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.