May 12-December 29, 2013

Shakespeare Pub presents Spare Time Murray & The Honeymakers Blues Jam each Sunday evening at 9pm.

This straight blues jam is hosted by blues legend Spare Time Murray, and the tagline for the popular evening is “Sundays ain’t just for church anymore.”  Fans gather together as a weekly ritual to catch the show.

April 6-July 27, 2013

Inspired by their holiday hit show “A Charlie Brown Christmas: Unscripted,” ComedySportz-Houston is launching a new late-night Saturday series aimed at reinventing the classics with improv. The first show in this adults-only series, Star Warz: Unscripted, will open on Saturday, April 6th, 2013 at 10:30pm.

ComedySportz actors will mix up the 1977 sci-fi classic “Star Wars: A New Hope” using audience suggestions to reinvent the characters and situations, and encouraging the audience to cheer, jeer, and participate throughout the show.

What if 3-CPO wasn’t a protocol droid? What if Luke uses bad poetry instead of The Force? It’s all up to the audience to decide in a hilariously raunchy parody that will never be the same show twice.

As Houston’s longest-running improv comedy show, ComedySportz is well-known for family-friendly improv comedy. The Unscripted series, like their popular Ampersand! show on Friday nights, will be a departure, with adult-oriented language and themes. Because of this, Unscripted shows are limited to adults ages 17+.

“Star Warz: Unscripted” opens on Saturday, April 6th, 2013, with performances every Saturday at 10:30pm through July 27th.

Tickets are $12 per person, or $8 for groups of 10 or more, and seating is General Admission. Reservations are recommended. Call (713) 868-1444 or purchase tickets online at comedysportzhouston.com.  

ComedySportz holds ComedySportz matches every Friday and Saturday at 8pm, and performances of the adults-only improv show Ampersand! Fridays at 10:30pm. All performances are at the ComedySportz Arena, 901 Town & Country Blvd. (at I-10 West and the Beltway).

May 3 – June 23, 2013

Houston Center for Photography presents the exhibition Collaborations X: Double Exposure: Concept | Construct. An exhibition by Houston-area high school students. Opening Reception: May 3, 2013 at 5:30pm. On view: May 3 – June 23, 2013. Artists Talk: May 18, 2013 at 11:00am.

Each year the dynamics of the program vary as the students get to know each others’ point of view in life and art. For Double Exposure: Concept | Construct, students analyzed the symbolism of their own photographic work, embarking on the deconstruction of their individual work’s meaning and constructing a collective concept for the exhibition, a new scenery, a new tableau.

The result is a collection of photographic images created through collage, digital and darkroom manipulation, stitching and performance, which invites the viewers to form their own interpretation based on their personal concepts and beliefs.

About Collaborations:

HCP’s Collaborations is an educational program that celebrates photography and encourages collaboration and teamwork amongst Houston-area high school students as they create an exhibition and personal bodies of work from beginning to end.

In its 10th year, the program welcomed 19 students from thirteen Houston-area high schools. Through regular evening meetings these teenagers met with HCP staff and visiting photography specialists to discuss exhibition planning, to critique photographic work, and to participate in lectures and discussions with artists and photographers from the Houston community.

- Juliana Forero, Ph.D., HCP Director of Education

Collaborations X participants are:

Yolanda Asumu (Seven Lakes High School)
Valerie Barocio (Cypress Ranch High School)
Ana Barrios (KIPP Houston High School)
Claire Dorfman (Saint John’s School)
Karina Filipovich (Cy-Fair High School)
Nate Freeman (The Kinkaid School)
Grace Gallagher (George Ranch High School)
Elissa Hakemack (Saint John’s School)
Katherine Laake (Houston Learning Academy)
Erick Martinez (KIPP Houston High School)
Kate Moger (Saint Agnes Academy)
Joshua Mokry (Cypress Ranch High School)
Clara Moore (Saint Agnes Academy)
Jade Partain (Cypress Ranch High School)
Silvia Pera (Carnegie Vanguard High School)
Nataly Perez (KIPP Sunnyside High School)
Andrea Rivera (KIPP Houston High School)
Michael Swift (The Briarwood School)
Myari Ware (Homeschooled)

Pictured Above:

Jade Partain (Cypress Ranch High School)
DETAIL Sleeping Beauty from the series Mythology
Archival Inkjet Collage
Courtesy of the artist

May 22 and 23

Dance Source Houston presents the Dance Source Houston Barn Raising Wednesday and Thursday, May 22 and 23.

To celebrate our recent transition to the Barnevelder Movement/Arts Complex, aka The Barn, we’re hosting a “Barn Raiser” and we hope you’ll join us!

Two different evenings will feature our members and include perfornances by Teresa Chapman, Patricia Davis, Earthen Vessels, Frame Dance 

Productions, Houston Ballet, HSPVA, Rednerrus Feil, Uptown Dance Company, Vault, Ad Deum Dance Company, Karen Stokes Dance, Reck Dance Projects, a duet from Regifting Lions, Leslie Scates, NobleMotion and Urban Souls Dance Company!

To make the evening even more exciting, a generous donor has agreed to match dollar for dollar all the funds raised from this event! So if you can’t make it, please consider making a donation instead.

All the details are below. Share with your friends and get your tickets soon. You won’t get to see all these companies on one stage again any time soon!

May 22 & 23, 2013 at 7:30pm
Barnevelder Theatre, 2201 Preston St.
Tickets: $35 general admission; $50 reserved seating.
Reception to follow the performance.
Available at www.dancesourcehouston.org

May 22 Program will include:
Teresa Chapman, Patricia Davis, Earthen Vessels, Frame Dance Productions, Houston Ballet, the High School for Performing and Visual Arts, Rednerrus Feil, Uptown Dance Company, and Vault

May 23rd Program will include:
Ad Deum Dance Company, Frame Dance Productions, Karen Stokes Dance, Reck Dance Projects, a duet from Regifting Lions, Leslie Scates, NobleMotion Dance, and Urban Souls Dance Company.

This Saturday, May 18 at 4pm

Houston’s City Dance Company, a non-profit dance studio and performing arts organization, catering to dancers from age 3 to 63 presents the Houston City Dance May Mixed Bag, Saturday, May 18.

Featuring 5.Seven and City Dance Ensemble, the event showcases works in progress by Sherese Campbell and Jaimee Vilela as well as performances by various jazz, tap,hip-hop, flamenco, and ballet classes. 

City Dance Studio, 1307 West Clay.

Tickets: $8 adults/$5 children. Tickets can be purchased at the door or by calling City Dance 713.529.6100.

For more information visit www.houstoncitydance.com.

May 10 – May 25, 2013

The Country Playhouse will present Six Degrees of Separation by John Guare, on our Cerwinske Stage for three weekends only, May 10 – 25. Performances are on Fridays and Saturdays at 8:00 p.m., with a Sunday matinee on May 19 at 2:00 p.m., plus a week¬night show on Thursday, May 23, at 7:30 p.m.

Paul, a young African-American down from Harvard is stabbed in a mugging in Central Park and is taken in by Ouisa and Flan Kittredge, since he is a friend of their children at Harvard. They become entranced by Paul’s remarkable poise and gifted conversation, and are impressed to find he is the son of Sidney Poitier, until they discover that none of the preceding is true, and that Paul has taken in several of their friends as well.

A cast of 17 brings to exciting life this comedic drama, where events unfold at breakneck speed as Paul’s impostures lead to tragedy, and a planned rapprochement with the Kittredge’s misfires.

The cast includes Renata Smith as Ouisa Kittredge, Brian Heaton as Flan Kittredge, Carl Masterson as their wealthy friend Geoffrey, and Christopher St. Mary as the young impostor. They are joined by Yvonne Owen Nelson and Sam Stengler as the Larkins, Lee Honeycutt as Dr. Fine, Roy Hamlin as the detective, and Tom Foti as the doorman. Jenny Reuss plays Tess and Kaylin Zeren portrays Elizabeth, and six male actors play their college-age peers.

The plot of the play was inspired by the real-life story of David Hampton, a con man who managed to convince a number of people in the 1980s that he was the son of actor Sidney Poitier. Playwright John Guare wrote the award-winning play, which opened at Lincoln Center on May 16, 1990 and later transferred to B’way’s Vivian Beaumont Theatre, opening on Nov. 8, 1990, where it ran for 485 performances. Stockard Channing as Ouisa received luminous reviews, and she starred in the 1993 film of the play, with Will Smith as Paul. The play won the New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award and the Obie Award for Best Play, and director Jerry Zaks won the Tony Award as Best Director.

Country Playhouse is located at 12802 Queensbury, Houston 77024 (across from CityCentre), just two blocks east of the Sam Houston Tollway.

For the latest information, follow us on Facebook and Twitter. 

April 19 – August 18, 2013

The Menil Collection presents the exhibition Forrest Bess: Seeing Things Invisible. On view April 19 – August 18, 2013.

Self-described “visionary” artist Forrest Bess (1911–77) is a unique figure in the history of American art. For most of his career, Bess lived an isolated existence in a fishing camp outside of Bay City, Texas, eking out a meager living by selling bait and fishing. By night and during the off-season, however, he read, wrote, and painted prolifically, creating an extraordinary body of mostly small-scale canvases rich with enigmatic symbolism.

Despite his isolation, Bess was known to a number of other artists, and in 1949 he met the prominent artist and dealer Betty Parsons. Between 1949 and 1967, Parsons organized six solo exhibitions of his work at her gallery in New York, the undisputed center of the art world at the time.

Bess taught himself to paint by copying the still-lives and landscapes of artists he admired, such as Vincent van Gogh and Albert Pinkham Ryder. Beginning in early childhood, Bess experienced intense hallucinations that both frightened and intrigued him; in 1946, he began to incorporate images from these visions into his paintings. After discovering Carl Jung’s theory of the collective unconscious, Bess began to understand painting not as an end in itself, but rather as a means to an end. By meticulously recording and studying the dream symbols captured in his artwork, Bess hoped to uncover their universal meaning.

To aid in his search, Bess looked to a variety of fields—medicine, psychology, anthropology, philosophy—combing their literature for clues. He eventually formulated a theory, which he referred to as his “thesis,” that the unification of male and female within one’s body could produce immortality. He so sincerely believed in his idea that he not only sent written copies of the thesis (now lost) to prominent researchers, but used his own body as a testing ground, performing several operations on his own genitals in an effort to produce a hermaphroditic state.

Forrest Bess: Seeing Things Invisible will present a selection of approximately forty paintings, along with rare works on paper and selected letters by this important but under-recognized artist. The exhibition will also include The Man That Got Away by contemporary American sculptor Robert Gober, originally created for the 2012 Whitney Biennial. In this room-size installation, Gober compiles a selection of Bess’s paintings and writings, and photographs of the artist as a way to fulfill Bess’s long-held desire to present his artwork alongside his thesis.

Organized by Assistant Curator Clare Elliott and accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue, Forrest Bess: Seeing Things Invisible is the first museum exhibition to focus on Bess’s work in over twenty years.

This exhibition is generously supported by the City of Houston.

Pictured above: Forrest Bess, Untitled, 1947. Oil on canvas. The Menil Collection, Houston, gift of the artist. Photo: Paul Hester.

DiverseWorks is pleased to present Miriam, a dance-theater performance by renowned choreographer Nora Chipaumire and produced by MAPP International Productions. Performances are at 8 pm on Friday, April 26 and Saturday, April 27 at the Barnevelder Movement/Arts Complex, 2201 Preston, Houston, Texas.

With Miriam, the renowned choregrapher and dancer Nora Chipaumire creates her first character-driven work — a deeply personal dance-theater performance that reverberates with tensions: between public expectations and private desires, between objectification and power, and between darkness and light. Miriam invites theaudience into an immersive experience of being an outsider, requiring the engagement of all five senses.

The inspiration for Miriam springs from the cultural and political milieu of Chipaumire’s southern African girlhood, her self-exile to the United States, and her self-discovery as anartist. Additional literary and legendary influences — the writings of Joseph Conrad and novelist Chenjerai Hove; the life of South African singer and activist Miriam Makeba; and the Christian iconography of Mary — come into the work as layers of text, sound, and image that enrich the mysterious and haunting world of Chipaumire’s creation.

In the performance, the persona embodied by Chipaumire emerges from a pile of rocks onstage to convey a woman’s struggles with the burden of objectification and the weight of resistance in a world defined largely by others. Her efforts are abetted by an otherworldly character, both angel and devil, performed by Okwui Okpokwasili. In their interplay, Miriam renders in vivid images the intensity ofwomen who fight to create themselves despite the dual legacies of strict cultural traditions and imperialist racial views that define female beauty and power.

Credits:
Written and choreographed by Nora Chipaumire
Directed by Eric Ting
Soundscore composed by Omar Sosa
Performed by Nora Chipaumire and Okwui Okpokwasili
Produced by MAPP International Productions
60 minutes / no intermission

Miriam comes to Houston after its world premiere at the TBA Festival/Portland Institute of Contemporary Art in September, 2012 and presentations at the Brooklyn Academy of Music; Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center (EMPAC), Troy, NY; and the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, among others.

About Nora Chipaumire
Born in Mutare, Zimbabwe and based in New York City, Chipaumire has been challenging stereotypes of Africa and the black performing body, art, and aesthetic for the past decade. She has studied dance in many parts of the world including Africa (Senegal, Burkina Faso, Kenya, and South Africa), Cuba, Jamaica, and the United States. A graduate of the University of Zimbabwe’s School of Law, Chipaumire holds a M.A. in Dance and M.F.A. in Choreography and Performance from Mills College, Oakland, CA.

Chipaumire is a 2012 Alpert Award in the Arts recipient and 2011 United States Artist Ford Fellow. She is also a two-time New York Dance and Performance (aka “Bessie”) Awardee: in 2008 for her dance-theater work, Chimurenga, and in 2007 for her body of work with Urban Bush Women, where she was a featured performer for six years (2003-2008) and Associate Artistic Director (2007-2008). She is the recipient of the 2009 AFROPOP Real Life Award for her choreography in the film Nora. She has also been awarded the 2007 Mariam McGlone Emerging Choreographer Award from Wesleyan University Center for the Arts, and a MANCC Choreographic Fellowship in 2007-2008.

Recent works include The Last Heifer (2012), commissioned by Danspace Project for Platform 2012,Parellels; Visible (2011), commissioned by Harlem Stage and created in collaboration with Jawole Willa Jo Zollar; Kimya (2011), a work for Jokajok!, a female ensemble based in Kenya; I Ka Nye (You Look Good) (2010), created and performed with Fred Bendongue; and lions will roar, swans will fly, angels will wrestle heaven, rains will break: gukurahundi (2009), created and performed with Thomas Mapfumo.

She is featured in several films, including Dark Swan (dir. Laurie Coyle, 2011); the award-winning Nora (dir. Alla Kovgan & David Hinton, 2008); and the documentary Movement (R)evolution Africa (a story of an art form in four acts) (dir. Joan Frosch & Alla Kovgan, 2006).

Chipaumire has been an adjunct faculty member at Arizona State University-Tempe, Bennington College, University of Minnesota-Minneapolis, and Barnard College.

Pictured: l to r: Okwui Okpokwasili and Nora Chipaumire. Photo: Antoine Tempe.

April 26 – April 27, 2013

Houston Ballet presents Houston Ballet’s Ben Stevenson Academy Spring Showcase.

“Don’t let the student label fool you. Most of these ‘pre-professionals’ have been perfecting their art for more than a decade.”
– Houston Chronicle

If the quality of students is any indication, the future of Houston Ballet looks very bright indeed.

In the Spring Showcase, the gifted young artists of Houston Ballet’s professional training program perform works that spotlight their multitude talents. They will dance a variety of ballets, some created on professional companies, others choreographed especially for the program and for the young dancers.

Come, see if you can spot the stars of tomorrow.

Age Recommendation: at least 5 years of age.

Pictured: Ballet: A Time to Dance. Dancers: Jacquelyn Long. Photo by: Amitava Sarkar.

April 23 – May 2, 2013

Lone Star College-CyFair, Bosque Gallery presents the Lone Star College-CyFair Spring 2013 Student Art Exhibition. 

The Spring 2013 Student Art Exhibition, featuring some of the best work of Lone Star College-CyFair’s talented students, will be on display April 23 – May 2.

This exhibition features the work LSC-CyFair visual art students have completed in their classes in a variety of media from photography, painting and drawing to design, ceramics and art metals.

Come to enjoy the exhibition and stay to meet the student artists in person at the opening reception and awards ceremony set from 4:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. Thursday, April 25.

The Bosque Gallery is located in the Center for the Arts building on the Barker Cypress campus at 9191 Barker Cypress. Gallery hours are 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Tuesday and Thursday and 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. Wednesday.

For gallery information, go to LoneStar.edu/bosquegallery or call 281.290.5273.

PICTURED BELOW:

Best of Show for Fall 2012
Artist: Minh Nguyen
Title: Poseidon
Medium: Charcoal

Artist: Aziz Alshayeb
Title: Allegory of Life
Medium: Oil on Canvas

Artist: Heather Aronson
Title: Vase
Medium: Stoneware

PICTURED ABOVE:

Artist: Geisa Branas 
Title: Self Portrait 
Medium: Acrylic