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[August 9, 2009] SPIN5: Flash Dance!

On Friday, August 28, 2009 from 8-11pm, HCP will host its 5th annual SPIN party, Flash Dance! a friendraiser that provides the Houston community with a great opportunity to celebrate summer, enjoy good company, and collectively contribute towards the creation of a creative experience. This year’s theme is inspired by the 1983 film Flashdance, directed by Adrian Lynne and starring Jennifer Beals. DJ Shoe will spin songs from the era, with projections from the film itself setting the mood for the party. Kelly Myernick, first soloist with the Houston Ballet and other members of the company will perform and instruct enthusiastic crowd-goers to learn an 80’s inspired dance piece. A surprise performance is scheduled for later in the evening. Attendees are also invited to rock out on the “dance pole” and ballet barres installed for the event. The party isn’t complete without photography; attendees can pose in front of 80’s themed backdrops, and are invited to contribute '80s-style pictures to be installed or projected on HCP’s walls. The best image which features the photographer as a performer will be included in the upcoming HCP exhibition, Artist as Performer, on view at HCP from September 10 - November 8. Call for entries information is posted on HCP's web site, www.hcponline.org. E-mailed submissions must be received by August 10. The theme for SPIN5: Flash Dance! was inspired by former HCP Executive Assistant Leigh Boone, who passed away on April 11, 2009 following a two-week arduous battle in ICU. While bicycling to work, Leigh was struck when two fire trucks collided at an intersection near her home. She loved the performing and visual arts, was a fan of the 80’s, and lives on in spirit. SPIN5: Flash Dance! also features Leigh Boone’s Pickins, a raffle to benefit the Leigh Bess Boone Foundation. Like many who work in the arts, Leigh spent many years interning after college in preparation for her career. She interned at the Julliard School, White Box, Jacob’s Pillow, and Lawndale Arts Center, among many other spaces. This fund provides scholarships to Americans like Leigh who recently completed and/or are completing internships in the visual or performing arts and need extra assistance to help make ends meet. This fund was created by Leigh’s family. Raffle tickets are $2 and $10, prizes include artwork by Louviere + Vanessa and others, gift certificates to restaurants and shops in the Houston area including Wish and Duo. Special thanks to SPIN5 event sponsors Real Ale; Antonio Manega, Gazer Design Group; Masterpiece Litho; DJ Shoe; Taco del Gordo.

[August 5, 2009] Par Excellance

ArtsHouston is your favorite cultural guide, bringing you everything you need to know about the art scene in Houston, but rarely do we take the time to talk about some of the amazing nonprofits doing work in the area. One such organization that we recently became introduced to is no stranger to working at different art events, or the Houston community. Par Excellence is a nonprofit student run hospitality-staffing business celebrating their 28th year. Hospitality staffers are your second favorite group of people (after the artists of course) at art events all over Houston Your favorite group in some cases… They are the ones bringing you the best hors d'oeuvres, your cocktails, and wine! Not only do they help nourish your thirst or hunger, they are also knowledgeable about the best instant hang over cures! Don’t judge, we’ve all been there. This group in particular is especially great because all of the money they raise goes to scholarships for hotel and restaurant management students at the University of Houston’s Conrad N. Hilton College. Not only does the money go to a great cause, but the service is actually provided by hospitality students from the college. These servers are no doubt a godsend when you and your date don’t want to fight your way to the bar, but did you know you can have them at home? Instead of shedding sweat and tears at your next party, you can hire a bartender or server at your next house party! Ready to please and show off their skills from one of the best hospitality schools in the nation, leave the work to them for your next event! Talk to an event coordinator at Par Excellence at www.parexcellencestaffing.com

[July 14, 2009] Dreams in Art

[May 18, 2009] Literally Figurative

[May 13, 2009] Solution by Nancy Wozny

Solution: Curated by Janet Phelps DiverseWorks Arts Space wc-469 Solution, curated by Janet Phelps and now showing at DiverseWorks, presents seven approaches to the concept of progress. Christopher K. Ho takes the slow approach in his Monumental Compost Heap, which is still gathering and decomposing within its neat and formal borders right outside of DiverseWorks. Ho's dreamy Lesbian Mountains in Love takes progress into geological time as projections of Mount Rainier and El Popo whisper sweet nothings culled from the seven popular romances of Nicholas Sparks. Michael Waugh takes a more subversive approach with Decline and Fall, which features bear and wolf imagery created from Edward Gibbon's classic albeit bigoted book The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. A ferocious grizzly bear and hungry wolf flank either side of a cuddly effeminate bear cub. Decline and Fall marvels in both execution and theory, as text and image vibrate with potent symbolism. Nina Katchadourian lends the minimalist view with her elegant A Leak in the Feeling, which consists of a water droplet descending a string to a tiny bucket against gentle text concerning her grandparent's romance. Spare yet powerful, Katchadourian's work effectively mixes text and straightforward technology to make her point. Jeffrey Gibson goes for trumped-up, glopped-on glamour in his sculptures constructed from dolls, ethnographic masks, mannequin parts and retail trash. The result lies somewhere between natural history museum exhibition and Vegas gift shop. Gibson's digital paintings mirror the same kind of density but employ Venetian blind like color grids to temper the images. Jeanine Oleson measures progress by addressing myth, fantasy and ritual in a collection of artifacts from recent performances. She created the world's largest smudge stick, much of which was used in New York City the day before the 2008 election, an event documented in this exhibition. In Oleson's recent performance of Enkidu Return A, she donned a costume of recycled furs and sat on a gigantic rock smack dab in Long Island, cleverly mixing the civilized with indigenous. The plight of trees and the future of Robert Smithson's iconic land-based work Spiral Jetty, currently under threat by oil companies, interests Joseph Smolinsky. His Tree Turbine re-draws the future with trees doubling as cell towers. It's going to take a time commitment to figure out what the LA-based collective known as My Barbarian are doing in their video document of Post-Living Ante-Action Theater (PoLAAT): Post-Paradise, Sorry Again, which is culled from workshops based on Fassbinder’s Munich-based Action Theatre and the Living Theater. Edited footage of the workshops reveals the five principles of PoLAAT: estrangement, in-distinction, suspension of beliefs, a mandate to participate and inspirational critique. Much about these retro renegade techniques feels timely right about now in thinking of merging of self with the political. - Nancy Wozny

[May 13, 2009] Mildreds Umbrella Theater

Imagine being an atheist, thinking Darwin was a bit off, and living in Texas. Houston and California-based playwright and screenwriter Tom Vaughan faces the interface between hard science and creationists in his world premiere play, The Third Side, presented by Mildred's Umbrella Theater Company at DiverseWorks. “It's a story about a man discovering the difference between doing the right thing and being right,” says Vaughan, who created this play with the company members in mind. Vaughan created a part of Linda, the hardcore Darwinist, specifically for Mildred's Umbrella artistic director Jennifer Decker. “She knows that compromising the scientific truth is bad for the world in general, and is willing to sacrifice her personal relationships to make sure the truth is upheld,” says Decker. “I've researched her field so that I can play her effectively.” This production of The Third Side commemorates the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin’s birth and the 150th anniversary of his work “On the Origin of Species.” Mildred's Umbrella presents The Third Side, May 14-30, 8pm, 2009, DiverseWorks, Call 832.418-0973 or visit www.mildredsumbrella.com

[May 13, 2009] Marie by Clare Croft

MARIE Houston Ballet Ballet came back to its home in the French court in Houston Ballet’s new ballet “Marie,” which ran at the Wortham Center. Created by company artistic director Stanton Welch, “Marie” followed France’s famous queen from adolescence in Austria, through her ostentatious reign at Versailles, to her grisly death. The ballet did an excellent job of developing character and a sense of place through movement. At court and in dance, how one moves determines the person one becomes. “Marie” opens as Hapsburg Empress Marie Therese (Katherine Precourt) demonstrated how a queen carries herself. Marie (Melody Herrera) must hold her chin high and twirl her wrists with delicate strength. Herrera’s Marie grows into the royal posture despite a difficult marriage, lost love, and a terrible death. This evening’s first act might be the only ballet dedicated to impotence. New husband, the eventual King Louis XVI (Ian Casady), eschews his bedroom responsibilities, facing unending taunting. Women let their fans droop when he walks by. The crowd of courtiers facilitates one of Welch’s well-crafted staging of large groups. The courtiers’ shadows loom as the couple finally consummates their marriage, an almost violent act that quickly, somewhat unbelievably, resolves into tenderness. Marie’s true love is saved for Swedish Count Fersen (Connor Walsh). Herrera and Walsh continue to become two of Houston’s finest dancers, even if their partnering is sometimes awkward here. Their relationship develops amidst the frivolity of Marie’s court, and then simmers with sadness as a revolutionary mob imprisons the royal family. The angry crowd lacks character nuance (and should not have brown-face makeup), but skill with large groups fields a rich, kinetic force. For a ballet about an opulent historical moment, Kandis Cook’s sets and costumes were surprisingly minimal. The color palette shifted from the lush gold of the Austrian court to the soft blues the queen favored to the to Easter-egg pinks and yellows for Versailles’ parties. Finally the stage went blood red, contrasting with a royal family in dishwater gray. Perhaps the most effective aspect of the ballet’s design came as bookends. In the opening scene a huge, gilded frame hung above the Hapsburgs, waiting to be filled. When Antoinette’s daughter returned to Austria, having escaped the rest of her family’s fate, she saw the frame again, now inhabited. Marie walked through Versailles, holding her chin high and raising her arm with a flourish. – Clare Croft

[May 13, 2009] Les Miserables- By John DeMers

LES MISERABLES Theatre Under The Stars The few, the proud – that’s the club TUTS joined when it became one of the only independent theater companies in the world to secure the rights to the blockbuster “Les Miserables.” What’s that? You’ve seen the show several times already? Of course you have. But those were official touring companies that steered 100% true to the, well, considering the show is about a revolution, party line. TUTS was one of the first troupes allowed to create its own version. And while this one will hardly displace the original in any of our minds, it made us stop and think about all that had seemed written in stone. “Les Miserables’ is essentially an opera disguised as a Broadway show, both in the fact that it is “sung through” without spoken dialogue and also, less objectively, because it deals with more and different and stronger emotions than the typical TUTS song-and-dance fest. Life, death, guilt, forgiveness, duty, idealism, self-sacrifice, romantic love and what its first creator, Victor Hugo, would have surely called Christian charity – all these are set on stage for us to feel by composer Claude-Michel Schonberg and librettist Alain Boublil. And the package that has become known as “Les Mis” since its Paris debut in 1980 and been performed in 21 languages around the world generally delivers. Surely the biggest TUTS departure from “official” touring productions that many have seen or will see was the stage design by Matthew Kinley. Indeed, few sets in history have become as familiar and beloved as the “revolving barricade” in “Les Mis,” dark pieces that move, turn, grind, connect and disconnect before our eyes in ways that evoke the heartless motion of fate. Kinley opted instead for projections of somber paintings, most by Hugo himself, some combined with etchings and even photos of 19th- century Paris, where the story takes place. This approach is unlikely to supplant the original, but it did make audiences familiar with the musical (some have seen it 20, 30 or more times, in New York, London and elsewhere) stop going through the motions and experience it fresh again. As the mammoth figures at the core of the complicated plot, two Robs (Evan and Hunt) shined as Jean Valjean and his relentless police pursuer Inspector Javert. Evan seemed to have some struggles with top notes on opening night, especially the falsetto sections presented as prayer, but entirely carried off the characterization as one of theater’s most layered figures. Valjean is one of the few characters in a musical who actually do what all are supposed to do: evolve, ponder and decide things by way of song, rather than singing about what they just decided. And Andrea Rivette, Sarah Shaninian and Leah Horowitz dazzled as the show’s three heartbreaking young women, Fantine, Eponine and Cosette. – John DeMers

[May 13, 2009] Henrique Oliveira:Tapumes by Garland Fielder

Henrique Oliveira: Tapumes Rice University Art Gallery Through May 9 wc-294 The title of Henrique Oliveira’s installation wonder at Rice Gallery is Tapumes, a Portuguese term that roughly translates as ”enclosure” or “fencing.” This is somewhat paradoxical in that the impressively swirling and shape-shifting ensemble is anything but confining. Although the original source material was inspired from temporary construction site partitions ubiquitously concocted in and about the artist’s native Sao Paulo, the title conveys little of the creative freedom the artist derives from it. Standing in the presence of the work, one marvels at the organic quality of the bent and stained veneer that takes on a semblance of scar tissue—an apt metaphor for a strategy Oliveira has made his own. Oliveira has transformed the back wall of the installation-only gallery at Rice into a massive high-relief sculpture that viscerally swirls and undulates into searing protrusions. Initially, the artist lays the planks of veneer out into the gallery space in groups to be tinted with pastel stains that still reveal much of the wood’s grain. Then a backing substructure is improvised onto the wall, bending and contorting wood so that its flatness is all but forgotten. Oliveira then “paints” the final strips of wood onto the piece—a method derived from his background in abstract painting. Despite the shear heaviness of the work’s presence, creative energy abounds in the Oliveira’s use of flow and rhythm. There is a freshness to the installation. Phoenix like, the wood that was once used to present interlopers from trespassing onto a restricted site now stokes the imagination into surrealistic daydreams. One is inspired to crawl up into the work, interacting with the tilts and turns of the wooden streams of color that now demarcate a shift between creative illusion and work-a-day detritus. Rice Gallery | 713-348-6069 | ricegallery.org Garland Fielder

[May 13, 2009] OPERA IN THE HEIGHTS-John DeMers

FALSTAFF Opera in the Heights It is undeniably a sign of some maturity for a small opera company to take on Verdi’s final opera, a comic work whose challenges sometimes seem as gargantuan as its anti-hero’s much-discussed waistline. Based rather expertly on not one but two Shakespeare plays, the opera has a larger number of solo roles than the typical two or four, and they all interact a lot more too – the whole thing at times seeming a witty conversation upon which we’re allowed to eavesdrop. Of itself, the story is familiar – perhaps, in life, a tad too familiar: an older, unattractive fat man who thinks he’s God’s gift to women, a great seducer, whom the latest women to catch his eye decide to whittle down to size. Falstaff absolutely has to have a really strong central performance (we fondly remember Bryn Terfel at HGO a few years back); and despite the lack of an HGO-sized artist’s budget, Opera in the Heights served up a prime Falstaff in basso buffo Jason Budd. Particularly in the intimacy of Lambert Hall, which seems to get nicer every time we go there, Budd’s comic acting made us care about Falstaff, not just about seeing him get his comeuppance. If his long, thick sideburns made him look a little like Fat Elvis, a bizarre association to be sure, his mugging also had an innocence that reminded of Charlie Chaplin or Harpo Marx. Harpo especially seemed a role model, considering his wide-eyed devotion to the chase as well. Budd’s voice blew out the back wall of the theater whenever he wanted it to, but also contained impressive softness, plus the lightness of occasional falsetto self-mockery. This was Budd’s OH debut, and we hope the company will find ways to bring him back. “Falstaff” is, in some ways, a tale of four women, as it’s their surprisingly (by today’s standards) good-natured conspiracy that makes us have a plot in the first place. Through most of the early going, Crystallia Spilianaki as Alice Ford and Dawn Padula as Meg Page gathered the limelight, but later on it was it was Alyssa Bowlby as Nannetta. By the time we reach Act III, we may not really want an entire aria sung by someone pretending to be someone else in the woods, but Bowlby sang that aria beautifully – and earned one of the evening’s most heartfelt “Bravas.” Nancy Markeloff gave an endearing turn as Mistress Quickly, the show’s go-between “Friar Lawrence in a dress.” The stage direction by Matthew Ozawa made expert use of the space. Sets by Nick Bakaysa and costumes by Dena Scheh were rather minimal, as budget no doubt tends to make them at Opera in the Heights. But one thing that’s never shortchanged here is musicianship in the orchestra, working with accuracy and verve under the baton of OH maestro William Weibel. The players may be fewer than we are used to, but after attending 10 or more OH productions over several seasons, we’ve never been anything but amazed at the quality and quantity of sound this little orchestra puts out. – John DeMers