Journalism – Page 6 – Nichelle Suzanne Strzepek

Houston Met Dance Confronts the Ground with jhon r. stronks

Last spring, Houston Metropolitan Dance Company premiered jhon r. stronk’s Not Yet Soaring as the finale of their Mixing It Up concert. Its fresh and joyous movement language was a highlight on the program and the company encouraged stronks to develop the work further. The resulting collaboration, Still Confronting the Ground is a dance theater work that “finds them attending to the serious business of happiness in an evening of choreography and performance created in honor of growing up, and what it takes to get there.”

A Peek at Company Clare Dyson’s Voyeur

In Voyeur two performers, Dyson herself and Jonathan Sinatra, are within a large box. Its many holes offer viewing points, each one different and each revealing different aspects of the performers. Some have binoculars, others headphones through which the audience member will hear personal revelations from the dancers. Members of the audience may move in the space at will, allowing one to vary his/her proximity, to listen to things that are individually relevant, to choose how and to what degree he/she wants to engage with the work or the environment.

A Travesty! This Review 100% Recycled Material

The hour-long performance event consisted of mostly reworked, reused, reinvented, recovered, retrieved, and revisited material from the last 12 years of the Travesty Dance-Houston canon. Choreographer Karen Stokes and company were irREfutably enjoying themselves.

Uptown Dance Company — Dance Infusion

Uptown Dance Company threw its hat into the Houston ring of contemporary dance ensembles not much more than a year ago, becoming an all-professional troupe after focusing for several years on providing pre-professionals at Uptown Dance Centre (the company’s affiliated school) an outlet to hone their performance skills. Their latest project, Dance Infusion, staged OctoberContinue reading “Uptown Dance Company — Dance Infusion”

Dominic Walsh Dance Theater Collaborators Celebrate Ballets Russes Centenary

Throughout the year, venues and dance companies all over the world have been staging tributes to The Ballets Russes and its impresario, Serge Diaghilev. Honoring the centenary of the influential ballet company’s formation with re-imaginings of four of its most noted works, Dominic Walsh Dance Theater recently presented its own salute, 1909-2009: The Great CollaboratorsContinue reading “Dominic Walsh Dance Theater Collaborators Celebrate Ballets Russes Centenary”

A Well-Built House Stands Up

Clearly, the collaborators are all on the same page with House. Deborah Schlidt’s dreamy film collage weaves in and out of the action as naturally as any performer making an entrance. Images of various types of dwellings, from hovels to tract houses, segue to demolished and water-logged homes. Reclaimed by nature with the brute force of Hurricane Katrina, these homes (or ones like them) may have given up parts of themselves for repurposing in Babette Beaullieu’s found object sculpture and set pieces.