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Houston hero Solange Knowles comes home for weeklong performance series

Solange Knowles is coming home.

From June 10-20, the Grammy-award winner and her artist collective, Saint Heron, will present six distinctive performances as part of Eldorado Ballroom Houston at three renowned venues: Eldorado Ballroom, Jones Hall, and The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.

The Houston native launched the Eldorado Ballroom series in 2023 at the Brooklyn Academy of Music as a tribute to her hometown. Since that initial performance, Knowles has reimagined Eldorado Ballroom, including a performance at Walt Disney Hall in Los Angeles in October 2024. Now, Knowles is bringing the series to its inspiration and namesake.

Eldorado Ballroom Houston serves as a reflection and time to honor pioneering Black artists, while also showcasing current creatives. Houston takes center stage with a forward-looking celebration of its musical roots, spotlighting Chopped and Screwed's lasting influence and the creative impact of the city’s Nigerian and African communities.

The series also honors Black folk and Zydeco music, Black female classical composers, devotional gospel traditions, and contemporary performance art.

Several artists will represent Bayou City during the weeklong event, including musicians from the Houston Symphony, interdisciplinary Houston-born artist Autumn Knight, Nigerian-American artist and Houston native Dozie Kanu, and Houston-based sound selectors HYPERFEMME and Big Ace.

“We’re thrilled to work with Solange and Saint Heron to present her vision right here in her hometown,” said Performing Arts Houston president and CEO Meg Booth in a statement. “Collaborating with Solange, Saint Heron, and Project Row Houses to shine a light on the Eldorado’s legacy of inspiring Black creativity and community with so many great artists is an enormous honor.”

In addition, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, will host two free screenings of Saint Heron’s film Monuments are Here. The film centers on Gene “Shady the Great” Thomas, a vocalist for Parliament Funkadelic.

“Project Row Houses appreciates that Solange makes sure our community is always part of her story,” Wilson said. “Solange has given us another great gift with this event — the opportunity to work with Performing Arts Houston. We look forward to exceptional artists from around the world empowering people and enriching our community through engagement, art, and direct action.”

Fans were first introduced to Saint Heron in 2013, when Solange Knowles released a compilation album of the same name through her record label. What began as a digital hub for amplifying Black artistry in music and culture has since evolved into an institution encompassing a studio, creative agency, library, and art gallery.

“We could not be more excited about Solange Knowles' return to Third Ward and the Eldorado Ballroom at Project Row Houses,” said Danielle Burns Wilson, Project Row House’s executive director. “She is so much a part of this building's history — her creative energy has reverberated in the ballroom's air since A Seat at the Table. Now, she'll be back to deepen that connection and supercharge the energy in this historic venue.”

Courtesy of Performing Arts Houston

Solange Knowles is coming home for six performances in June.

Knowles has remained connected to her roots through generous donations to Project Row Houses and nine simultaneous screenings across the Third Ward of her 2019 short film, When I Get Home.

Early access is now open for Performing Arts Houston members. General admission opens at 10 am on April 22 at performingartshouston.org/eldorado.

On Dissonance (An Evening of Classical, Symphonic, and Opera Works); Tuesday, June 10 at 7:30 pm; Jones Hall
Type of Guest; Wednesday, June 11 at 7:30 pm; Eldorado Ballroom
Monuments Are Here; Thursday, June 12 at 5 pm & 7:30 pm; The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
Paper in My Shoe; Saturday, June 14 at 7:30 pm; Eldorado Ballroom
Glory to Glory (A Revival for Spiritual and Devotional Work); Sunday, June 15 at 6:30 pm; Jones Hall
Go Slow; Friday, June 20; Location TBD

performing-arts celebrities eldorado ballroom solange knowles

Movie Review

New comedy I Want Your Sex saddles an all-star cast with a dull story

Photo courtesy of Magnolia Pictures

Cooper Hoffman and Olivia Wilde in I Want Your Sex.

Writer/director Gregg Araki has been making provocative movies for nearly 40 years, releasing his debut — Three Bewildered People in the Night — in 1987. Most of them have had plotlines that revolved around sex in one way or another, and for his latest — his first film in 12 years — he’s putting it right there in the title, I Want Your Sex.

Elliot (Cooper Hoffman) is an aimless twenty-something who can’t even afford the rent for his apartment with best friend, Apple (Chase Sui Wonders). Thankfully, he finds a job at the gallery of artist Erika Tracy (Olivia Wilde), who is open with her sexuality both in her artwork and in her day-to-day life. That soon includes Elliot, whom she convinces to enter into a dominant-submissive relationship with her, with sessions taking place both at work and her home.

Elliot, who’s in a going-nowhere coupling with Minerva (Charli XCX), is more than willing to participate, both because it lets him feel something he doesn’t get normally and because Erika offers a perspective on sex that’s much different from people of his generation. But as he gets in deeper with her, he starts to lose a sense of himself, going down a path in which he finds himself talking to police detectives Zem (Johnny Knoxville) and Zola (Margaret Cho).

Araki does his level best to make I Want Your Sex into a broad comedy, and early on it seems as if he might succeed. The deadpan way that sexual objects appear in the film (a penis-shaped rug in Elliot and Apple’s apartment, a vagina artwork with chewed gum as the medium) make for amusing sight gags. He also makes Elliot the bewildered other in multiple twosomes, with Minerva being the funniest, as she’s way more interested in studying than his ham-fisted attempts at sex.

It’s clear that Araki wants the film to be a commentary on the generational differences about sex, but he fumbles his own idea. It starts with an on-the-nose conversation between Erika and Elliot, and continues with the various dalliances, which seem to be more about making Elliot look and feel ridiculous than giving true insight. Their encounters certainly open his mind about what sex can be, but their one-note nature makes them repetitive and frankly boring, odd considering the acts in which the two engage.

The uninspired storytelling makes the 90-minute film drag way more than it should. Araki includes a few other characters to try to vary the tone of the film, including gallery workers Zap (Mason Gooding) and Vikktor (Daveed Diggs), but their early promise yields little results. The framing device of Elliot’s interview with the detectives never works, especially because Araki completely neuters the personalities of Cho and Knoxville for seemingly no good reason.

The cast as a whole goes to waste. Hoffman is showing the promise of his late father (Philip Seymour Hoffman), and even though he’s appealing here, the material pulls him down. Wilde just made her own provocative movie about sex (The Invite), and this one pales in comparison despite her heightened performance. Wonders, Charli XCX, and Gooding are all young stars who deserve to be showcased much better than they are in this film.

A film called I Want Your Sex is announcing itself as daring and alluring, but this film contains almost none of those qualities. Instead, it’s a slog that only occasionally has something interesting to show or say, mostly relying on the power of its actors to hold viewers’ attention — and failing at even that.

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I Want Your Sex is now playing in select theaters.

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Movie Review

New comedy I Want Your Sex saddles an all-star cast with a dull story