back on stage

TITAS boldly dances on the edge with risqué new series for Dallas

A.I.M: An Untitled Love will be part of the new season.

Photo by Carrie Schneider

Determined and grateful. Those are the words that premier Dallas dance presenter TITAS has chosen as its guiding force through the next season, which will welcome seven companies — two international and three Texas debuts — back to the stage, live, at AT&T Performing Arts Center.

"As we leave the fog of lock-down and we return to live performances, the 2021:22 season won’t disappoint," the company says in a release. "Creative, soulful and breathtaking imagery make this a very special season of dance companies. We proudly return to the ‘LIVE’ experience with a season of seven extraordinary companies from Canada and the United States. It is a season rich in creativity and soul-stirring performances."

New this season will be an edgy new "series within a series" called, appropriately, TITAS/UNFILTERED, tagline: “If you’re easily offended, don’t come.”

"We recognized that not all art is for everyone, but our audience needs to have the option to see great art that might be somewhat controversial," they say in the release. "Our UNFILTERED series is dedicated to 'risk,' and we are thrilled to add these more progressive works to our profile."

Here's a closer look at the new season, with descriptions provided by the organization:

MOMIX with Alice
September 17-18 at Winspear Opera House
MOMIX, celebrating their 40th anniversary, brings their fantastical Alice to Dallas in its U.S. premiere performance that was supposed to have happened in fall 2020. Famed MOMIX director Moses Pendleton’s latest work takes the audience on a fun adventure with Lewis Carroll’s most beloved character, Alice, as she meets the Mad Hatter, Queen of Hearts, the Caterpillar, and more.

Doug Varone and Dancers with Somewhere
October 22-23 at Moody Performance Hall
Doug Varone took the famed Bernstein West Side Story music and created Somewhere, "a surprisingly fresh approach to music we all know and carry in our hearts." It's a work of "pure movement that creates a stunning reinterpretation of this iconic music."

Rubberband with Ever So Slightly (Texas debut)
November 12-13 at Moody Performance Hall
The Canada-based troupe's founder Victor Quijada brings 10 irrepressible dancers and a DJ to Dallas for their Texas debut. "Athletic, exciting and inventive, the evening-length work Ever So Slightly explores behavioral mechanisms and the reflexes we develop every day dealing with the world around us."

Ballet Hispanico 50th Anniversary Tour
January 14, 2022 at Winspear Opera House
With its stunning dancers, Latinx choreographers, and classical and contemporary techniques, Ballet Hispanico — celebrating its 50th anniversary — creates "a new style of concert dance where theatricality and passion are at the core." The choreographers represent rich Latinx cultures and nationalities including Venezuela, Cuba, Trinidad, Puerto Rico, Mexico, Spain, Brazil, Argentina, and Columbia.

A.I.M by Kyle Abraham
March 4-5, 2022 at Moody Performance Hall
Part of TITAS' new Unfiltered series, Kyle Abraham’s bold new work An Untitled Love features music by Grammy Award-winning R&B legend D’Angelo and celebrates culture, family, and community. “As part of my extended exploration of personal identity through movement, it feels important for me to dive into a process that explores and celebrates that unity and that love, in all its facets," Abraham says.

Compagnie Marie Chouinard with Jerome Bosch: Le Jardin des Delices (Garden of Earthly Delights) (Texas debut)
April 8-9, 2022 at Moody Performance Hall
Garden of Earthly Delights is described as "so stunning, it’s shocking. ... Watching Chouinard’s Garden of Earthly Delights is to step into Bosch’s extraordinary tryptic and viscerally experience this painting as never before." Part of the Unfiltered series, the expertly choreographed work contains partial nudity. The Canadian company is making its Texas debut.

BalletX
June 3-4, 2022 at Moody Performance Hall
The season will close with another company making its Dallas debut, BalletX. Co-founded in 2005 by artistic and executive director Christine Cox and choreographer Matthew Neenan, the diverse company has produced more than 100 ballets by 60 choreographers from across the globe. They've been called the “epicenter of creation” and the “IT company” to watch.

Command Performance (special event)
April 23, 2022 at Winspear Opera House
Artists from leading companies will light up the stage in the special gala event that's described as "the pyrotechnics of dance — the most exciting, innovative, and beautiful works being performed today." Command Performance also features TITAS-commissioned works by leading choreographers created specifically for this performance.

Tickets for TITAS/DANCE UBOUND regular season performances begin at $12. Performance tickets to Command Performance (performance only) also begin at $12.

Season subscriptions are on sale now; subscribers receive discounted pricing depending on the number of shows they purchase. (New this year: TITAS subscribers subscribe to the entire season, but they do have the option to exclude any TITAS/UNFILTERED productions, the organization says.)

Individual tickets will be available after initial subscription sales close at the end of the summer. Tickets can be purchased online at www.attpac.org/titas, or by phone at 214-880-0202.

dance

All Eyes on Them

Dallas alt hip-hop group wins prestigious Tiny Desk Contest by NPR

Cure for Paranoia/Facebook

As winners of the Tiny Desk Contest, Cure for Paranoia will record their own Tiny Desk concert and go on tour.

Few live recording studios or musical web series have the cultural sway of NPR's Tiny Desk, and a Dallas band is poised to make an impactful debut: Cure For Paranoia, an alternative hip-hop project by rapper Cameron McCloud and producers Tomahawk Jonez and Jay Analo, has won the high-stakes annual Tiny Desk Contest for 2026.

They'll record their official Tiny Desk show "soon," the announcement by NPR says.

Winning the concert also means Cure for Paranoia is going on tour. The only Texas stop will be at Emo's Austin on June 24.

Tiny Desk is known for platforming both niche and majorly successful artists — NPR posted a new Foo Fighters set on YouTube on May 13 — for stripped-down sets that are literally played behind former All Things Considered director Bob Boilen's old desk. (Fun fact for Texans: Tiny Desk was created because folk artist Laura Gibson was disappointed with the sound at her South by Southwest show in Austin in 2008, and she wanted a redo.)

Most artists who appear on Tiny Desk more than 15 years later are already well-known, at least in their specific circles. But the Tiny Desk Contest, which launched in 2015, helps a growing group of newer, unsigned artists get their foot in the door. Contestants record one video of them performing a single song behind a desk, and a jury of radio staff and musicians chooses their favorite.

In their audition video, Cure for Paranoia gathered 11 musicians around a truly tiny desk and in front of downtown Dallas' iconic gigantic eyeball sculpture. They played the song "No Brainer," a frenetic track that starts with clever boasts and becomes a criticism of racism in the United States.

McCloud, a pre-school teacher, is known independently of Cure for Paranoia for rapping to his social media following about politics and current events. Some of those lyrics made it into "No Brainer." He says he started the group because he found that music was more helpful than medication for coping with bipolar depression and paranoid schizophrenia.

Alex Marrero, host of the Austin-based KUTX show Horizontes, was one of the judges this year. He was impressed with the visuals in Cure for Paranoia's audition.

“When this popped up, I immediately felt something different," he wrote in a blurb for the announcement. "It just jumped out. The visuals were super cool and creative, BUT I could still totally envision them bringing the heat behind the Desk.”

Madison McFerrin, jazz vocalist and daughter of the famous singer Bobby McFerrin, was one of the musical judges.

"Cure For Paranoia’s energy is infectious, fresh and distinctly theirs — exactly what you want in a Contest winner!" she wrote.

McCloud's post on Instagram announcing the group's win has only been up for three hours at the time of this article's publication, and it already has more than 8,000 likes. The YouTube audition has garnered 74,000 views.

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