On this week’s list of best bets, you’ll find world premiere dance works with some interesting inspirations, a five-day-long film festival, and a not-oft-heard work of art. Keep reading for more about these and our other top picks over the next seven days.
Homelessness is the subject of Houston Grand Opera’s latest world premiere set to debut on Thursday, March 9, at 7:30 p.m. Another City, a 75-minute, immersive one-act features a cast of 12 and is site-specific, being presented at Ecclesia Houston. Librettist Stephanie Fleischmann, who created Another City with composer Jeremy Howard Beck, recently told the Houston Press that the ensemble story was important because “one person’s story isn’t going to hold all the gradations of the problems and the solutions,” noting that “there are so many aspects to [homelessness], so many layers, so many experiences and there’s so many kinds of needs from the chronically homeless.” Additional performances are scheduled for 7:30 p.m. Friday, March 10, and 2 p.m. Saturday, March 11. Tickets for any of the performances can be purchased here for $25.
Houston Ballet’s latest mixed repertory program is set for Thursday, March 9, at 7:30 p.m. and will feature Artistic Director Stanton Welch’s Clear, George Balanchine’s Concerto Barocco and the premiere of Cathy Marston’s Summer and Smoke, which lends its name to the program and is based on Tennessee Williams’s 1948 play of the same name. Jessica Collado, who dances the role of a virginal minister’s daughter, recently told the Houston Press describes it as “a simple love story but yet very complex in its emotions,” set to an original score by Michael Daugherty that “just grows and grows and grows as the piece goes on. It puts you in this romantic story grandeur.” Performances will continue at 7:30 p.m. Friday and Saturdays, and 2 p.m. Sundays at the Wortham Theater Center through March 19. Tickets are available here for $25 to $210.
Houston-based dance and music company Group Acorde will explore the concept of adaptation during their latest full-evening production, adaptar: stories of adaptation, on Thursday, March 9, at 8 p.m. The program will feature two premieres: Roberta Paixão Cortes’s Belonging (or not) Abroad, about the choreographer’s journey to Houston from Brazil, and Neuroception, a work from Jennifer Mabus and Spencer Gavin Hering inspired by the polyvagal theory. Group Acorde’s Lindsey McGill told the Houston Press that the polyvagal theory “really lends itself to multiple voices, multiple inputs, multiple avenues, multiple access points,” which make it “a great topic for a collaboration.” Performances of adaptar: stories of adaptation are also scheduled for 8 p.m. on Friday, March 10, and 7 p.m. on Saturday, March 11, at The DeLuxe Theater. Tickets can be purchased here for $20 to $30.
Experience “a monument of instrumental music” this spring as Bach Society Houston presents all six of Johann Sebastian Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos over the course of two concerts at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Though written for Christian Ludwig, Margraf of Brandenburg, the Brandenburg Concertos were not performed, likely because “the Margraf’s small musical establishment could not begin to cope with the Concertos’ wide variety of instruments and extreme technical difficulty,” i.e. “it would have been a major project for the Margraf’s musicians just to cover all the parts, let alone play them well.” On Friday, March 10, at 7 p.m., concertgoers can hear Concertos 1, 2 and 4. The second concert, scheduled for Friday, April 14, at 7 p.m., will cover Concertos 3, 5 and 6. You can but tickets for either concert (or both) here for $20 to $50.
If you’re in the mood for some “aesthetic transcendence,” you may want to head over to the Wortham Theater Center on Friday, March 10, at 7:30 p.m. when the Minneapolis-based Ragamala Dance Company visit, courtesy of Performing Arts Houston, to present Fires of Varanasi: Dance of the Eternal Pilgrim. Ranee Ramaswamy and Aparna Ramaswamy’s 85-minute work utilizes Bharatanatyam choreography to imagine a place where a person leaves this world for the next. Ranee Ramaswamy, the company’s founder, has said that the troupe wants “the audience to think about this idea of the transformation from life to death,” stating that they have “tried to embody these habitual practices that stem from a mythic memory,” and then “abstracted it and [incorporated] it” into the performance. Tickets can be purchased here for $29 to $109.
On Saturday, March 11, at 7 p.m. the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, will screen Jean Renoir’s masterpiece, The Rules of the Game (La règle du jeu), in its full 4K restoration glory. The comedy of manners – “in which manners act as a scrim” – has been described as “among the most perfectly balanced of films: a movie about discretion that is in every way a model of it.” Released in 1939, it’s “a scathing critique of corrupt French society” where “etiquette and pageantry excuse the characters from dealing honestly with matters of the heart, and perhaps even blind them to the encroaching darkness of World War II.” The film will screen for a second time on Sunday, March 12, at 2 p.m. Tickets to either screening can be purchased here for $7 to $9.
It’s been said that New Orleans’ famed Preservation Hall, founded in 1961, is a jazz venue that, unlike others of its kind “that have changed their décor and ethos with the times,” remains arguably “the most authentic, with a pure emphasis on the music.” Just two years after its founding, a touring ensemble was established to take jazz all around the world, and on Tuesday, March 14, at 7:30 p.m. Performing Arts Houston will bring today’s iteration to Jones Hall for the Performing Arts for Preservation Hall Jazz Band: 60th Anniversary Celebration. Ron Rona, Preservation Hall’s artistic director, has warned that the band’s name may be a little misleading, as “jazz is an evolution,” adding that though the melodies and forms may be the same, “the musicians put themselves into it,” resulting in “brand-new tunes.” Tickets are available here for $25.55 to $99.
The 7th Annual Latino Film Festival comes to The MATCH this week with a lineup of more than 70 short and feature-length films screened over five days and made by filmmakers from across the U.S., Latin America, Spain and Portugal. Before the opening night film, Silvina Schnicer and Ulises Porra Guardiola’s Carajita, an exploration of privilege through the relationship between a girl and her nanny, at 8 p.m. on Wednesday, March 15, you can also visit “On Identity,” an exhibition from Karen Navarro that will remain on view throughout the festival. The gallery will open at 5:30 p.m. on Wednesday, with Navarro set to give opening remarks at 7:30 p.m. You can view the full festival schedule here, and nab an all-access badge for $55 (students can get one at the discounted price of $40) or buy single screening tickets for $14 here.
This article appears in Jan 1 – Dec 31, 2023.
