It’s
Father’s Day weekend, next week is Juneteenth, and it’s still Pride Month, so
there are plenty of reasons to get out and celebrate. Keep reading for our picks
of the best things to do this week, including ‘80s music, a Juneteenth
celebration, and world premiere dance.
Two of the three works in Sparrow,
Houston Ballet’s season-ending mixed
repertory program opening tonight, June 12, at 7:30 p.m. at the Wortham
Theater Center, feature music with lyrics: Stanton Welch’s Sparrow,
which lends its name to the program, is set to the music of Simon &
Garfunkel, while Ben Stevenson’s Four Last Songs is set to Richard
Strauss with live vocals provided by soprano Nicole Heaston. On Four Last Songs,
First Soloist Julian Amir Lacey told the Houston Press, “Being
able to go and see ballet and opera at the same time is something that’s quite
rare. So, I think that in and of itself is a main reason to go.” Performances
will continue at 7:30 p.m. Friday and Saturdays and 2 p.m. Sundays through June
22. Tickets are available here for $47 to $159.
ISHIDA Dance Company,
in collaboration with Asia Society Texas,
will present its latest program, inside
my walls, on Thursday, June 12, at 8 p.m. Artistic Director Brett
Ishida’s inside my walls, a work inspired by Haruki Murakami, will world premiere
alongside a world premiere by guest choreographer Stephen Shropshire and Greek-born
choreographer Andonis Foniadakis’s Horizons, before continuing to Austin for performances next
week. Additional performances are scheduled for 8 p.m. Friday, June 13, and Saturday,
June 14, and 3 p.m. Sunday, June 15. Tickets can be purchased here for $30 to $90, with VIP tickets also available for $120. VIP receptions with
the choreographers and dancers will follow the shows on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday.
Following Sunday’s performance, all audience members can stay for a talkback
with Ishida and the dancers.
Over at the Museum of Fine
Arts, Houston, the “Jazz on Film”
series is in full swing, entering the second of three weekends with a screening
of Shirley Clarke’s Ornette: Made in
America, paired with Dick Fontaine’s not-oft-seen short “David,
Moffett, and Ornette,” on Friday, June 13, at 7 p.m. Following Clarke’s 1985
documentary about the Fort Worth-born musician who happens to be one of the innovators
of free jazz, the series will continue with a documentary on Art Blakey, a 35th-anniversary
screening of Spike Lee’s Mo’ Better Blues, and
Sidney Lumet’s The Pawnbroker, which features Quincy Jones’s first
Hollywood film score. Tickets to the screening can be purchased here for $7 to
$9. The series runs through June 21, and you can learn more about the film
lineup here.
Juneteenth, which marks the end of slavery in the United
States, is next week, but you can start the celebrations on Friday, June 13, at
8:30 p.m. when the Miller
Outdoor Theatre presents the Juneteenth
Culture Fest, a night of live performances featuring musical acts like the Ernest
Walker Band, LeToya Luckett, and Ruben
Studdard, on hand to pay tribute to artists like Roberta Flack, Luther
Vandross, Frankie Beverly, and more. The show is free, and you can reserve a
ticket here starting at 10 a.m. today, Thursday, June 12, or you can plan to sit on the Hill where
no ticket is required. If you can’t make it in person, the performance will be
livestreamed, and you can catch it on the Miller Outdoor Theatre website, YouTube
channel, or Facebook page.
Earlier this week, Sly Stone, born Sylvester Stewart in
Denton, Texas, passed
away at the age of 82. Deep dive into the life of “one
of the most influential and groundbreaking musicians of the late Sixties and
early Seventies who smashed the boundaries of rock, pop, funk, and soul” on
Saturday, June 14, at 3 p.m. when the Moody
Center for the Arts and The Reading Room screen Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson’s documentary Sly Lives! (aka The Burden of Black Genius). Film producer Joseph Patel has said,
“Our
premise is about Sly being the first post-civil rights Black star who has a
white audience and a Black audience, and what that specific American burden is
on Black artists.” Admission to the screening is free, and you can register
for it here.
If you think the best part of the ‘80s can be found with neon
leg warmers, sky-high teased hair, and synthesizer dominance, then you might
want to check out Pride Chorus Houston’s
next concert, True
Colors: The Music of the 80s, at Unity
of Houston on Saturday, June 14, at 8 p.m. We’re almost halfway through
Pride Month, so it’s a good time to join Pride Chorus Houston, a unified LGBTQ+
chorus that originally formed back in 1979, for a night of some of the most
memorable songs of the 1980s, from poppy dance songs to ballads, arranged specially
for the concert and paired with fun choreography and costumes (so don’t be
afraid to dress for the occasion, too). Tickets to the concert can be purchased
here for $20 to $35.
A classic ’80s film about a ragtag group of misfits on the
hunt for a long-lost treasure turns 40 this year and you can see it with the Houston Symphony during The
Goonies: Film with Live Orchestra at The Cynthia Woods Mitchell
Pavilion in The Woodlands on Tuesday, June 17, at 8 p.m. There’s a sequel to the film currently in
development – and yes, Steven
Spielberg, who provided the original story, and Chris Columbus, who wrote the
script, are both involved – but until then, you can enjoy the “fantastical story”
with “a smooth
mixture of the usual ingredients from Steven Spielberg action movies, made
special because of the high-energy performances of the kids who have the
adventures” on a big screen – with an orchestra. The performance is free,
and no ticket is required.
