Bling It On

Up your kulture quotient at Phenomenon, a blowout house party at Dallas Contemporary

If you haven’t yet made plans for this coming weekend, there may be a tricked-out hot pink Cadillac in your future. On February 9, the Dallas Contemporary is hosting Phenomenon, a souped-up house party featuring the over-the-top mixed-media works of Chicago artist Dzine and the musical stylings of DJ Derrick Carter.

And, oh yes, an incredible display of lowriders.

“The Dallas Contemporary’s events are always such a surprise in the best possible way,” says Phenomenon co-chair Laura Noble.

“Phenomenon is a convergence of art and culture in the truest sense,” says Laura Noble, co-chair of the evening along with Kristie Ramirez and Jon Schwartz. “The Dallas Contemporary’s events are always such a surprise in the best possible way for people who have never experienced one. For this year’s event, low culture and high culture will merge with contemporary art through music and ambience.”

The contemporary art that Noble is referencing includes Dzine’s canvases bedazzled in jewels, bikes draped in necklaces and coated in silver paint, and sparkling graffiti signs. Through these abstract paintings and ornate customized vehicles he explores the Kustom Kulture genre, which evolved from the hot rod craze of Southern California in the 1970s.

As far as the music is concerned, Carter, a renowned DJ who also hails from Chicago, will mix old-school disco, jazz and soul with any other genre he sees fit for the night.

“This year’s Phenomenon will be a really fun and whimsical, ‘ghetto Baroque’ evening,” Noble says. Tickets are available online for $50 for nonmembers and $45 for members. Doors open at 9 pm.

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The Contemporary is hosting an exhibition of Dzine’s works, called “Victory,” through March 31. The artist also has a recently published coffee table book, Nailed: The History of Nail Culture, featuring actress Tilda Swinton.

Expect an incredible lowrider display at Phenomenon, February 9 at the Dallas Contemporary.

Photo courtesy of Dallas Contemporary

Expect an incredible lowrider display at Phenomenon, February 9 at the Dallas Contemporary.

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Season Announcement

'Come find your people' in Echo Theatre Dallas' 2025 season

Photo by Joan Marcus

A scene from the Off-Broadway production of Catch As Catch Can.

The theme for Echo Theatre's 2025 season is family, with the tagline "Come find your people." Echo, if you need a reminder, is the Dallas-based company that solely produces plays written by women-plus.

"We recognize the limiting nature of the binary use of the word 'woman,'" the company explains on its website. "We use the term 'women-plus' to include an expansive and diverse array of people, including those born female, those who identify as women, and those who are gender non-conforming."

“This season, my thoughts have turned to family in all its forms,” says artistic director Kateri Cale. “Every person experiences generations of family expectations, judgements, competitions, celebrations, and disappointments, over and over again. If we're lucky, we experience the fierce love of family too.”

First up is the regional premiere of Catch as Catch Can by Mia Chung.

Double-cast across gender, generation, and race and set in a blue-collar New England town, the drama follows two families — the Irish-American Phelans and the Italian-American Lavecchias — as the prodigal son returns home for a holiday gathering. Two off-stage characters, who are Korean and Korean-American, impact the families as they face the weight of generational expectations.

“With Catch as Catch Can, I wanted the audience’s experience of what they’re watching to mirror that felt by the characters; the character doubling articulates and enhances the propulsion of the play," says Chung in a release about the play's Off-Broadway debut in 2022. "I believe in performance, I believe in the actor’s capacity to inhabit a character to the extent that an audience may stop seeing that the actor is a man, or is Asian, or is 30 years younger than the role they’re playing. The cognitive dissonance is by design.”

It runs February 3-March 8, 2025, at the Bath House Cultural Center.

Next is OPEN by Crystal Skillman, a queer love story told by an amateur magician, presented during Pride Month.

A woman called the Magician presents myriad tricks for our entertainment, yet her performance seems to be attempting the impossible: to save the life of her partner, Jenny. But is our faith in her illusions enough to rewrite the past? The clock is ticking, the show must go on, and, as impossible as it may seem, this Magician’s act may be our last hope against a world filled with intolerance and hate.

It runs June 6-21, 2025, at the Bath House Cultural Center.

Last is El Rey del Pollo, a world-premiere "nuevo comedy" by Anna Skidis Vargas that the playwright describes as "a Shakespearean telenovela that’s loosely based on King Lear, but it’s a lot shorter and a lot sillier."

Reymundo Lear is about to retire from his fried chicken empire, and he is leaving everything to his three daughters. But things aren’t as easy as they seem. Cordelia gets disinherited, and Gisela and Raquel hike the prices. El Rey del Pollo features a hungry old man, essential oils, a giant chicken suit, and all the family drama you can eat.

It runs September 11-27, 2025, at the Bath House Cultural Center.

The Echo Reads free play readings will continue next year, and are scheduled for the months of March, April, May and September, October, November.

Season tickets are on sale now at echotheatre.org. Single tickets will be available at a later date.

A fun fact about Echo Theatre productions: Up to 10 free tickets are set aside for every performance and given out on a first-come, first-served basis. Patrons must email the box office directly at reservations@echotheatre.org to participate.

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