The World is Our Dance Studio

The World is Our Dance Studio

Education Frame | Work News & Updates

Outdoor Fall Programming from Frame Dance

Quarantine and social distancing has taken away many habits and practices, but sometimes the things we replace them with are so very sweet. We’ve been forced out of the dance studio this fall, but when we walked through that door we found ourselves on the grass, under the sky, breathing deeply among the trees. Frame Dance has a lot of practice using the city as its stage, an now we are using it as our studio, taking our dance classes into the parks and green spaces of Houston.

 

Like other dance programs, we offer online dance and dance-related content. Unlike other dance programs, we have not gone hybrid or into taped-off personal areas in a studio in order to dance together.* Instead, we offer you the uncommon joy of dancing outdoors. 

 

Three outdoor classes happen on the weekends: Creative Movement and MultiGen on Saturday mornings, and Beginning Modern Dance on Sundays. The first two are are grassier versions of the classes we’ve offered season after season, but Beginning Modern for adults with Jacquelyne Boe is all new. To us. Jacquelyne had taught modern dance to adults for many years at various studios, and we are proud and pleased to offer this first ongoing adult class with a member of our prestigious company. I personally take classes with Jacquelyne whenever I have the chance because her classes are thorough and inventive and good for one’s physical and mental health. I mean, all dance classes are, or should be, but these have an extra layer of goodness. Our girl is insightful and efficient. Give yourself the gift of experiencing it. Register here.

 

Creative Movement is for families to dance together at a park, which is exactly what I thought parenting would be before I became a parent. Lydia leads this idyllic interval of sweetness. Each family will purchase a bag of dance accessories to use at class and at home during the week where the learning and joyful activity can continue. Register here.

 

MultiGen is the epitome of Dance for All. Every body can dance and every mind and spirit can grow from the practice of dance, and this happens with uncompromising quality of instruction and abundance of heart at MultiGen dance class. For everyone, all ages, all abilities, even babies worn by a dancing adult are welcome (those special pairs of people are also welcome in Creative Movement along with their dancing child). MultiGen is about radically inclusive community, which means that you, all of you, automatically belong there. Register here.

 

See you on the grass, under the sun, surrounded by living things, dancing outside like the happy, wild artists we are.

 

*No shade. If we had our own studio, with rent to pay, we’d be taping those floors for sure.

Making Dance Makers

Making Dance Makers

Education Frame | Work

Good Dance Makes Good People: Frame Dance Production’s Youth Ensemble

Mini Framers (ages 3.5-5), Little Framers (ages 5-7), and Junior Framers (ages 8-13) comprise the Frame Dance Youth Ensemble, a training and performing group for developing dance makers. 

Dance makers are artists who learn to communicate through dance. They learn to use dance as a way to understand themselves and the world around them. They learn to use that understanding to develop an idea, and they learn to use movement, space, lighting, costume, and music to present that idea to an audience. They learn to communicate through dance, and to do so with integrity and intention.

Dance makers learn skills in the studio that profoundly improve other areas of their lives. Youth Ensemble dancers develop body knowledge, both in the sense of knowing what their body can do and in their understanding of themselves and their world through the immediacy of physical action and reaction. Dancers develop an innate sense of physics through movement. Dance making builds students’ planning and decision-making skills in deep, considered ways as they create and learn choreography, and on the fly as they learn to dance improvisationally. For all ages (but with implications that change over time), physical communication helps dancers understand body boundaries. The communication skills of negotiation, connection, and articulation of ideas are routinely practiced in ensemble dance and move smoothly from the studio setting to any arena where your child works as part of a team. For all of these reasons and more, good dance makes good people, and both are found in abundance in the Frame Dance Youth Ensemble.  

Registration is (still) open! Mini Framers starts Wednesday, September 4 at 3:30 PM. Little Framers starts Thursday, September 5 at 4:15. Junior Framers have options that begin tomorrow, Tuesday, September 3 at 4:15. All classes meet at our studios on Shepherd at Westheimer. Please use the links above to register and for more class details.

See you amazing students in the studio!

 

Relaunch of Frame|Work [Blog]

Relaunch of Frame|Work [Blog]

News & Updates

Hello, and welcome to Frame|Work, the revamped blog representing Frame Dance Productions. I am Kerri Lyons Neimeyer, and I sit on the board and dance in the Multi-Generational Ensemble. I am also involved in the new blog formatting. We intend this blog to be a connection and a frame (get it?!) of reference for content on modern dance, dance education, arts events in Houston, and other topics that uplift us here at Frame Dance.

Let me tell you why I am involved with this dance company, and give you an idea of the work we wish to share with our community.

In 2006 Kurt Vonnegut declined a request to speak at a New York high school by sending a letter of thanks that included the message he would have delivered in person. “To wit,” writes Vonnegut, “Practice any art, music, singing, dancing, acting, drawing, painting, sculpting, poetry, fiction, essays, reportage, no matter how well or how badly, not to get money or fame, but to experience becoming, to find out what’s inside you, to make your soul grow.”

Executive and Artistic Director of Frame Dance Productions Lydia Hance is of the Vonnegut school of arts practice. In her interview for the initial post of Frame|Work, Lydia says:

I want to help people get their heart back in their bodies, and use that to move, and to find out more about themselves, about who they were made to be, about understanding each other, with the understanding and the belief that they don’t need to change who they are to be better dancers. I mean, technically we want to grow and everything, but dance is this gift, and I want everyone to experience it. I think that in a lot of ways dance has become for a select few, and that makes me really sad because we find out so much about who we are and the world that we live in through moving and through dancing. This is how we are on earth; we are in a body. The capacity for the body to move, and do incredible things, small or big, changes how we think, changes how we see each other, and it changes how we feel about ourselves (emphasis added).

Lydia is more generous than Kurt Vonnegut. I am not. I practice arts because I discovered that these practices enrich and satisfy me; they make my soul grow. And, for the most part, I practice arts as an amateur, which is to say that I do it for love of the practice or field, not for mastery of the practice or field. Lydia, on the other hand, is a degree-holding, working dance artist who is respected, celebrated, and promoted by her peers. She created a professional company to realize her vision of artistic production, and then, seeing a need, she developed curricula for dance education with the same open yet specific spirit as her performance practice. Do you see in the quotes above how Lydia took the idea of practising art for self-discovery, for soul-growing, and expanded it to include community, the connection and interaction of souls, and the kind of understanding about oneself and one’s world that can only come from practices that are communal? Dance is a gift, and it can grow souls, and it can grow communities. This is what Frame Dance Productions offers its dancers, professional and amateur. This is what I get out of being a Framer. I hope you will join us; in classes, in audiences, and in our social media communications, which includes this re-imagined blog. Talk to us, here and anywhere. Be part of the community, part of the communication. Build this Frame|Work with us.

Looking ahead, Frame|Work will feature more interviews with Framers from the professional company, dance classes, youth and multi-generational ensembles, as well as behind-the-scenes folks and what I like to call Frame-adjacent creatives and professionals. There will be articles about the arts working in people, in education, and in the community. It will also offer a curated look at Houston-specific happenings, and some of our favorite places on the World Wide Web. Let us know what you like. Let us know what you need. We look forward to working with you.

Tuesday Tunes: What students like to hear

Tuesday Tunes Uncategorized
Hey, Framers! I hope you’re ready for a special edition of Tuesday Tunes. Today, I’ll be talking about my tunes and what I enjoy hearing when I’m dancing. 
 

Tuesday Tunes: Rachel’s Tunes

As a dancer, of course I have my own musical preferences when I take class. Normally in a class you can’t just pick your own music to dance to, so you’re using the music that your teacher provides. Dancing to music you enjoy always makes those everyday classes even more fun than they already are, or even give you that extra kick of energy at the end of class. Here’s some bands I always love to dance to.

Bastille

 

Phantogram

 

 

Lo-Fang

 

 

The xx

 

Have fun listening!

*by Frame Dance Social Media Intern Rachel Kaminski