Aszure Barton

Malpaso Dance Company: Winter 2025 Season

January 28, 2025

This may not have been a typical program for the Malpaso Dance Company, but the troupe seems to lean towards the darker parts of life. As moving as each of the works are, they all painted a gloomy view. The movement style was an amalgam of ballet and the plasticity of good old-fashioned modern dance: lots of extensions, falls, turned-in legs and twisty partnering. [more]

Houston Ballet: Fall 2019

October 29, 2019

The first piece on the program was the most successful of the three: Mark Morris’ “The Letter V”. (There was no mention of any specific meaning of the title.) The classical music composition “Symphony No. 88 in G Major” by Joseph Haydn provided a substantial underpinning for the choreography because Morris had a beautifully uncanny way of making the movement seem to rise up from the music. The Orchestra of St. Luke’s, conducted by David Briskin, provided the fine, live, performance. Morris, in fact, always insists on live music, and that added so much to the experience. [more]

Malpaso Dance Company: 2018 Season

January 29, 2018

The first work on the program was “Indomitable Waltz” (2016) choreographed by Aszure Barton to dark hued music by the Balanescu Quartet and Nils Frahm. Barton achieved a graceful, yet dramatic flow for these dancers dressed in Fritz Masten’s black and grey costumes. Barton knows how to spread her dancers about the stage like a single organism continually splitting apart and coming together again. They danced warily about each other, performed leans and sensual embraces that faded as the dancers melted to the floor. The work ended on a contemplative note as Dunia Acosta moved with careful steps and twisting hips, in a journey across the stage. Although the emotions of “Indomitable Waltz” ranged from dark to sensual to giddily physical, it ended up as a head scratcher, beautifully performed by the Malpaso dancers. The intriguingly moody lighting was by Nicole Pearce. [more]

The Threepenny Opera

March 5, 2006

The best way to imagine what has happened to the beggars, the bourgeoisie, the pimps and whores, and the sordid denizens of the underworld in this operatic rant on the evils of capitalism is to think of a Cirque du Soleil troupe on Valium and under neon (what was lighting designer Jason Lyons thinking?). Worst of all, it is plodding and dull and an eyesore thanks to Isaac Mizrahi's Halloween-on-Fire-Island costuming. [more]