Houston, Texas (April 16, 17) Frame Dance Productions presents Mortar, Sylphs Wrote on Saturday, April 16 and Sunday, April 17 at 7:30PM at the Hope Center located at 121- West Clay St. #26, 77019.  The company comprised of seven dancers will premiere this brand new show integrated with quirky, lush and curious film in high definition. Tickets ($5) are available for reservation; email Lydia.Hance@framedance.org.

Mortar, Sylphs Wrote is made possibly through Hope Stone Inc.’s Hope Werks Residency.  The music is by composer Micah Clark, winner of Frame’s 2010 Music Composition Competition.  Choreography by Lydia Hance and the company.  The new film work is made from footage collected by Director Lydia Hance during her artist residency in Lexington, Virginia called the Rockbridge Artist Exchange.

In 2010 director Lydia Polhemus Hance founded Frame Dance Productions, a contemporary dance company dedicated to creating innovative and vulnerable works for the screen and simulcast stage.  Presenting repertory that is diverse, Frame commits to new collaboration with artists of different disciplines to broaden the scope of dance and bring it to a global audience.  Frame Dance Productions, familiarly known as “Frame” has performed/screened new works at the Contemporary Arts Museum, Miller Outdoor Theater, Rice Dance Film Festival, Barnevelder, Washington & Lee University, Spacetaker ARC, and Frenetic Theater all in the less than one year of its existence.

Last night was fantastic. Thank you Frame Fans. I just love when art is fun. Combining a the fab space and art installation at Spacetaker, some wine, cookies, and chocolate and the premiere of Satin Stitch, the weather was lovely, it couldn’t have been better. For those of you who missed it, we missed you, and catch you next time around. April 16,17: Mortar, Sylphs Wrote.

And for those of you looking for some art tonight, I have a great idea. Chris Becker is a musician and composer for silent films. He is performing tonight at Frenetic Theater, and a Frame Dance Productions film, At First, Delights, is on the program. Same film, Chris’ brand new music specifically for At First, Delights. Here’s the info:

Music For Silent Films at FrenetiCore
5102 Navigation Blvd., Houston, TEX
March 13, 2011 at 7pm
$7 cover
1 hour and 10 minutes approx
Part of FrenetiCore’s Second Sundays series

Chris Becker – Laptop, Kaoss Pad
Films by Lydia Hance/Frame Dance Productions, Maya Deren, Noe Kidder, Molly Schwartz, Aurora Neeland, and others

Composer Chris Becker presents a set of composed and improvised music accompanying silent films by friends and fellow artists from New York City and New Orleans, as well as Maya Deren’s seminal work At Land. Becker recently debuted this project in Houston in a special set presented by the Caroline Sessions at CultureMap. Some of the films from that set will be screened again at FrenetiCore, but every performance of Music For Silent Films is different.

Using the popular software program Ableton Live and a large collection of samples musical or otherwise, Becker improvises a soundtrack to each silent film selecting and layering samples like the pieces of a aural jigsaw puzzle. The majority of the samples are field and studio recordings Becker has made over the past decade. Although the music for each film begins with a prepared, partially composed “template” of sounds and samples, once the film hits the screen, an improvised dialogue between Becker and the images begins. No two performances to a film are ever the same.

Becker has performed Music For Silent Films solo as well as with ensembles small and large in venues across the U.S. including Zeitgeist Theatre Experiments (New Orleans), ADA Gallery (Richmond, VA), Live With Animals (New York City), and Capital University during their annual NOW Music Festival (Columbus, OH). Musicians from the worlds of jazz, indie rock, and the avant-garde have joined him for Music for Silent Films performances. March 13th at FrenetiCore’s, it will be just Becker and the films.

A recent interview with Chris Becker on Space City Rock.

Film maker Noe Kidder’s Paradise with music by Chris Becker. This film will be screened with a new, improvised soundtrack at the March 13th show: