A Thought-Leader In Family & Children’s Dance Classes | Houston, TX
Frame Dance is a thought leader in dance education, inspiring the next generation of movers, makers, and world changers by offering dance classes for adults & children, multi-generational ensembles, professional performances, networking events, and film festivals. We are nestled between West U and the Museum District.
We believe in developing the whole dancer, teaching critical life skills such as creative thinking, leadership, collaboration, and resilience through our artful and playful dance curriculum at our studio and in partner schools.
Our adult modern dance classes are designed to offer you the joy and magic that’s possible when you create space in your life to move, to grow, and to share in the creative process with a like-hearted community.
For more than ten years, Frame Dance has brought radically inclusive and deeply personal contemporary dance to Houston. Led by Founder and Creative Director Lydia Hance, whom Dance Magazine calls “the city’s reigning guru of dance in public places,” the professional company is made up of six acclaimed co-creators committed to collaboration. Frame Dance has created over 50 unique site-specific performances and nine dances for the camera screened in festivals all over the United States and Europe. With an unrelenting drive to make dance in relationship to environment, Frame Dance has created dance works for and with METRO, Houston Museum of Natural Sciences, Houston Parks Board, Plant It Forward Farms, CORE Dance, Rice University, Houston Ballet, 14 Pews, Aurora Picture Show, and the Contemporary Arts Museum. Frame Dance’s productions were described by Arts + Culture Texas Editor-in-Chief Nancy Wozny as “some of the most compelling and entertaining work in Houston.” Creative Director Lydia Hance is a champion of living composers and is dedicated to work exclusively with new music.
“The arts and creative arts therapies were characterized by Captain Moira McGuire, at Walter Reed as a ‘must have’ rather than a ‘nice to have.'”
Here in Houston, Jane Weiner and Hope Stone are working with vets, offering an 8 week DRUMMING workshop (with the amazing Chris Howard) for veterans…FREE!! If you are a vet? or know a service man or woman please let them know about our workshop.
Classes are Monday, starting March 30-May 18
8-9 p.m. (no drum needed, we will supply, but if you have one bring to the circle!)
The Barn-2201 Preston @ Hutchins.
Info@hopestoneinc.org if interested or want more details.
Music has been implemented more and more in therapy and treatment. Check out this recent article posted on the American Music Therapy Association’s website describes music therapy’s impact on working with the military.
Good morning, Framers! I hope you’re having a wonderful Tuesday. I certainly am after having the opportunity to interview Jane Weiner, for this edition of Tuesday Tunes.
Tuesday Tunes: Jane Weiner
R: How do you imagine the future of the dance world?
J: One where we get rid of audience and everyone gets to be a part. No more proscenium, more communication and interaction. Maybe we no longer even know who is the “dancer” and who is the “audience.”
R: I know that you had the opportunity to give a TED talk several years ago. What was the most rewarding part of that experience?
J: Not sure if I would call it rewarding…more awareness that there isa lot of work to be done to create an Army of Artists that infiltrate all levels of society with their art education.
R: What life lessons has being a dancer and choreographer taught you?
J: That life is short, precious, beautiful, sad, inspiring, frustrating, and beyond my wildest dreams.
R: What music would I find on your playlist when you’re teaching a class?
J: Peter Jones, Norah Jones, Beth Orton, Albert mathias, R.E.M., War, Parliment, Beastie Boys, Zuco 103, Stevie Wonder, C & C Music Factory, Tracy Chapman, DJ John Kelley, Led Zeppelin, Sia
photos by Simon Gentry
Jane Weiner graduated from Bowling Green University with a degree in deaf/elementary education and a minor in dance. She had the unbelievable opportunity to work with the Doug Elkins Dance Company for a decade of fine dancing, touring and experiences before her move to Houston, TX in 1996. She presently is the director of Hope Stone, Inc., and Artistic Director of Hope Stone Dance Company and the Pink Ribbons Project. Jane founded Hope Stone with a dream of unlocking the innate creativity of children and adults and improving their quality of life through the performing arts. Jane also founded and directs Hope Stone Kids, an arts outreach program for children 2-18 years old in Houston, that uses master teachers in dance, theater, music, photography, spoken word and yoga to empower and educate youth. Hope Stone Kids was created to help meet the artistic and emotional needs of underserved and at-risk students. “I see the void and want to help fill it,” Jane says. Jane also founded the Pink Ribbons Project in 1995 and was the executive director from 1997-2002
Jane has set her work on the Alley Theater, Houston Ballet II, Stages Repertory Theater, the Houston Children’s Museum, as well as many high schools and universities and has collaborated with the Houston Symphony, the CAMH, and the Asia Society. She was a finalist for the Cal Arts/Albert Award for Dance in 2001, awarded the CACHH general fellowship grant for 2002, the Houston PBS Speaking Women’s Health Conference Honoree 2004, the Surgical Society of Oncology’s James Ewing Layman Award, the Jung Center Award for 2005, DiverseWork’s Artist of the Year 2011, and was a speaker at the 2012 TEDx Houston and 2013 TEDx TAMU.
At present Jane continues to run Hope Stone, Inc. creating a vision of Art for All, work on projects with her company as well as schools and companies nationally. She continues her work on creating, enriching, evolving and teaching her teacher’s template to make Hope Stone Kids a national arts education project. She is married the wonderful Eric Mallory, has one dog, Oliver Jones and three cat children, Houston, Riley and Spot-ika.
*Interview by Frame Dance social media intern, Rachel Kaminski
C: At one point I was a bit concerned about the future of dance based on what I’ve been seeing lately. I’ve been doing quite a bit of teaching young dancers, and initially I was disappointed with seeing a lack of knowledge and a lack of interest outside of what’s happening on reality television as it relates to dance or in the competitive market but I have come to realize and with help from my teachers and mentors, I’m understanding, it’s my job to educate them as much as I can, to give them all the options out there and to step back and let them make their decisions based on that information. I just spent 3 weeks teaching atBates Dance Festival Young Dancers Workshop and found those young artists to have a refreshing outlook on what’s currently going on for them in dance and what they see for their futures and I was pleasantly surprised that there was still an interest in concert and company work and that though many of them participated in competitive dancing, they were looking for more and were interested in studying dance in higher education and beyond. So I think, the future of dance as far as the next generation of young dancers coming up will be ok, now funding and support for this beautiful art, that is another discussion.
R: Where do you primarily teach?
C: The High School for the Performing and Visual Arts(HSPVA) and UH School of Theatre and Dance with a lot of guest teaching at numerous studios, intensive and workshops thrown in there.
R: How has dance influenced you?
C:Well it’s my best language, movement I mean. I am learning to love my voice just as much as I love to move but there’s no denying that dance is my language. It’s the way I speak to people I love and people l don’t even know.
R: What is on your playlist when teaching a class?
C: It depends on my mood and what I’m teaching but Currently for my Modern Dance playlist:
a lot of Peter Jones
Gotye “Somebody That I Used to Know”
Gnarles Barkley “Crazy”
Rene Aubry “Salento”
George Kranz “Din Daa Daa”
Robert Glasper “Ah Yeah”
Emily King “Every Part”
Victor Y. See Yuen “Percussion for the Dance Technique of Lester Horton”
Chris Cawthray
DJ Snake & Lil Jon “Turn Down for What”
photos by Lynn Lane
Named one of Dance Magazine’s 25 to Watch in 2012, professional dancer, guest teacher and actress Courtney D. Jones is a Presidential Scholar in the Arts for Choreography and a graduate of the High School for the Performing and Visual Arts (HSPVA). She began her professional career in Miami, FL with the Freddick Bratcher and Company Contemporary Dance Theatre while attending New World School of the Arts.
Ms. Jones is a proud graduate of SUNY Purchase with a BFA in Dance Performance and a minor in Psychology, graduating with honors. As a student she performed the works of Jose Limon, Mark Morris, Doug Varone, Jacqulyn Buglisi, Roger C. Jeffrey, Michael Foley, Heather Maloney and Kevin Wynn. After graduation Ms. Jones continued to work with the Kevin Wynn Collection and joined Jennifer Muller/The Works where she taught and toured internationally for four seasons.
With a growing interest in theatre she joined the cast of Show Boat in 2008 accomplishing a long-standing goal to perform at Kennedy Center, Lincoln Center and Carnegie Hall and went on to join Broadway’s First National Tour of WICKED in 2009.
In Houston, Ms. Jones enjoyed four lovely seasons from 2010-2014 with Hope Stone Dance Company where she was the Assistant Director of Hope Stone Dance II (h.s.d. II) and has been seen in productions at Stages Repertory Theatre; Auntie Mame, Panto Pinocchio, In the Next Room or the Vibrator Play, Failure: A Love Story, Houston Grand Opera; Show Boat (swing), Die Fledermaus, The Passenger (Movement Director) and Theare Under The Stars; Urban Cowboy the Musical and A Chorus Line (Lois/swing) . She is also a highly sought after consultant teaching company class for Hope Stone Dance, Houston Metropolitan Dance Company, SUCHU Dance, Rice University Rice Dance Theatre and Urban Souls Dance Company where she also served as a guest choreographer for their 2012 season.
Ms. Jones is an Adjunct Faculty member at the School of Theatre and Dance at the University of Houston teaching modern dance, she is a consultant in modern dance, composition and repertory at the High School for the Performing and Visual Arts while guest teaching at numerous universities, workshops and intensives. She is a proud member of the Actors Equity Association and is represented by A+ Actors of Texas.
*interview by Frame Dance social media intern, Rachel Kaminski
