Dancing Roosters, The Rolling Stones and Classic Ballet — Rock, Roll & Tutus Shakes Up Houston’s Performing Arts Scene

T hose lucky enough to see Houston Ballet’s Rock, Roll & Tutus can count themselves as witnesses to something extraordinary. The program brings a solid medley of short works from the repertoire featuring beloved music from Tchaikovsky and — cue the excitement — The Rolling Stones.

Brett Ishida ’s what i was thinking while i was waltzing opens the program. The curtain rises on five couples gliding in a waltz like statuettes on a child’s music box. Yet the unexpected scarlet of the ballerinas’ ballgowns, the moodiness of the lighting and the sawing of the violins in Ezio Bosso’s String Quartet No. 5 feels menacing and phantasmal. It foreshadows what we’ve come to know as Ishida’s signature — a journey beyond the wall of appearances and the real.

The dark narrative of what I was t