Arts & Entertainment
October 20, 2021
Video: Harper Watters, Boundary-Breaking Ballet Star
The gay, Black social media influencer and Houston Ballet soloist is shaking up the world of classical ballet.
Dance
Arts & Entertainment
October 20, 2021
Can Harper Watters Make Ballet Matter Again?
The Houston social media influencer is a gay Black man with a gift for the absurd and a passion for platform heels. He’s also a star dancer in one of the world’s most rigid, gendered, and segregated art forms.
Tacos
September 22, 2021
One of the State’s Best New Taco Trucks Is Owned by a Trio of Folklórico Dancers
The founders of Los Danzantes ATX bring the same vitality to their food and their dancing.
Film & TV
August 6, 2021
How Alvin Ailey Built a World Where Black Dancers Felt Free
A new documentary about the dance visionary from Rogers shows how he nurtured fellow artists—even while pushing them (and himself) relentlessly.
Sponsored
April 16, 2021
What Are Some of Your Favorite Cumbia and Tejano Tracks?
This month, WhiteClaw Hard Seltzer wants to celebrate Selena and her legacy with the ultimate dance playlist.
Arts & Entertainment
December 2, 2020
The Sugar Plum Fairy Is on Zoom: Texas Ballet Companies Take ‘The Nutcracker’ Virtual
The Christmas classic is the ballet world’s biggest annual event (and a major moneymaker), so dancers and administrators have gotten creative.
Arts & Entertainment
July 24, 2020
How One Texas Ballet Company Is Surviving the Pandemic
While dancers at Fort Worth’s Texas Ballet Theater do pliés at home barres improvised from pipes and shower handles, administrators are making do with a $2 million budget shortfall.
Arts & Entertainment
July 23, 2020
How Alvin Ailey’s ‘Revelations’ Has Helped Me Find My Way Back to Texas
While quarantined and away from home, I keep coming back to the late Texan choreographer’s works—which are newly available to watch online.
Arts & Entertainment
November 19, 2019
How Concheros Use Dance to Connect With Their Indigenous Roots
Dozens of Azteca dancers, clad in regalia, came together during Austin’s largest Día de los Muertos celebration.
Arts & Entertainment
November 18, 2019
Austin’s FuturX Festival Is Carving Out a Space Where Latinx Performing Arts Thrive
The second annual celebration of theater, comedy, and dance displayed the many dimensions of Latinidad.
Arts & Entertainment
August 29, 2019
On Texas Time: Harper Watters, Houston Ballet Soloist and Internet Sensation
The ballet standout dishes on viral stardom, modeling for Ralph Lauren, and becoming a queer icon.
The Culture
August 31, 1997
Barbara Barrie
I enrolled at the University of Texas in 1950 during a post-war period that produced many talented individuals. Harvey Schmidt, Tom Jones, Liz Smith, Robert Benton, Pat Hingle, Word Baker, Kathryn Grant (later Mrs. Bing Crosby), and I all graduated with degrees in drama. We did lots of dance concerts
Film & TV
March 1, 1996
Cyd Charisse
I had my first dancing lesson in Amarillo with Constance Ferguson. Constance had been out in California studying ballet with Theodore Kosloff, one of Pavlova’s partners, but she came back to Amarillo and wanted to open a dancing school. Up on the very top floor of a great old hotel
Music
March 1, 1995
Come Dancing
When country hunk Billy Ray Cyrus his megahit “Achy Breaky Heart” in 1992, country dancing—or at least a modern version of it—returned to vogue. Cyrus’ novelty song was released with a video that showed a line dance specifically created for the song, and—in a flashback to the Urban Cowboy craze of