I've attended several of Ballet Folklorico's performances, and they are well-rehearsed, serious…read moredancers. I honestly don't understand how they keep up their level of energy through their entire performance, because they never stop moving. It's like a combination of tap dance, ballet and folk dance all at once. Their costumes are beautiful, and you can see the joy in their faces when they dance. A great organization!!

These guys bring in some world class guitarists. I highly recommend that you go to a show if you…read morecan catch one. Tickets are cheap, especially if you use the student or senior discount. I went to a performance of Yamandu Coste. A true virtuoso. He did not follow the program and just kind of felt the mood of the room and chose the pieces to play. The crowd was so pleased that Yamandu played 2 encores. Before the show there was an amateur performance by the society. It was not as strong as Yamandu Coste and I did not enjoy it tremendously. But I still think it was valuable in getting everyday people to participate in the love for this amazing instrument. # For the Music Lover

I was a little confused about what the focus of your blog and company were. Some of the content was…read morethought provoking and opinionated, but also a little disorganized and confusing. You left a lot of the sample text on the website too, which just makes it look incomplete.

Allow me to give you a brief overview of the dance company (I'm copying from the program, I don't…read moreknow enough about the history to not mess it up). "Aztlan has embarked on the creation of important and valuable dance that shares stories of the rich and diverse Hispanic experiences in the Americas...Aztlan works to create dance that is thought-provoking, artistic, culturally relevant, and dynamically expressive." El Gran Circo is their current performance, but today is the last show. To see this show, you'll have to hit up the Pecan Street Art Festival for excerpts. I went to the show last night and it was an amazing performance. My friend Amy is one of the performers and until last night I never understood what kind of dance and why she is so passionate about this stuff. As I said, it was an amazing performance. It was set in a Spanish circus, with the ringmaster dictating/writing in his journal. The spoken word was mostly in English, with an occasional Spanish word squeezed in, all the music was in Spanish. The storyline is well laid out in the program, making it much easier to follow. The dancers are incredible, as well as the choreography and the costumes. The women are very fluid in their movements, imitating jaguars, fish/mermaids, and a child's dolls. I was most impressed with the doll sequence, the women had to stand very still in really awkward positions for long periods of time. The women pretty much made up the show, but the men were crucial in lifting, flipping, and physically supporting the women. I can imagine how much practice a muscle ache a performance like this must take. They practice and perform in the Santa Cruz Center for Culture. This is a small, intimate venue. Although it's tiny, it seems to be the perfect place to host this type of performance. The acoustics are great and you can see the stage from all over. A couple complaints, though. I somehow managed to sit under a really, really bright light...but it was off during the production, so it was more of an irritant before and after the show. Secondly, there's a concession stand which is WAY overpriced. I realize that this is a nonprofit organization, but after paying $13 to get into the performance, you'd think a tiny bag of Doritos would be less than $1. They also serve beer, wine, water, and other soft drinks. This is a must visit to support the arts, I'll definately be coming back!

If I had to use only one word to describe the AZTLAN DANCE COMPANY and it's performers , the word…read morewould be MESMORIZING !! You just can't take your eyes off the performers or the performance going on ...and you feel like you've been thrust into another place and time ! Each dance is beautifully paired with just the perfect music which is in Spanish , but oddly enough , needs little interpretation for our English only speaking audiences. We can feel the energy coming from the dancers and what they are trying to convey in the story they tell with their movements. My niece, Cathy, performs with this dance company and she was the reason I attended my first performance ever !! She seems to exude such confidence in her dance and truly shows who she is as a talented performer. But although she was the initial reason for my attending , I've attended several performances since then and I've come to appreciate all of the performers as well because they work as a real team to entertain their audiences . The dancers seem to glide across the stage at times and make the dance moves seem so effortless ! The costumes are so beautiful and colorful !!! And the music just tops the whole performance off !! No matter if the performance venue is big or small...the shows are grand and spectacular !!!! If you want to experience some of Austin's finest entertainment , I advise everyone to attend a performance because you just don't know what you're missing until you've seen these amazing dancers in action !!! You won't be disappointed !!! V.Vitela Pasadena, Tx.

The Original Recipe Band...We have really mixed feelings about our experience with them…read more Unfortunately, more negatives than positives stand out, which is our reasoning for the 2 stars instead of the neutral 3 stars. We were recently married in Hill Country, and felt very strongly about having a live band rather than a DJ at our wedding, mostly because all of the weddings that stood out in our memories had awesome live bands to make the reception memorable. We did a lot of research on bands, which definitely took a lot of time. Getting married in the Austin area leaves a ton of options to sort through! What originally attracted us to the band is that they were large, seemingly flexible in accommodating our wishes, offered a great price, and despite not having many online reviews, they provided us with a list of emails to previous clients who we were able to email us references. While the "booking" process what relatively easy, once we did book, our impression of the band manager, James, started to decline. While he was initially quick to respond to us when we were scouting them, once we booked he took months to get our signed contract back to us. I had to email and encourage him multiple times. I come from a family of lawyers and have always had the mentality that nothing is final or confirmed until it is in writing, so waiting so long to see our agreement in writing made me uncomfortable. James often commented that he was preoccupied with moving forward with other endeavors professionally and home repairs, and that this was the reasoning for his delay, which I found to be unprofessional. Let me throw in some positives: They were accommodating of our song choices for special dances. We arranged to have one of the band members play guitar for our ceremony. His name is also James (a different James than the manager) and he was very prompt at responding, kind, and his ceremony performance was excellent. The jazz/piano music for the cocktail hour were appropriate. When it came to the reception music and orchestrating the order of events, the manager, James, seemed to have no idea what was going on despite having had been emailed a timeline for the evening and order of events. He initially kept coming up to me (the bride) and asking me what was next, etc. Keeping him organized and on schedule was the last thing that I wanted to be doing at my own wedding. We had two wedding coordinators and he didn't even think to go to them first with questions without my prompting. When James was speaking and introducing speeches, etc. he was very mumbly and difficult to understand. After the first dances were over and it was party time, instead of playing music that would get people out on the dance floor it was still a lot of jazz and swing music...not exactly what's going to get 20 and 30 something's out on the dance floor. After asking our coordinators to have them step it up a bit with the music, things did get better. Another thing of note was that the transition between songs felt like it took forever. A song would wrap up and guests would just be standing and waiting for the next song. It made it difficult to keep the momentum going. A few guests would even shout out, "Come on! Let's keep it going!" Overall, it was not the experience we were hoping to have with our band. I feel like the band really sets the vibe for the night and it wasn't exactly the upbeat party atmosphere we had in mind. We had amazing experiences with all of our other vendors, but we would not work with ORB again.

Original Recipe Band performed at my daughter's wedding in January 2011 and did an outstanding job…read more Our guests commented repeatedly about how great the band was and how much fun they had. They played a variety of music and kept everything lively. Our guests were out on the dance floor dancing and truly enjoying the event. In addition to the actual performance, my experience with James Fenno in engaging the band, selecting the music, and working through the details of the schedule of events for the reception was exceptional. He is professional in his dealings and responsive to communications. I have to say that having Original Recipe Band perform for the reception really made the event successful. I highly recommend them to anyone planning a wedding.

Great agency to work with! LOTS of entertainment variety. Easy to schedule and coordinate. Very…read morekind and professional people. You can book small and big budget acts!

Love. Hate. Passion. Betrayal. A typical Friday night out at the bars for me, but also the major…read morethemes running through "Blood Wedding" (Bodas de Sangre), a tragic play by the Spanish dramatist Federico García Lorca. Written in 1932, it has now been adapted in 2011 by The Wondrous Strange Players, an acting troupe that will be putting on the show here in Austin, TX at the Community Renaissance Market Theater. I was invited by my friend Trey, after he had read my impressions of other local plays I attended over the summer. He basically cut to the chase and said: "On our opening night, I want to see YOU in the audience". He sent me to their website and I made plans to be there, since that's usually when there's all that "opening night" electricity in the air. The Community Renaissance Market was at first, admittedly, a venue I was completely unfamiliar with. That is until I drove up and realized it was that south side market with a variety of locally owned micro-businesses; it's basically an air-conditioned hub for Austin's thriving "Buy Local" initiatives. Black curtains cordon off the stage and seating area from the rest of the market, and if I thought Zach Scott was an intimate setting, then compared to that space we were almost sitting in the actors' laps. We were instructed not to leave until intermission, as the actors would be making various entrances from each side. It's a reasonable request, because I could remember pondering at other theaters how one would even be able to go to the bathroom during the performance since there were always people lined up waiting for their cue. I was lucky enough to be sitting with Trey's friends, all of whom I could deduce work at the same office together. Actually, they kept referring to having come to support their friend "'Austen", so I thought we were there to see different people. When they asked me who I had come to see, I said I couldn't find his name on the cast list. They probably thought I was lying. A whole half hour went by before I realized that Trey *was* Austen, and I made sure to explain that to everyone during a break, so they didn't think I was some psychotic who pretends to know someone and then randomly name-drops actors to get into shows. The play is divided into three acts and two intermissions, but the total run time is about equal to that of one with just two acts. The story follows a love triangle that ends up with what can only be described as the wedding reception from Hell. When I described the plot to my mother the day before, she abruptly blurted out "Oh--that's García Lorca!" Apparently her Spanish teacher loved the playwright and had drilled all his works into their heads during her upper level Spanish literature courses. She said it would probably be really dramatic and ethereal, and that's exactly how it turned out. My friend Austen Simien played Leonardo, The Bride's old lover who is now married to another, but still madly in love with her. The Bride, played by Cameron Holmes, feigns that she doesn't love him back, but as with all good tragedies--of course she does. In short, if these people had computers, they'd still be Facebook stalking each other even after they'd both changed their relationship statuses. Ms. Holmes pulls off "stressed out" quite well, and she can do a mean cry, too. I also enjoyed the performance by Terrie Cooper as The Mother, whose son gets stood up by The Bride; her scenes at the end were especially well done. There's a lot of symbolism (a lullaby at the beginning metaphorically spells out the upcoming events). and some larger themes such as the role of women in society (The Mother explains to The Groom that if The Bride ever doesn't want to hit the sack, he has a right to press the issue because he's a dude. Ladies, your thoughts?). There's also moments of a capella singing, done especially well by Kat Eason as The Bridesmaid. In the director's thanks on the program, there's a shout out to the venue for "allowing a lot of crazy theatre people to do what they love". And that's what you're paying to see. I'd also recommend it to those especially familiar with the works of García Lorca, as the poetry is quite beautiful even in English. "Blood Wedding" is like the theatrical equivalent of live music in Austin; it's people working on their craft, no matter how big or small the venue, and having fun doing so. Tickets for "Blood Wedding" are $10, and can be purchased ahead of time from their website or at the door. The show runs September 8th-11th and 15th-18th.

We were thrilled to have these talented folks perform at our wedding reception. Guests raved for…read moreweeks afterwards! Jai was a pleasure to work with leading up to the wedding and offered assistance in helping us chose our first dance song and was flexible with the stage area and setup. They arrived to the venue in plenty of time for setup and sound check and promptly finished well before the start of the ceremony. It was a treat to be able to visit during the reception with some of the band members, who are all very personable (just make absolutely sure you provide them a green room, unless you want some of your family and guests hearing about it!). If you want all your guests, young and old, out on the dance floor, APB will make that happen - guaranteed!

Me and my wife recently hired Austin Party Band, and they truly MADE the wedding!…read more They're very easy to work with and on top of that - they will ROCK the house all night long. They played a wide variety of music that kept us on the dance floor all night. We got so many glowing compliments about them from our guests. Thank you again APB!