in one evening, a perfect Stanton Welch wonderland and a great way to examine this choreographer's gifts to ballet.
Shakespeare En Pointe
In celebration of Shakespeare's 450th birthday, Houston Ballet has anchored their new season with three ballets based on Shakespeare's timeless tales, including the company premiere of John Neumeier's A Midsummer Night's Dream, Stanton Welch's world premiere of Romeo and Juliet and John Cranko's The Taming of the Shrew.
performania
In doing some early research on the history of ballet in Texas, I emailed my favorite grad school ballet teacher, Shelly Berg, now a Professor in the Dance Division at Southern Methodist University.
eyes on texas performing arts
Performing arts events across the state of Texas.