Convention is not a part of Allison Orr’s vocabulary. The Forklift Danceworks artistic director has carved out a particular niche in the site-specific performance world of Texas—one that draws attention to the people and systems that keep our communities ticking, often without thanks or notice. This is Orr’s specialty: bringing the invisible to the forefront.
All too often choreographers of modern dance present work based on material they without question know and understand: their own life stories, experiments based on individual movement practices, or explorations of thematic content that shoot out of their imaginations.
Pablo Helguera's exhibition The Fable is to be Retold at DiverseWorks (on view through Nov. 19) opened with a performance recital in five parts, each of which considers the ways we learn and imagine, evoked through the lens of youth.
The Dance/USA conference was held in Austin this past June, a first for the capital and the organization’s second visit to Texas (Houston, 2009). For me, it was a chance to hobnob with my peers from all over the US, expand my arts toolbox with the broad spectrum of talks and workshops and to spend some much-needed quality time with the Austin Dance community.
In traditional versions of Giselle, the worlds of the living and the dead are separated by an intermission, each confined to its own act. In Houston Ballet’s brand new version, at Wortham Theater Center by Artistic Director Stanton Welch, the worldly and the ethereal overlap to come full circle.
Jonah Bokaer folded space in two in one sweeping motion. OK, so maybe he used a super long piece of paper to do that. Not everything that moves in a Bokaer concert is human.