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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

Glen Powell stumbles in remake of sci-fi classic The Running Man

Photo courtesy of Paramount Pictures

Glen Powell in The Running Man.

For all its cheesy ‘80s greatness, the original version of The Running Man starring Arnold Schwarzenegger was a very loose adaptation of the novel by Stephen King. For the new remake, writer/director Edgar Wright has tried to hue much closer to the story laid out in the book, a decision that has both its positive and negative aspects.

Glen Powell takes over for Schwarzenegger as Ben Richards, a family man/hothead who can’t seem to hold a job in the dystopian America in which he lives. Desperate to take care of his family, he applies to be on one of the many game shows fed to the masses that promise riches in exchange for humiliation or worse. Thanks to his temper, Ben is chosen for the most popular one of all, The Running Man, in which contestants must survive 30 days while hunters, as well as the general population, track them down.

Given a 12-hour head start, Ben earns money for every day he survives, as well as every hunter he eliminates. Since he only has a relatively small amount of money to use as he pleases, Ben must rely on friendly citizens who are willing to put their own lives on the line to help him. That’s a task made even more difficult as the gamemakers, led by Dan Killian (Josh Brolin), use advanced AI to manipulate footage of Ben to make him seem like a guy for which no one should root.

Co-written by Michael Bacall, the film is shockingly uninteresting, working neither as an exciting action film, a fun quippy comedy, or social commentary. The biggest problem is that Wright seems to have no interest in developing any of his characters, starting with Ben. Our introduction to the protagonist is him trying to get his job back, a situation for which there is little context even after we’re beaten over the head with exposition.

The situation in which Ben finds himself should be easy to make sympathetic, but Wright and Bacall speed through scenes that might have emphasized that aspect in favor of ones that make the story less personal. The filmmakers really want to showcase the supposed antagonistic relationship between Ben and Dan (and the system which Dan represents), but all that effort results in little drama.

Ben has a number of close calls, and while those scenes are full of action and violence, almost every one of them feels emotionally inert, as if there was nothing at stake. It doesn’t help that Wright doesn’t set the scene well, making it unclear how far Ben has traveled or who/what he’s up against. There are times when Ben feels surrounded and others when he can walk freely, weird for a society that’s supposed to be under almost complete surveillance.

Powell has been touted as a movie star in the making for several years following his turn in Top Gun: Maverick, but he does little here to make that label stick. With no consistent co-star thanks to the structure of the story, he’s required to carry the film, and he just doesn’t have the juice that a true movie star is supposed to have. Nobody else is served well by the scattershot film, including normally reliable people like Brolin, Colman Domingo, Michael Cera, and Lee Pace.

The Running Man is a big misfire by Wright and a blow to Powell’s star power. On the surface, it has all the hallmarks of an action thriller with a side of social commentary, but nothing it does or says lands in any meaningful way. Schwarzenegger’s one-liners in the original film may have been goofy and over-the-top, but at least they made the movie memorable, which is way more than can be said of the remake.

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The Running Man opens in theaters on November 14.

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