Danse Macabre Part III: The Dance of the Dead, March 24, 2006, Talento Bilingué

This is the first Bobbindoctrin Puppet Theatre show I've made it to, although I've heard a lot about their other shows. This show was a collaboration with Two Star Symphony and Freneticore, and combined with the show only being an hour long, that didn't leave much time for puppetry. I was disappointed with that, but not disappointed with the show.

The central figure of the show was a guy who had been buried alive but was not yet dead. Boy, if listening to someone describe being buried alive for an hour doesn't creep you out, nothing will. The show alternated between music, puppetry, acting, video, and dance. The acting consisted of a few monologues, some by the buried guy explaining how he got there, and one by a woman giving his eulogy. It seems his church was maybe a little too eager to get him in the ground.

Two Star's music was enjoyable, although their violin section was a little weak. When I played the violin in orchestra in high school, everyone complained about my tone, and now I see what they were talking about; however, I only cringed one time, when the musicians briefly got out of phase with one another. Most of the music was original composition, the exception being an excerpt from "The Unknown Soldier" by Luc Sante. I love the program note that reads, "Two Star Symphony is Houston's most unusual string quartet." Yes, having eight musicians and four non-string instruments does make for an unusual string quartet.

About two-thirds of the way through the show, we started hearing disembodied voices describing how they had died. ("I was trampled by horses," etc.) I took it to be an interlude between a monologue and the dancing, but apparently it was meant to be the other occupants of the cemetary. (We're in a cemetary?) Knowing this would have lent more meaning to the dance section, in which the dancers clearly portrayed dead people who (not so clearly) had risen from their graves to dance with Death. Since Two Star took up half the stage, and the set took up another quarter, the dancers had all of about 100 ft² in which to dance. That didn't leave much room for creativity, but they made good use of what little space that they had, flailing and sagging as any good corpses should do.

When is FrenetiCore going to have actual content on their web page?

Dance Houston Does Houston, March 17, 2006, Hobby Center's Zilkha Hall

Well, they tried. This show promised to do the same thing as the Travesty show - give a portrait of Houston, warts and all. Unfortunately, it was not as sucessful.

I've seen one other Dance Houston production, the show in 2003. It was your standard multi-company performance, where each company performs one or two works, and the show covers the spectrum of dance. (I used to participate in such shows, with my ballet company, at Mountain View College in Dallas. That's where I started my tradition of eating peanut M&M's before performances.) This show was different; rather than gathering companies, DH gathered dancers and chorographers and put together a show with a central theme. It worked pretty well in the first act, but fell apart in the second.

The program helpfully informed me that there was an Act One called "A Warm Welcome" and an Act Two called "An H-Town Mythology Case Study No. 1." That's as specific as it got - there was no clue who choreographed what, what the various sections might be called, or who danced specific parts.

A newcomer to Houston provided a thread for the first act - he encounters IAH, downtown, rain, traffic, and mosquitos. He mostly disappeared in the second act, which had a few sections that were hard to relate to the Houston theme. The highlight of the show was the introduction of four human-sized mosquitos, all female, and all cleverly attired with bug eyes, antennae, wings, and proboscis. A narrator read an encyclopedia entry, and the mosquitos brough the words to life. The rain dance was done by a lone female dancer wearing an awesome hat and was Asian in flavor. It would have been nice to know more about the style.

The second act had few high or even middle points, although the opening section about refinery workers was effective, and the 20's jazz section was at least entertaining. In other sections, some dancers were looking at other dancers to see what they should be doing. I heard later that they'd just finished some of the dances the day before - not too professional.

Houston Ballet, March 11, 2006, Wortham Center's Brown Theater

The first piece on the program was Indigo, choreographed by Stanton Welch to music by Vivaldi. I love Vivaldi, so it was a treat to hear the music. I liked the choreography, set on four couples, but it didn't inspire me. Too much head wagging. There was also a lot of dancers struggling to get out of the grip of other dancers, but I couldn't see what purpose that served.

The second piece was a world premier of Hush by Christopher Bruce. This pieces uses the recorded music of Yo-Yo Ma and Bobby McFarin. The six dancers protrayed a family, with a mother, father, two sisters, and two brothers. The set conveyed a dream-like atmosphere and was filled with dark blue lighting and oversized playground equipment. The quality of movement was very similar to Bruce's Ghost Dances, which I saw HB perform in my pre-blogging days. The women and men wore flat shoes, and movements tended to use the whole body rather than isolated arm or leg movement. Sara Webb was a charming Little Sister, and the rest of the cast was excellent as well.

The last piece was Balanchine's Western Symphony (1954). Ok, you can't fault the entertainment value of the music and costumes, but the whole thing was a little bland for my taste. There were certainly technically difficult moves in there, and the dancers did a great job selling to the audience. I felt there was too much empty space on the stage, though, which on reflection really meant that the dancers didn't move around the stage very much. A lot of the variations took place practically on the same spot. Combined with the Russian convention of repeating combinations three times, it just wasn't that interesting. Sorry, George.

Hometown, March 4, 2006, Hobby Center's Zilkha Hall

This was just the program to see during my last month in Houston. Travesty Dance Group presented a reprise production of Karen Stokes's affectionate look at Houston, which premiered in 2003. The cast of 12 excellent dancers included Ms. Stokes, as well as other faces familiar to the Houston modern dance scene: Toni Leago Valle, formerly of Suchu, and Sonia Noriega and Sophia Torres of Psophonia. Julie Fox, a collegue of Ms. Stokes at the University of Houston, shone especially bright in this production, like a diamond set among sapphires.

The show was divided into six sections, each exploring some facet of Houston's identity. Range, Bayou, and Weather formed the first half, and Ranch, Traffic, and Space formed the second. The show opened with the cast standing on stage singing. Yes, singing. It was immediately obvious why; Ms. Stokes has a lovely voice and clearly some training. It would never occur to me to include singing in a dance show - at least, not me singing. Trust me, you are all happy about that. Anyway, the cast was game and good enough at singing that I was able to focus on the song and not the singers.

Voices, both song and spoken word, were interspersed with music and sound collages throughout the show. The Bayou section included a description of various swimming holes on Buffalo Bayou (from True Stories of Old Houston and Houstonians) back when it was a bayou and not a glorified drainage ditch. This led to a beautifully lit swimming scene in which the dancers made innovative use of "towels" (actually large sheets). A montage of thunderstorm sounds made me long for some rain. Do you realize that Houston has only had 5 days with substantial rain (> 0.5 in) in the past 3 months? Makes me thirsty just to think about it.