Annette Lawrence reads me something she’s written about her work: “I’m tuned in to things that go unannounced and remain steady, continuous, and unremarkable on the surface, but hold magic over time.”
Both of my grandmothers were factory workers. Paw Paw, my Chinese grandmother, watched her family oppose the Communist party in China and lose everything. They left mainland China for British-controlled Hong Kong before arriving to the United States as refugees.
Once Texas’ summer torpor hits, escaping the heat may be priority No. 1. If you’re looking for a reason to flee to a higher, cooler altitude, Santa Fe Opera (June 28-Aug. 24) offers a world premiere, the company’s first staging of a 20th-century classic, and new productions of two perennial favorites.
“There are associations that come with the use of a sarape, especially now with recent political and economic border issues,” says Adrian Esparza, referring to the brightly colored, blanket-like shawls from Latin America that inform and compose much of his work as well as the constant issue of the Mexican-American border, in which Texas is often found at the center.
Why does the Dallas Symphony mount its annual Soluna music-and-arts festival? Not because it wants to escape the proverbial same old thing. For an orchestra, “the ‘same old’ is fantastic,” president Kim Noltemy says. With Soluna, the group is thinking bigger.
Hurricane Harvey dumped some 15 trillion gallons of water on the Bayou City, creating havoc for the Downtown theater district, along with many artists and arts organizations.