The Arthropologist

Your guide to National Dance Week: From the Salad maker to the Ahn Trio to Japandisaster relief

Artists of Nai-Ni Chen Dance Company, New York, performing "Temptation of theMuses," choroegraphed by Nai-Ni Chen
Photo by Carol Rosegg
Alisa Mittin in CORE Performance Company's "In the Mood," free on April 29,World Dance Day, at Miller Outdoor Theatre
Photo by Mark Teague
Thang Dao
Photo by Eric Livey
Bridgett Zehr and Zdenek Konvalina of National Ballet of Canada performing"Impromtu," choroegraphed by Derek Deane.
Artist of Eastman, Antwerp, Belgium, performing "Faun," choroegraphed by SidiLarbi Cherkaoui
Photo by Hugo Glendinning
Ballet Ausin II in Thang Dao's "Quiet Imprint"
Photo by Anne Marie Bloodgood
Artists of Nai-Ni Chen Dance Company, New York, performing "Temptation of theMuses," choroegraphed by Nai-Ni Chen
Photo by Carol Rosegg
"Madame Butterfly" choreographed by Stanton Welch with artists Sara Webb and IanCasady
Photo by Jim Caldwell

Dance is its own planet. National Dance Week, leading up to World Dance Day on April 29, seems a fitting time to honor some of its prize citizens making a difference in the global community — many who just happen to have shows coming up this week.

Here they are: Thang Dao, with Ballet Austin II and the Vietnamese Culture & Science Association (VCSA) in Quiet Imprint on Saturday at The Hobby Center; Nancy Henderek of the Dance Salad Festival, Thursday through Saturday, at Cullen Theater Wortham Center; and Nao Kusuzaki and her colleagues at Houston Ballet and the Japan-America Society of Houston in Dancing for Hope, a benefit for Japan, Thursday night at The Hobby Center.

International dance right at your door

Whenever international dance people find out that I live in Houston, their first question is, "Do you know Nancy Henderek?"

The global curator of the Dance Salad Festival has been putting Houston on the world dance map for the past 16 years. She has some delicious delights up her international sleeve with a return of one of my favorite choreographers, Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, along with an impressive list of rarely-seen-in-Houston troupes.

I appreciate the way Henderek puts her support behind rising choreographers, giving us a chance to see how they are developing. With Cherkaoui's third appearance on the Salad, he's now a force of nature dance maker on the scene.

The same holds true for Annabelle Lopez Ochoa, who made her U.S. debut as a choreographer in 2006 with her powerful duet, One, created especially for Jacoby & Pronk, who also made their company debut. Expect a strong Asian contingent too, with Beijing Dance/LDTX and Nai-Ni Chen Dance Company performing with the accomplished Ahn Trio, who were just on the SPA stage earlier this year.

After a few years of highlighting mostly male choreographers, this year's bill is a boon for women dance makers, and includes Ochoa, Masa Kolar, Jasmin Vardimon, Ma Bo, Nai-Ni Chen and Oksana Titova. Henderek often includes a nod to Houston's dance history, and this year is no different with National Ballet of Canada principals and former Houston Ballet dancers Bridgett Zehr and Zdenek Konvalina returning to perform Derek Deane's romantic duet, Impromptu. I know the city welcomes these two favorite dancers back.

A Houston Ballet soloist rallies her troupe

I met with Kusuzaki and Connor Walsh two weeks ago in the Center for Dance's swanky new dancers' lounge to hear about "Dancing for Hope, A Japan Relief Fund," a fundraising event that came together in record time.

"Growing up in Japan, and having my entire family as well as many close friends on the island, this recent disaster hit me close to my heart," said Kusuzaki, who is from Ehime, Japan. She quickly teamed up with Shizu Yasuda, of Ad Deum Dance Company, who are also performing in the show.

"Helplessness overwhelmed me initially, which turned into a realization that there is always a way to make a difference," Kusuzaki says.

She joined forces with the Japan-America Society of Houston, with additional help from the Japanese Association of Greater Houston and assumed the role of artistic event coordinator, something she has never done before. She convinced 21 fellow company members, including several principals, to participate.

In no time, Kusuzaki came up with program (with some advice from her HB colleagues), which includes excerpts from Christopher Bruce's Hush, Le Corsaire, La Bayadere and Stanton Welch's Mediaeval Baebes and Madame Butterfly, to name a few. Rehearsals and planning took place on days off and down time. This is one industrious and disciplined tribe.

Welch is completely behind the project, giving the team full access to his ballets and rehearsal space.

“I am very proud to have so many of Houston Ballet’s dancers pull together and take part in a relief benefit for Japan. Houston Ballet feels personally connected, since we have numerous Japanese professional dancers and academy students. Fortunately, all their families were safe and sound after the disaster,” Welch said. “The Japanese culture is so very rich, deep, and has inspired me as a choreographer many times and inmany ways.

"I am glad that a part of Madame Butterfly can be included on this important occasion."

Kusuzaki will be dancing Welch's breathtaking pas de deux from Butterfly. The evening also includes Otro Portal, danced and choreographed by Houston contemporary choreographer Paola Georgudis.

Telling the story of the Vietnamese Diaspora through dance

Dance can be a way of telling your story. That's one of the things New York choreographer Dao found out when he embarked on creating Quiet Imprint for Ballet Ausin II.

"My mother never talked about her history," said Dao, who spent the first six months of his life in a prison in Danang, Vietnam.

Trained at The Juilliard School, Boston Conservatory and New York University, Dao made Texas headlines when he was selected for Ballet Austin's New American Talent contest. He went on to win the Audience Award all four nights. When Ballet Austin artistic director Stephen Mills and associate director Michelle Martin invited the rising choreographer to create a work on Ballet Austin II, Dao considered a dance based on his heritage, but then told Martin he wasn't quite ready.

"You are ready," Martin replied back. After numerous interviews with several Houston members of the Vietnamese community, Quiet Imprint took shape.

Set to songs by Trinh Cong Son, sung by the legendary Vietnamese singer Khanh Ly, the ballet comes to life through the music Dao grew up hearing. Getting the iconic singer aboard was not easy.

"A ballet? I don't know if I'm the right person," she told the young choreographer. "I know you are the right singer," he replied back, with enough passion in his voice to change her mind.

Dao played dramaturg with the Ballet Austin II dancers as they immersed themselves in the interviews to better embody these stories.

"The more I learn about these individuals, their living history, the more I was able to shape the narrative in each song vignette," Dao said. "Their stories became the framework for how I would craft each dance using distinctive movements particular to the narrative and gave emotional texture that drove the direction of the choreography."

Dao heads up the Thang Dao Dance Company in New York. He received a 2008 Princess Grace Award and a 2009 Special Projects Grant to develop Quiet Imprint. The VSCA joined forces with Ballet Austin II to present this show as part of their cultural programing. A strong showing of the community showed up to the Kim Son Ballroom two weeks ago to meet Dao and Martin in person, and hear his moving tale of creating a dance based on the stories of many people in that very room.

Dao's ballet has a dual focus: To find out more about his own origins, and to share his art form with his parents. He has succeeded at both.

If your dance card is still not full, can I suggest Houston Ballet Academy Showcase, on April 29 & 30, Core Performance Company's In the Mood... for Dance at Miller Outdoor Theatre, on April 29, or Between the Lines at UH's School of Theatre & Dance, April 29-May 1, or The Thank You Barat DiverseWorks, April 28-30.

There's more, don't you know it, as Houston celebrates National Dance Week Lone Star style all month.

Thang Dao and Ballet Austin II in Quiet Imprint

National Ballet of Canada principals Bridgett Zehr and Zdenek Konvalina are simply gorgeous in this pas de deux

An excerpt of Stanton Welch's haunting Mediæval Bæbesis on the Dancing for Hope Program

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Movie Review

Action-packed Kraven the Hunter showcases gritty Marvel antihero

Photo by Jay Maidment

Aaron Taylor-Johnson in Kraven the Hunter.

One of the oddest things about the blockbuster era we live in is that while Disney owns the rights to the majority of Marvel comic book characters, Sony Pictures owns the rights to Spider-Man and any affiliated characters. Since they’re sharing Spider-Man himself with Disney, Sony has been trying to capitalize on those rights by making stand-alone films using niche characters that only comic book fanatics would know.

Having exhausted Venom and whiffed on attempts with Morbius and Madame Web, they’re trying again with Kraven the Hunter. Also known as Sergei Kravinoff, Kraven (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) is a self-styled vigilante who, as the film tells it, travels the world exacting vengeance on the truly bad people of the world. He’s the son of Nikolai (Russell Crowe), a hard-edged Russian oligarch, and brother to Dmitri (Fred Hechinger), who is relatively weak compared to the rest of his family.

The origin story has Kraven gaining his animal-like powers - including super-strength, speed, and jumping abilities - as a teenager from a mysterious serum given to him by a girl named Calypso (played as an adult by Ariana DeBose) after he was mauled by a lion. The two maintain a tenuous partnership as adults, with Calypso helping him hunt down other villains like Aleksei Sytsevich (Alessandro Nivola) and The Foreigner (Christopher Abbott).

Directed by J.C. Chandor and written by Richard Wenk, Art Marcum, and Matt Holloway, the film looks and feels enormously lazy, something made merely to hold on to potentially valuable intellectual property. Other than the tense family dynamic between the Kravinovs, little makes sense in the story. Kraven has an indecipherable moral code that has him going after poachers - because he’s part lion? - in addition to other high-powered criminals, with no clear goal except to … get back at his father?

The laziness extends to the action scenes, which feature Kraven being mostly impervious to any damage, whether it’s hand-to-hand combat, knives, or guns. The CGI-heavy scenes don’t even allow moviegoers to enjoy an R-rated bloody free-for-all, as all of the blood splatter is computer-generated, too. Since apparently one Spider-Man villain is not enough, three others make appearances with abilities that are under-explained and CGI that is poorly done.

That’s not even counting Calypso, another Spider-Man villain whose purpose in this film is nebulous at best. Her early connection with Kraven is so coincidental as to be laughable, and her continued reasons for helping him as an adult strain credulity as well. The only saving grace of her presence is that the filmmakers don’t try to shoehorn romance into the plot; perhaps they’re saving that for the (inevitable?) sequel.

Taylor-Johnson has had one of the most prolific-yet-anonymous careers in modern Hollywood, with appearances in big films like The Fall Guy, Bullet Train, and Tenet that have made very little impact. Even as the star here, he fails to hold your attention, with the story and visuals doing him no favors. DeBose has followed up her Oscar win for West Side Story with schlock like I.S.S., Argylle, and this, which doesn’t bode well for her career. At least Crowe gets to chew the scenery.

With a contractual inability to mention the name “Spider-Man,” movies like Kraven the Hunter exist in a weird area that forces filmmakers to make up stories for characters to which most people have no attachment. And just like Sony’s previous efforts, it is a very poor way to spend two hours in a movie theater; avoid at all costs.

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Kraven the Hunter opens in theaters on December 13.

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