February is drawing to a close (and March is approaching quickly), but you can still these last few days of the month to enjoy the Houston arts and culture scene. This week a ballet makes its return to Houston after almost exactly eight years, there are two film festivals, and a program of new works from four creatives will be staged at the Wortham Theater Center. Keep reading for more on this week’s best bets.
William Shakespeare’s star-crossed (and monumentally doomed) lovers will find their way to the Wortham Theater Center stage at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, February 23, when the Houston Ballet opens Artistic Director Stanton Welch’s Romeo and Juliet. Principal Dancer Connor Walsh, who along with Principal Dancer Karina González premiered the title roles in 2015 that they will return to on Thursday, told the Houston Press that because it’s “a familiar story,” the audience won’t have to be “digging through the program to follow along. I think people can just come to the theater and let the music and dance wash over them.” Performances will continue at 7:30 p.m. Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays; 1:30 p.m. Saturday March 4; and 2 p.m. Sundays through March 5 at the Wortham Theater Center. Tickets can be purchased here for $25 to $220.
From Thursday, February 23 to Saturday, February 25, the Indian Film Festival of Houston and Asia Society Texas Center will present the 15th Indian Film Festival of Houston, featuring a lineup of features, shorts, and documentaries. Selections include Ananth Mahadevan’s The Storyteller, about “an unpublished Bengali storyteller who answers a help ad from a Gujarati businessman who suffers from insomnia,” and Shaunak Sen’s All That Breathes, a “luminous documentary about the labors of two brothers who rescue birds of prey falling from the polluted skies of Delhi.” You can find the full schedule here. Single screening tickets are available for $19, Thursday day passes for $50, Friday day passes for $35, or you can get a full festival pass for $85 here. A reception and musical performance will follow Thursday’s program and a closing awards ceremony and dinner is scheduled for Saturday.
Senegalese cinema takes center stage at The Menil Collection on Friday, February 24, from 6:30 to 9 p.m. when the museum joins forces with the West African Film Festival of Houston to present the West African Film Festival Double Feature Screening. The first film is Isabel Rivero-Vilá’s Afrykas and the Magic Box, a documentary that “tells the story of Senegalese cinema through the testimonies of Dakar locals.” A film by the “father of African cinema,” Ousmane Sembène follows; Mandabi, the first feature “ever made in an African language” and a tale “about colonialism and Africa’s relationship with France, though a 21st-century audience might specifically read it as a parable of globalization.” The free screening will be presented on the museum’s front lawn, so don’t forget the bring lawn chairs or a picnic blanket for comfort.
Join Performing Arts Houston at the Wortham Theater Center at 7:30 p.m. on Friday, February 24, or Saturday, February 25, for New/Now: The Houston Artist Commissioning Project. The two-hour program will feature multi-hyphenate (one of which is artistic director of Musiqa) Anthony Brandt’s Diabelli 200, a cross between Ludwig van Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations and neuroengineering; composer J.E. Hernández’s Desert Shelter, which uses music and dance to explore the experience of migrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border; Angolan musician Vivalda Ndula’s Mbandu ni Mbandu, an examination of social issues through the four musical compositions in Kimbundu; and Tee Zee Productions’ Tazeen Zahida, who will present And The Clay Pot Speaketh, a retelling of a South Asian folktale through musical pantomime, narration, poetry and folk music. Tickets can be purchased here for $25.
Join the Houston Symphony for a romp through the history of the Great White Way when they present The Best of Broadway with Jeremy Jordan at Jones Hall for the Performing Arts on Friday, February 24, at 8 p.m. Jordan and the Symphony, under the hand of Principal POPS Conductor Steven Reineke, will perform selections from the Corpus Christi-born performer’s past roles – which include “Jack Kelly” in Newsies, “Tony” in West Side Story, “Dr. Pomatter” in Waitress, and more – as well as classic tunes from musicals like Carousel, Les Misérables, Rock of Ages, and Oklahoma. The concert will also be performed at 8 p.m. on Saturday, February 25, and at 2:30 p.m. on Sunday, February 26. In-hall tickets (this one won’t be livestreamed) can be purchased here for $42 to $170.
There’s another noteworthy historical event that occurred in 1492 – it just doesn’t have a catchy little mnemonic rhyming device – and that is the Alhambra Decree, a mandate from King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella that expelled all Jews from Spain. The “results were catastrophic.” On Saturday, February 25, Houston Early Music will welcome the early music ensemble Istanpitta to the Evelyn Rubenstein Jewish Community Center of Houston for Exiled, a program that highlights the resulting fusion of Western and Eastern influences – Sephardic, Spanish and French – as the exiled traveled from Spain to other parts of Europe and the Middle East. The concert will begin at 7:30 p.m. following a talk scheduled for 6:45 p.m. Tickets can be purchased here for $50 (with $20 tickets available for students and $40 tickets for seniors 60 and older).
Despite a relatively short career, Glenn Miller’s music defines an era – “his name is synonymous with the classic big band sound, and his ballad ‘Moonlight Serenade’ is likely one of the best-known songs of all time, recognizable by old and young alike.” On Monday, February 27, at 7 p.m., The Glenn Miller Orchestra: The Greatest Hits Show will swing by the Wortham Theater Center to play some of his tunes, including hits like (of course) “Moonlight Serenade,” “Pennsylvania 6-5000,” “In the Mood” and more. Music director and saxophonist Erik Stabnau has said that “for folks that know Glenn Miller and his music, you can expect to hear all the songs that you want to hear,” as well as “some of his lesser-known songs” and “a couple songs that are not Glenn Miller’s but popular music of that swing era that folks will recognize.” Tickets can be purchased here for $67 to $94.
There’s a busy two days in store for DACAMERA Artistic Director Sarah Rothenberg and cellist Sonia Wieder-Atherton. On Monday, February 27, at 7:30 p.m. the pair will be joined by poet Edward Hirsch at The Menil Collection for True Life, A Celebration of Poet Adam Zagajewski. The program, co-presented by DACAMERA and Inprint, will see Rothenberg and Wieder-Atherton situate the music that inspired Zagajewski – from composers such as Frédéric Chopin, Dmitri Shostakovich and Franz Schubert – alongside his work. Tickets for the program can be purchased here for $40 (or you can stream it for free in March).
The following evening, at 7:30 p.m. on Tuesday, February 28, Rothenberg and Wieder-Atherton will return to The Menil Collection for a duo recital of works by Johann Sebastian Bach, Gustav Mahler and Ludwig van Beethoven. Tickets for Tuesday’s event can be bought here for $60.
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This article appears in Jan 1 – Dec 31, 2023.
