Links We Like Friday

Links We Like Friday

Links We Like

CLASSES:

Little Framers, MultiGen Framers, Adult Workshops Children’s Classes offer a cohesive education of modern dance technique, rehearsal, and performance. Little Framers will learn how to work technically in a studio, cooperate, and collaborate in a rehearsal like professional dancers do.

In Adult classes (Multi Gen, Workshops) students discover dance as a means of self-expression, exploration, and community connection through creative experiences. Based in modern dance technique and improvisation, these classes welcome beginners of all ages and advanced students who are looking to rejuvenate their creative practices.

CLICK HERE FOR MORE INFORMATION

Why you should go see the Barn Storm Dance Fest

Links We Like Performances/Screenings

Houston!  I am really pumped– lemme tell you why.

barn storm2

I just watched the second weekend of Barn Storm Dance Fest, and last weekend I was able to see Program 1.  Barn Storm Dance Fest is a three-weekend dance festival produced by Dance Source Houston– Houston’s dance service organization.  Dance Source Houston has exploded in the last couple of years.  They have taken over The Barn (formerly Barnevelder Performing Arts Complex), and worked to raise the funding to subsidize rentals for artists and arts organizations; They have started an Artist in Residency Program (AIR) for three artists each year to use the space to develop new work; They now offer Micro Grants for production costs (Frame Dance is eternally thankful!); and they produce the Barn Storm Dance Festival to showcase dance from Houston and other Texas cities.

What strikes me (as someone who is not participating as an artist in this festival) is the importance for dancers and choreographers to convene.   It has been special to watch pieces from veteran and emerging choreographers on the same show.  This is very valuable for the health of dance in our city.  The shows have been running flawlessly, and lit beautifully.  I imagine you’ll have your favorites, some that don’t touch you as poignantly, and others that will push you a little as a viewer.  That’s the beauty of the festival format– you get to see so much.  I walk away from the first two programs proud of our city and all of the dance in it!  Thank you, Dance Source Houston, for bringing these artists together and producing such an extensive festival, and thank you to the artists for making dance.  You have two more chances to see it this weekend and a full weekend for Program 3.  Tickets and info here.

Frame Dance Audition

Links We Like
photo by Lynn Lane
photo by Lynn Lane

 

Frame Dance Audition, men and women

hiring for company and apprentice positions

July 12 2-4pm, 2808 Caroline St.

Frame Dance calls for smart, musical dancers with an open mind, a sense of adventure and professionalism, a willing spirit and an embracing strength from both men and women to partner and support their fellow Framers.  Dancers must have a desire to work in non-traditional spaces, experiment with new ideas, and a willingness to  be involved in the creative process and in the community.

 

Please bring a CV, and RSVP to Lydia.Hance@framedance.org.

photo by Lynn Lane Frame Dance ranges from athletic, to suspended, to subtle.
photo by Lynn Lane
Frame Dance ranges from athletic, to suspended, to subtle.
photo by Lynn Lane Frame Dance works with adults and children
photo by Lynn Lane
Frame Dance works with adults and children

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

METRODances Frame Dance performs in alternative spaces
METRODances
Frame Dance performs in alternative spaces

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

photo by David DeHoyos Frame Dance works with emerging composers and live music
photo by David DeHoyos
Frame Dance works with emerging composers and live music

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Frame Dance explores audience connection and integration
Frame Dance explores audience connection and integration

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Announcing Framed in Five

Composers Links We Like Performances/Screenings

Frame Dance - Truck Dances - Dance Source Houston 10th Anniversary - Photographer Lynn Lane-64Frame Dance casts a vision for the next five years with steel string guitars, percussion toys, and sophisticated dancing

 

Houston, TX—February 5, 2015. Framed in Five is a celebration of Frame Dance Productions and the vibrant “Framer” community they have grown over their first five years. The blanton_musiciansprogram will feature new dance and live music ranging from surprising and intricate percussion, to a curious and whimsical guitar duo, to an emotive string quartet that “depicts the wind and rainfall during a rain shower.”

Framed in Five runs May 1 & 2, 2015 in the Margaret Alkek Williams Dance Lab at The Houston Ballet Center for Dance. This vibrant program will feature winners from the Frame Dance Music Competition: composers Joel Love (Austin), Gabriel José Bolaños (California), and Robert Honstein (Boston). Baylor Percussion Ensemble, a steel string guitar duo, and string quartet will perform with Frame Dance in three new pieces.

 

photography by Jonathon Hance

Frame Dance’s newest programs: Little Framers Children’s Ensemble and the Multi-Generation Ensemble will join the cast for a special premiere, Lightscape. Lydia Hance has choreographed a dance that integrates the professional dance company, the children’s ensemble, and adults of different ages from around Houston revealing the depth of age, the vitality of youth, and the resonance of vulnerability.

Artistic Director Lydia Hance will reveal the vision for Frame Dance in the next five years with an exciting new video.

 

Margaret Alkek Williams Dance Lab

Houston Ballet Center for Dance

601 Preston St.

Houston TX 77002

May 1 at 7:30pm, May 2 at 2pm and 7:30pm

On street, lot, and garage parking

 

Cost: $11-22, family rates and group ticketing available

Framedance.org/boxoffice for tickets.  Tickets available starting Monday, February 9, 2015.

 

Join the Framer tribe and find out more: framedance.org

(above photos by Lynn Lane, Lydia Hance, and Jonathon Hance)

Get updates, pictures and videos on Facebook.

 

FRAMED_IN_FIVE_LOGO

 

About the Choreographer and Composers:
imgresDubbed Houston’s “queen of curious locations,” Lydia Hance is the Executive and Artistic Director of Frame Dance Productions. She has been named an Emerging Leader by Dance/USA and has been leading Frame Dance in performances from the Galveston pier onto the METRO light rail, into the backs of U Haul trucks, and into museums, stages, and warehouses throughout Texas for the past five years. A champion of new music composers, her work deepens interdisciplinary collaborations and investigates the placement of dance in our lives. She is the former Education Director of Hope Stone Inc., and has recently launched the children’s ensemble Little Framers. She is a choreographer, curator, filmmaker, educator, and dance writer originally from the California Bay Area. She holds degrees in Dance Performance and English Literature from SMU and trained at the Taylor School, Graham School, Tisch School of the Arts, Limon Institute and SMU.

 

 

Gabriel José Bolaños Chamorro is a Nicaraguan-American composer and guitarist. He is pursuing his PhD at UC Davis. He received a bachelor’s bolanos
degree from Columbia University in 2007 where he studied composition with Fabien Lévy and Sebastian Currier, and orchestration with Tristan Murail. He has also worked as a freelance musician in New Haven, CT, and was a professor of theory, analysis and guitar at the Casa de los 3mundos music academy in Granada, Nicaragua. His work draws upon a variety of interests including linguistics, spectralism and the physical properties of sound, psychoacoustics and geology.

 

Joel Love’s music has been performed by The Aura Contemporary Music Ensemble, The California State University Los Angeles Wind Ensemble, Da Camera of Houston’s Young Artists, The Boston New Music Initiative, the Ohio State University Wind Symphony, the Texas Joel-Love_webA&M University Symphonic Winds, the Lamar University A Capella Choir and Wind Ensemble, the University of Texas Wind Symphony, and exhibited at many art galleries throughout the United States. Joel’s first work for wind ensemble, Aurora Borealis, was recently selected for performance at the 2013 SCI National Conference. In a recent review of 2013 SXSW events, Capital Public Radio’s Nick Brunner commented that “The Peace of Wild Things” was a “gorgeous piece of music, wafting along into the ether.” He recently finished is doctorate from the University of Texas Austin.

 

Celebrated for his “roiling, insistent orchestral figuration” (New York Times) and “glittery, percussive pieces” (Toronto Globe and Mail), composer Robert Honstein is a composer of orchestral, chamber, and vocal music. Robert has received awards, grants and recognition from Carnegie Hall, Copland House, the New York Youth Symphony, ASCAP, SCI, the robert honsteinMinnesota Orchestra Composer Institute, the Albany Symphony Orchestra, the Young New Yorkers Chorus, the Lake George Music Festival, the Boston New Music Initiative, the Ithaca College Chamber Orchestra, and New Music USA. Robert co-founded Fast Forward Austin, an annual marathon new music festival in Austin, TX. Described as “the first ever classical music event in Austin to make its own beer koozies” (Austin American Statesmen), Fast Forward Austin features local and national, cutting-edge artists in a “welcomingly relaxed venue… [that] tapped into what is so great about the Austin vibe: a community of people who are artistically curious, non- doctrinaire, and unpretentious” (NewMusicBox).

Links We Like Friday: Tiny Dances

Links We Like Performances/Screenings

Week 3 in our series that came from our installation at Fresh Arts.  The piece was called The Black Space, and included these tiny silent dances meant to be seen on your smart phones.

 

The Black Space: Tiny Dance 3 from Frame Dance Productions on Vimeo.

Links We Like

Links We Like Performances/Screenings

For links we like we thought we’d throw back to some Frame Dance Tiny Dances from our show called The Black Space.  We made a series of these tiny silent films that were made to be viewed on a smart phone.  Stay tuned for the second one next Friday.

 

The Black Space: Tiny Dance 1 from Frame Dance Productions on Vimeo.

Links We Like

Links We Like

Happy New Year!  Beginnings are my favorite.  There’s so much hope and there hasn’t been time for discouragement yet.  There hasn’t been time yet for failure or hurt.  There hasn’t been time to hurt metrodance1others.  It’s clean and everyone is trying to be his or her best self.  I wonder, why can’t each new day have the promise of the new year? I think it requires stepping beyond the past.

2014 has been a fabulous year for us at Frame Dance, and so much because of the support of our audience, friends, donors, and family.  It’s not easy creating something out of nothing, and now in our fifth year, we feel like we really have something to be proud of.  The dancers and collaborators have worked so hard, and I am truly in awe of how much of themselves they have put into the work we’ve done.  Sometimes it can be lonely figuring out how, exactly, to lead a new arts organization– how to

Photo by David DeHoyos
Photo by David DeHoyos

pursue a vision, but be smart and strategic in the practicalities, thinking of the artists and how to challenge them and showcase their strengths, thinking of our community and the art that would enrich it.  There are a lot of moving pieces I consider in how to make Frame Dance a thriving, growing, relevant arts organization serving its community.

The dance we’ve made has the fingerprint of so many artists.  Frame Dance is a manifestation of dancers, composers, photographers, writers, children, parents, musicians, chefs…(shall I go on?)  It is the manifestation of the board and of myself and the many, many people who have fought for it.  It is the manifestation of those who have given us opportunities, spoken and written supportive words, commissioned new works, and those who have given us a critical eye, and a corrective voice.

While it is cleaner to let go of the past while embarking on this new year, I choose to remember the past, with gratitude and a breath of distance.  Onward and upward, soldiers.  There’s more art to be made.  You are a part of it whether you create it, support it, experience it, or share it.  We need all of you.

photo by Leticia London
photo by Leticia London

With an expectant heart of gratitude,

Lydia