'Tis the season

A ballet worth rioting over? Stanton Welch puts a new twist on the daunting "Rite of Spring"

Spring is a time of renewal, but winter doesn’t always go quietly.

As Houston Ballet prepares for its latest mixed repertory program, there’s definitely a sense of newness in the air with Thursday's opening night almost here. The program features two world premieres — artistic director Stanton Welch’s interpretation of “The Rite of Spring” and emerging choreographer Edwaard Liang’s “Murmurations” — and a Houston Ballet premiere of Mark Morris’s sweet and floral “Pacific.”

Sweet and floral: that’s what we hope for from spring. But it would be hard to associate those terms with the both iconic and iconoclastic “The Rite of Spring” otherwise known by its French title “Le Sacre du printemps.” Many think of the premiere in 1913 of this collaboration between composer Igor Stravinsky and dancer and choreographer Vaslav Nijinsky as the battle cry of modernism, which seems to witness an outbreak of war between the old and the new. The dissonant, emphatic, and experimental nature of both the music and the dance nearly caused a riot in the theater at its premiere.

The plot of the ballet involves a ritual of renewal. A young girl (the Chosen One) is selected as sacrificial victim to bring fecundity back to the earth. In spite of decidedly mixed feelings at the premiere of “The Rite of Spring” and in spite of the loss of Nijinsky’s original choreography, until it was recreated by Millicent Hodson for the Joffrey Ballet in the 1980s, the “Rite” has become a rite of passage for choreographers and dancers.

The dissonant, emphatic, and experimental nature of both the music and the dance nearly caused a riot in the theater at its premiere.

Martha Graham danced the part of the Chosen One in Leonid Massine’s version in 1930 and later choreographed her own “Rite” at the end of her career; Lester Horton created the first American version in 1937 set in the Wild West with Native American dance; and significant productions by Mary Wigman, Kenneth MacMillan, Maurice Bejart, Pina Bausch, Glen Tetley and others are regularly performed.

Some of the most stellar moments in Wim Wenders' stirring tribute to Pina Bausch, Pina, which I first saw in 3D the Houston’s 2011 Cinema Arts Festival, came from her fiery and influential “Rite.”

In fact, there’s a veritable orgy of “Rites” this spring at the centennial anniversary of Nijinsky’s original. The Joffrey Ballet just performed Hodson’s reconstruction in Austin and Houston’s Society for the Performing Arts will present innovative choreographer Shen Wei’s “Rite of Spring” in May:

Stanton Welch found inspiration not only in Stravinsky’s groundbreaking music but in Australian aboriginal culture. In a video interview, he describes encountering the art of Rosella Namok in Houston’s Booker Lowe Gallery. Although inspired by Namok’s paintings, the setting of Welch’s “Rite” is more general

“The Rite of Spring” offers ambitious choreographers a great provocation and the chance to test their mettle against an iconic event in the history of dance. It may leave audience members wondering if they’ve seen a dance worth rioting over.

Taiwanese-born Edwaard Liang has wowed audiences first as a dancer in the New York City Ballet, later as a lead in the Tony Award winning cast of Fosse, and finally with with Nederlands Dans Theater under Jiri Kylian. Now a sought-after choreographer, Liang has premiered several new works in just the last year or so for the Joffrey Ballet and San Francisco Ballet in addition to Houston Ballet’s commission “Murmurations.”

Here’s an excerpt from the Joffrey Ballet’s 2008 production of Liang’s elegant if also frenetic “Age of Innocence,” which is set to music by Philip Glass and Thomas Newman:

It’s hard not to be pleased to see another Mark Morris dance entering the Houston Ballet repertory, especially after stellar recent performances of the “Sandpaper Ballet” and “Drink to Me Only with Thine Eyes.” In the midst of praising Morris’s musicality, he admitted that “Pacific” was the first Morris ballet he saw performed. Set to a Lou Harrison trio for violin, cello, and piano, “Pacific” is, according to Seattle critic Moira Macdonald, “a quiet ballet, gentle as a sigh; its jumps seem to longer in the air like the scent of spring.”

After all the riot and sacrifice of “Rite of Spring,” a gentle sigh sounds just right.

"The Rite of Spring" runs Thursday through March 17 at Wortham Theater Center.

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Movie Review

The Mandalorian and Grogu lacks the cinematic magic of a true Star Wars movie

Photo courtesy of Lucasfilm

The Mandalorian (Pedro Pascal) and Grogu in The Mandalorian and Grogu.

At one point in the 2010s, Disney planned to release a different Star Wars movie every year, with an “Episode” film (like The Rise of Skywalker) alternating with anthology movies like Rogue One. But when 2018’s Solo underperformed, those plans changed, and the pandemic made any Star Wars movie less appealing, with Lucasfilm shifting heavily toward TV shows like The Mandalorian.

The popularity of that show in particular has led to the return of Star Wars to the theaters in the form of Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu. The film follows the bounty hunter (Pedro Pascal) and his Force-sensitive adopted child as they travel around the universe, hunting down the remaining members of the Galactic Empire (the film, like the series, is set in the years following The Return of the Jedi).

The main thrust of the film has the duo, at the behest of Colonel Ward (Sigourney Weaver) of the New Republic, trying to track down Rotta the Hutt (voiced by Jeremy Allen White), the son of the late Jabba the Hutt, who’s supposedly been kidnapped. The discovery of the ultra-buff Rotta sets them down a different path than they thought, one that puts Mando and Grogu in the crosshairs of Rotta’s twin cousins.

Directed by Jon Favreau and written by Favreau, Dave Filoni, and Noah Kloor, the film is perfectly fine if you consider it to be an extended Mandalorian episode, but at no point does it rise to the level of a great movie experience.

The film, like the show, is defined by the Mandalorian’s unflappable nature and strict code, as well as Grogu’s mischievousness and unquenchable appetite. Right from the start, the Mandalorian has a “take no prisoners” approach, laying waste to all comers in a PG-13 sort of way. Grogu is mostly along for the ride, occasionally breaking out the Force to help out, but mostly serving as the comic sidekick. Their relationship keeps the film watchable, but only just barely.

The biggest issue, one which was starting to affect the Disney+ show as well, is that the story never seems to go anywhere despite the fact that its two main characters are constantly on the move. No matter how big or ferocious the opponent they face, the overall stakes are so low as to almost be nonexistent. If Favreau and Filoni (who has a small part in the film) are trying to build toward some larger story, it doesn’t come through on screen.

The film’s action fits in well with sequences that have been put forth in previous Star Wars films, but to call them “cinematic” would be stretching things. There are all manner of monstrous creatures that the duo comes across in their adventures, but only a few of them are memorable. The most interesting sequence features a snake/dragon hybrid that Mando fights in a watery pit that is reminiscent of the trash compactor scene in the original Star Wars. Much of the rest of the film blends together in a mish-mash of uninteresting opponents.

For a live action film, there are precious few actors who actually show their faces. The Mandalorian removes his helmet exactly once, making it clear that Pascal is merely providing the voice for the character. White affects a tough voice for Rotta that may be canon, but frankly sounds ridiculous coming from the character’s body and in no way resembles White’s actual voice, which negates his casting altogether. Weaver is close to a non-factor in her small role, but Martin Scorsese is kind of fun voicing a four-armed fry cook/informant.

The cachet of Star Wars and the fun of The Mandalorian series may be enough for many to enjoy the inoffensive lark that is The Mandalorian and Grogu. But the film does not come close to reaching the heights of the best Star Wars movies, and does nothing to indicate what to expect from the valuable intellectual property going forward.

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Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu opens in theaters on May 22.

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