Houston Ballet Kicks Off Stanton Welch’s 20th Season with Shakespeare, Celebrations and Premieres
Sep. 5, 2023
Houston Ballet Principal Karina González as Titania and former Soloist Aaron Robison as Oberon in A Midsummer Night's Dream (photo by Amitava Sarkar, 2014); and González with former Principal Joseph Walsh in Welch's Tu Tu (photo by Ron McKinney, 2010)
STANTON WELCH IS now in his 20th season with Houston Ballet. It’s a cause for celebration, and the Company’s 2023-24 season is exactly that: a celebration of creative storytelling, as well as his and new co-artistic director Julie Kent’s shared commitment to bring top-notch classics to the stage alongside newly commissioned works by emerging choreographers.
The new season gets rolling Friday, Sept. 8 with a return performance of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Choreographed by John Neumeier, with music by Felix Mendelssohn and avant-garde composer Gyorgy Ligeti, the ballet features the familiar characters and hilarious scenarios from one of the Bard’s most beloved comedies. Houston Ballet was the first North American company to perform this work in 2014. “Even if you have seen this production, dance is a living art which can only live in the present tense,” says Neumeier in a statement, echoing the forward-thinking spirit of Welch and Houston Ballet. “A ballet is a live, living art, that must be performed as if has never been before, making each performance new.” A Midsummer Night’s Dream runs through Sept. 17.
Those hungry for Welch’s choreography are in for a treat when Tutu, the first mixed repertory program of the season, begins its run on Sept 21. The program includes Welch’s humorous and virtuosic ballet, Tu Tu, set to Ravel’s jazzy Concerto for Piano in G major, which, as it did when it was premiered in 1931, sounds as if it were composed for dance. Tutu also includes the Houston Ballet premiere of George Balanchine’s Stars and Stripes, with rousing music by John Philip Sousa, and the world premiere of Annabelle Lopez Ochoa’s Delmira, inspired by the passionate and tragic life 20th-century Uruguayan poet Delmira Agustini, with a commissioned score by Colombian composer Juan Pablo Acosta. Tutu runs through Oct. 1.
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Reflecting on Losses from the Winter Street Studios Fire, Erika Alonso Pops Up with New Paintings
Sep. 5, 2023
Alonso, inset, and her acrylic-on-canvas painting 'Birds'
BASED IN HOUSTON, Cuban-American painter Erika Alonso is a self-taught, self-described “painterly painter,” with a playful and very idiosyncratic take on abstract expressionism, mark making, and automatism, where the artist works quickly and intuitively, relying upon the subconscious to guide the artistic process. Her work can be found in numerous private collections across the United States and Europe, including that of beloved Houston collector and art fanatic Lester Marks. On Friday, Sept 8., from 7-9pm at Lanecia Rouse Tinsley Gallery, Alise Art Group's Art House presents Alonso’s solo exhibition Birds Are People Too (And Other Thoughts . . . ).
It’s a new collection of attractive black and white acrylic paintings, filled with squiggly lines and mysterious shapes that will indeed remind the viewer of birds and the natural world, as well as the jumpy, interior life of an artist blessed and cursed with racing thoughts. Alonso’s paintings aren’t exactly sedate, but they don’t signal danger.
Created in the months after the tragic and senseless Winter Street Studios fire bombing, which destroyed Alonso’s studio and several of her artworks, Birds Are People Too is a testament to Alonso’s resiliency, and the innate ability of artists to bounce back even after unimaginable loss. (Nearly 100 artists were impacted by the fire.)
“These experiences led me back to where I started as an artist: the simplicity and contrast of black and white,” says Alonso in a statement on her Instagram feed. “What color once concealed is now displayed in plain sight — the figures, birds, and creatures in my work step forward, confronting you in all their expressiveness.”
This exhibit is a special, one-night-only “pop-up” experience, a unique model presented by AAG.
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