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    The Review is In

    Frenzied bodies: Daring and provocative dance takes over in Houston Ballet season opener

    Joseph Campana
    Joseph Campana
    Sep 6, 2013 | 11:37 am

    What's in a name?

    "Four Premieres" may be an accurate title for Houston Ballet's season opener, which runs through Sept. 15 at Wortham Theater Center, but the program might as well have been called "Frenzy."

    Each year a company must decide how to start a season. It's so easy to pick works that are charming, romantic or nostalgic. Hats off to the company for adding daring and ambitious to the list. Premiere works by Houston Ballet associate choreographer Christopher Bruce, former Houston Ballet dancers Melissa Hough and Garrett Smith and National Ballet of Canada artist-in-residence James Kudelka were provocative, surprising — and surprisingly different.

    Bruce's Intimate Pages premiered with Ballet Rambert in 1984, but this revised version represents a North American premiere. The title references romantic letters between composer Leoš Janáček and Kamila Stösslová, a much younger married woman. Set to Janáček's String Quartet No. 2, the work is a study of the tortures of unrequited love. Bruce makes extraordinary use of the score, which was exquisitely performed by the Houston Ballet Orchestra.

    Intimate Pages was less idiosyncratic and less dominated by groups than other Bruce works in the Houston Ballet repertoire. Often it seems that Bruce has unearthed some lost vernacular in the way bodies twitch and touch to create new forms of social dance.

    Intimate Pages was austere. Deliberate strings swing from desperate to sweet as the flawless Ian Casady, principal, and first soloist Jessica Collado act out a love scene that's constantly interrupted. Bruce deploys a clever device as he pairs each lover with two other dancers. As the lovers reach for one another, the other dancers, garbed in ghostly colors, distract them into other phrases of movement. Occasionally they unite, but never for long. Such is the frenzy and pain of frustrated love.

    Athleticism and spelunking in undergarments

    Hough and Smith more than held their own with the more established Bruce and Kudelka, bringing plenty of frenzy into play.

    Hough's concept is a paradox: Thrilling yet cerebral, athletic yet complex. Her title, …the third kind [is] useless, quotes Machiavelli's The Prince. With a jarring, ponderous score by Gabriel Prokofiev (grandson of Sergei) at her disposal, Hough rings the dancers through exciting changes: One minute sinuous, the next, abrupt. Of course she had ample support from startling lighting and costume designs by Lisa J. Pinkham and Monica Guerra.

    Never has the always-exceptional Simon Ball been so persuasive. It felt like I was seeing him dance for the very first time. Is that not what all passion, especially in ballet, aspires to?

    Principal dancer Connor Walsh plays a prince consumed by a power that slowly destroys him from within. With mere gestures, he moves the bodies around him. The dance is marked by an ambitious patterning of bodies in groups that swerve between unity and individuality.

    Whereas Hough's earlier choreography seemed wonderfully intimate and sexual, this latest effort is queasy, wry and capacious. I couldn't help thinking of the middle of Balanchine's Prodigal Son, with Kelly Myernick as the Siren drawing the prince to his doom. As if drunk on power, Walsh slowly unravels until dissent finally overtakes him. He whimpers at the end, "I'm the prince."

    Maybe no one's really the prince, but Hough held all the power.

    Smith's Return may not pack the dense, cerebral punch of Hough's thrilling creation, but he accomplished something extraordinary: A genuine crowd-pleaser.

    That term is often a backhanded compliment that refers to exciting but shallow work. And admittedly, the scenario of young dancers exploring caves seemed, at times, hokey. As they emerged on the stage, someone nearby whispered, "Why are they spelunking in their underwear?"

    But harnesses strung over shorts were part of Smith's ambitious athleticism. Mere straps and the strength of dancers Oliver Halkowich and Rhodes Elliot kept Nozomi Iijima and Jacquelyn Long swinging in dizzying and dazzling circles. These were only a few of a series of thrilling moments. So what if there were a few too many flashlights on helmets for my taste? Smith made an ambitious selection of John Adams' scores, his well-composed choreography handily withstood the music's awesome force. That's his brand of frenzy delights.

    Fighting or making love?

    What a pleasure it was to end with Kudelka's masterful Passion, one of the most intelligent pieces of choreography I've seen. Set to Beethoven's Concerto for Piano in D major (the composer's transcription of the Violin Concerto), Passion opens on a gauzy, neo-classical affair. Five women in a line travel like a fragment of a corps de ballet while three couples glide around them. Whether this is a performance or a ball, the dancers maintain a gorgeous façade that evokes dance as pure elegance.

    But like wolves after prey, principal dancers Simon Ball and Karina Gonzalez stalk the stage. Ball wears a vest but no shirt; Gonzalez sports disheveled hair. It's as if they've just been fighting or making love. They only eye each other as if unaware of the others. Overwhelming forces rage beneath the pristine exterior of this ballet.

    It takes a choreographer of supreme confidence to obscure his central couple. For long stretches, they walk around and stare at one another. At times they struggle while at other times they melt, weary, into one another. Never has the always-exceptional Ball been so persuasive. It felt like I was seeing him dance for the very first time.

    Is that not what all passion, especially in ballet, aspires to?

    Jessica Collado and Christopher Grey in Houston Ballet's production of Intimate Pages.

    Houston Ballet Four Premieres September 2013 Intimate Pages with Jessica Collado and Christopher Gray choreographed by Christopher Bruce
      
    Photo by © Amitava Sarkar
    Jessica Collado and Christopher Grey in Houston Ballet's production of Intimate Pages.
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    Movie Review

    New horror movie Sinners sings the blues with twin turn from Michael B. Jordan

    Alex Bentley
    Apr 18, 2025 | 12:30 pm
    Michael B. Jordan and Miles Caton in Sinners
    Photo courtesy of Warner Bros.
    Michael B. Jordan and Miles Caton in Sinners.

    Writer/director Ryan Coogler has become so well-known for his blockbuster films — Creed, Black Panther, and Black Panther: Wakanda Forever — that it’s easy to forget that he made his debut with the small-but-powerful 2013 film, Fruitvale Station. After more than a decade, he’s finally returning to original material with his latest film, Sinners.

    Each of Coogler’s films has either starred or featured Michael B. Jordan, and this one gives moviegoers a double dose, as Jordan plays twins who go by the nicknames of Smoke and Stack. Set in 1932, the two hustlers have recently returned from mysterious (and possibly criminal) work in Chicago to their hometown of Clarksdale, Mississippi to open a juke joint.

    They call upon a number of friends and family to help them with the venture, including cousin and guitar player Sammie Moore (Miles Caton), Smoke’s old girlfriend Annie (Wunmi Mosaku), piano player Delta Slim (Delroy Lindo), bouncer Cornbread (Omar Miller), and Chinese couple Bo and Grace Chow (Yao and Li Jun Li). Trouble is never far from the brothers, though, whether it’s Stack’s old girlfriend Mary (Hailee Steinfeld), the Ku Klux Klan leader who sold them the property for the juke joint, or something even more sinister.

    Coogler began his feature film career by confronting the issue of unjustified shootings of Black people by police. How Black people are perceived by society has been a part of everything he’s done since. By placing this film firmly in the middle of the Jim Crow era, he infuses the story with all manner of subtext, including the injustice of sharecropping and prevalent segregation in the South.

    Music, specifically Blues, plays a big part in the film as well. It’s championed through the emerging talent of Sammie and the veteran presence of Delta Slim, but it’s also a driving force for other parts of the plot. Sammie is decried by his pastor father for playing “the devil’s music,” while strange newcomer Remmick (Jack O’Connell) seems to appreciate it a little too much. A fantastically surreal scene at the juke joint turns into an entertaining and educational lesson on the history of Black music.

    It’s Remmick’s obsession that’s at the center of the final hour or so of the film, one in which all hell breaks loose. The manner of that hell is probably better enjoyed if it’s not spoiled here, but suffice it to say that Remmick has an evil to him that threatens to destroy Smoke and Stack’s venture before it even gets started. The horror aspect of the film is fine, but it winds up being the least interesting part of the story.

    Jordan can occasionally go over-the-top with his performances, and with him playing twins the threat of doing so was doubled. But he remains relatively restrained for most of the film, giving each twin their own unique spin. Caton, a rising R&B singer, makes his acting debut in the film and winds up stealing every scene he’s in. The rest of the cast complements each other well, with Mosaku and Steinfeld being standouts.

    Coogler has proven himself to be a savvy filmmaker in each of his previous four films, and with Sinners he combines the personal with crowd-pleasing elements to great effect. It features great music, an insightful story, and even some gory action for an experience you’re not likely to find anywhere else.

    ---

    Sinners opens in theaters on April 18.

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