Review: The Toxic Avenger
Musical theater has, as of late, taken some strange turns. Movies beget musicals that beget musical movies, but none, thus far, have been as surprising as “The Toxic Avenger,” based on the cult classic film [...]
Houston
Review: Observed Imagined Abstracted
“Observed Imagined Abstracted” At Hiram Butler Gallery January 14 - February 25, 2012, three different approaches to landscape painting make for an intriguing show of small works that ask us to reflect on our interactions with the Earth [...]
Review: Jade Walker at Lawndale Art Center
As the exhibition title, “Contact,” implies, Jade Walker’s current installation in the large John O’Quinn gallery space at Lawndale Art Center is suggestive of a contact sport. Like her earlier work, the objects assembled in “Contact” [...]
Review: “Pretty Dark” Shorts Showcase
When I think about “dark,” in a general context of genre, my expectation is more often than not, weight or heavy handedness. Filmmakers exploring violence can fall into the trap of excess, and those interested in mystery lean on abstraction or purposeful incoherence, a la Lynch derivatives [...]
Leaving the Silo: Artists on Seeing Other Disciplines
BEING AN ARTIST IS AN ALL ENCOMPASSING job, illness with time and money often in short supply. Yet,...
Stanton Welch: Houston Ballet’s Fast and Furious Choreographer
HOUSTON BALLET’S ARTISTIC DIRECTOR, Stanton Welch wasted no time ascending to world renown as a choreographer. Once he got started, that is. Most dancers expect to spend years in the studio and on the stage before moving on to a choreographic career. [...]
Cultural Warrior: Inprint’s Executive Director Rich Levy
Inprint Margarett Root Brown Reading Series February 27 Rae Armantrout & Christian Wiman March 26 Téa Obreht &...
Making Music: Making a Career
SO YOU HAVE TRAINING AT A major music school, does that guarantee you a career? Not necessarily. That’s where professional development programs come in. As the number of highly trained musicians graduating from [...]
John Sonsini Men at Work
THE PHRASE “PAINTING FROM life” can bring to mind a host of images produced by the working artist...
A Timely Chekhov
THERE ARE 32 KNOWN ENGLISH translations of Anton Chekhov’s 1895 play “The Seagull,” and when deciding to add the title to the Alley Theatre’s 2011– 12 season, Gregory Boyd and his team read every one of them. After all [...]
Moments of Respite
Understated Elegance Triumphs in Yoshio Taniguchi’s Asia Society Texas Center HOUSTON IS NOT KNOWN FOR its grand...
Under the Great Dance Umbrella
WHEN THAT TRANSLUCENT WHITE umbrella floats on stage during Alvin Ailey’s masterwork “Revelations” during Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater’s return to the Society for the Performing Arts Jones’ Hall stage on March 2–4, it will be a historic occasion. [...]