The Year in Culture

Collaborate and be prosperous: Houston art groups lean on each other like neverbefore

Houston Grand Opera and Talento Bilingüe de Houston broke operatic conventionsthrough the commission of the first mariachi opera
Photo by © Jessica Rinaldi / Reuters
The Houston Girls Chorus is a first for our city, giving young women educationalopportunities that extend beyond music making
The ARTernative festival was enjoyed by over 1,000 Sugar Land residents
Dr. David Eagleman delivering his TEDxTalk on "possibilianism"

Tough times call for tough measures. For Houston’s art scene, the sluggish economy has presented an opportunity to be creative and figure out ways to do more with less.

Yes, it would seem rather obvious to expect an arts organization to use its innate innovative resources to do so. At its core, art breathes creativity. But the business of the arts isn’t always willing to step out of convention, especially when bottom line and cash flow concerns start infiltrating programming and artistic decisions.

Michael Kaiser, in The Art of the Turnaround, preaches that great art combined with strong marketing strategy is key to economic solvency. In 2010, the Houston art scene added one more element to the formula: Do it with a little help from your friends, collaborate and be prosperous.

Perhaps Young Audiences of Houston headed the most impressive and large-scale collaboration. Todd Frazier, executive director, and friends were able bring to the table 16 of the major professional art organizations and eight school districts to create an unprecedented resource for the educational community. Houston Arts Partners: Arts 4 All became a website indexing all art program offerings enabling teachers to quickly search and find the resource best suited for their students' learning goals.

A task not for the weak, getting everyone to buy in was possible due to a strict focus on the mission. Frazier attributes the success to leaving money aside and concentrating on the effect of the final product.

In similar spirit, American Festival for the Arts (AFA) launched the Houston Girls Chorus in collaboration with Houston Grand Opera’s education arm, HGOco. Focused on creating a new offering targeting the local community, care was placed on not reproducing or competing with existing programs. If their first appearance at the Tree Lighting Ceremony at City Hall is an indication of things to come, the Chorus’ first full-length debut concert on Jan 21 is something not to be missed.

Executive director Michael Remson laid out educational goals that extend beyond the musical experience into lifelong learning while providing positive role models for the participants.

Houston Grand Opera already has a unique place in the operatic world as a major leader in new commissions. In collaboration with Talento Bilingüe de Houston, HGO presented its 41st premiere, To Cross the Face of the Moon / Cruzar la Cara de la Luna , which broke through all sorts of artistic and operatic conventions to produce the first mariachi opera. With music by José “Pepe” Martínez, music director of Mariachi Vargas de Tecalitlán, the universal story of global travels and cross-cultural identity, immigration and assimilation sold-out performances at a concert version at the Wortham Theater Center and at a full- staged production at Talento Bilingüe de Houston.

A part of the Song of Houston project, the series of commissions celebrates the unique cultural diversity of the city. Mariachi songs tell human stories, so the juxtaposition with operatic conventions was a rather natural fit. The result? Continued exposure of HGO’s visibility and scope.

Spacetaker and Fresh Arts also joined resources in an unprecedented event. Bringing 17 arts organizations and nine individual artists to Sugar Land, the ARTernative Festival presented a jam-packed scheduled of back-to-back performances, workshops, interactive art stations and a visual art exhibition appropriate for families.

Culture Pilot’s own Javier Fadul was the driving force behind bringing the first TEDx conference to Houston. Although not an arts non-profit in the traditional sense, TED (technology, entertainment and design) is an organization dedicated to “Ideas Worth Spreading,” putting and licensing conferences worldwide.

A packed audience at University of Houston Lyndall Finley Wortham Theatre in the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Building heard 16 dynamic speakers share a wide range of thought-provoking topics from dance and music to architecture and health and their respective intersections. Most notably, neuroscientist and author David Eagleman presented his theory of possibilianism, the concept that allows freedom of thought amidst science’s inability to fully explain certain phenomena and concepts.

If we are optimistic about an economic recovery in 2011, Houston's art scene has already set a high expectation for the creative consumer. And it had better deliver.

Hear Dr. David Eagleman's TEDx Houston talk:

Editor's note: This is the 23rd in a series of articles CultureMap will be running this transition week (the end of '10 and the beginning of '11) on The Year in Culture. The stories in this series will focus on a key point or two, something that struck our reporting team about the year rather than rote Top 10 lists or bests of.

Movie Review

28 Years Later revives zombie franchise for new generation

Photo by Miya Mizuno

Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Alfie Williams in 28 Years Later.

The 2000s brought two of the best zombie movies ever made in 28 Days Later and 28 Weeks Later. Both films, despite being made by different filmmakers, featured intense action with fast-moving zombies, harrowing sequences, and real emotional connections with their main characters. Now the original director and writer — Danny Boyle and Alex Garland — have returned with the first of a possible three sequels, 28 Years Later.

The rage virus from the first two films that turns humans into insatiable monsters has successfully been contained to the United Kingdom, and one group of survivors has managed to band together on a small island off the coast of England. We’re introduced to the group through Jamie (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), his wife, Isla (Jodie Comer), and his son, Spike (Alfie Williams).

Isla is sick with an unknown illness, while Jamie is set to take the 12-year-old Spike on his first trip to the mainland to hunt zombies. That trip not only gives Spike an education as to the different types of feral zombies that now populate England, but also a clue that other people have survived there. When he discovers that one of them may be a doctor, he makes plans to take his mother there in hopes of finding a cure for whatever ails her.

While the first two films were notable for their brisk pace that kept the potency of the stories high, Boyle and Garland almost go in the opposite direction for much of this film. The first 90 minutes are relatively slow, with only a couple of sequences that raise the blood pressure. The final half hour or so go a long way toward filling that void, so it’s clear that the filmmakers were biding their time for the story to come in the sequel. A bit more balance in this film would have served them well, though.

What they do show involves some weird, wild stuff that is objectively upsetting, even for fans of the genre. The zombies have evolved in strange ways, giving them a variety of body shapes and abilities to suit the environment in which they live. These storytelling choices may thrill some and have others scratching their heads. Another human character living on his own (played by Ralph Fiennes), appears to have gone the way of Colonel Kurtz in Apocalypse Now, with a revelation that is bone-chilling.

Boyle, who’s directed everything from Trainspotting to Slumdog Millionaire, doesn’t have a signature style, and he makes some choices in this film that test your patience. He occasionally employs an odd technique in which the film stutters, for a lack of better term. It’s a bit jarring, especially since it doesn’t seem to improve the storytelling. He also inserts scenes from older films involving medieval warfare that emulate the bow-and-arrow weaponry used by characters in this film, but the exact connection he’s trying to make is unclear.

The young Williams has a lot put on his shoulders in the film, and he proves to be up to the task of carrying the story. He isn’t precocious or annoying, instead reacting almost exactly like you’d expect a boy of his age to do when faced with extreme situations. Taylor-Johnson and Comer are good complements for him, drawing him out with their polar opposite characters. Fiennes makes a huge impression in the final act of the film, while Jack O’Connell makes a very brief appearance, teasing a bigger role to come.

It’s difficult to fully judge 28 Years Later because it’s designed to only give you part of the story; part 2, The Bone Temple, is due in 2026, while a third film will follow if the first two do well. This film has its moments and winds up on the positive side of the ledger, but it’s also a frustrating experience that could have used a more stand-alone story.

---

28 Years Later is now playing in theaters.

movies film