Happening Type: Performance

Once a 1920s water reservoir for the City of Houston, the Buffalo Bayou Park Cistern has, since 2016, opened to the public for art installations and performances. This year its “Underground Sounds” series returns, with musicians taking advantage of the reverberation of sound around its cathedral-like columns. Vocalist Sarah Grace Graves performs a Gregorian-chant-inspired piece from June 19–22, Les Cenelles ensemble plays on the theme of water rights and activism from September 11–14, and composer and sound artist Kurt Stallman presents a meditation on nature in the bayou. Through November 16, 2025.

In November 2020, a fire destroyed the Doris Duke Theater, a central performance space for the annual Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, which showcases companies from across the globe. Now it is reborn as a “living lab for the future of dance,” anticipating robotics, immersive performances, and other technology while still maintaining a connection to the surrounding natural beauty. This summer’s reopening features Taiwanese choreographer and roboticist Huang Yi and Korean choreographer Eun-Me Ahn, who uses 3D holographic projections. Opens July 9, 2025.

Robert Rauschenberg frequently brought his textural use of materials to dance collaborations, and in honor of the centennial of his birth on October 22, the Trisha Brown Dance Company and the Merce Cunningham Trust are touring pieces featuring his sets and costumes. The series kicks off at the American Dance Festival in Durham, North Carolina, with performances on June 12 and 13 of Brown’s Set and Reset and Cunningham’s Travelogue. Further dates are planned across the country through April 2026, with new dates to be announced, so keep an eye out for these seminal modern dance pieces arriving near you. Ongoing through April 2026.