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.
We hope the beginning of your week has been terrific!
Here are some great tunes from Michele Kitchen
to get you moving…
What music inspires you the most in the classroom and/or in the choreographic process?
I find myself drawn to music from movies I really love. I think that, similar to dance, sometimes everything just comes together in movies and the music can turn a scene into something magical. Those are the kind of pieces that inspire my creative process oddly enough. Either that, or something I find nostalgic for whatever reason.
What are your three favorite tracks to teach a (pick one (or more!): modern, ballet, jazz, hip hop, improvisation) class to?
So many options! I love Lynn Stanford’s music for Ballet currently, it’s super rhythmical and reminds me of some of my favorite pianists. For my little ones (Creative Movement) this summer I had a mashup: Waltzes from Sleeping Beauty (Op. 66), Fleet Foxes (Winter White Hymnal), various different Charleston tunes from the old Great Gatsby soundtrack.
Fleet Foxes
What are your top tracks to get the rehearsal process going?
Currently…
Man in Me -Bob Dylan
Blue Spotted Tail -Fleet Foxes
These Days -Nico
Hannah Hunt -Vampire Weekend
Kaw-liga -Hank Williams
Pick 5 tracks that should be on every dancer’s iPod?
Vivaldi (all of it)
Bach’s Suite Solo for Cello No. 1 in G Major (Yo-Yo Ma)
M.I.A Mango Pickle Down River
Daft Punk Doin’ it Right (feat. Panda Bear)
Swan Lake in its entirety
Do you have a ‘secret weapon’ song or artist when you need go-to inspiration?
It changes, but is pretty consistently my classical favorites (Vivaldi/Tchaikovsky) and at the moment Benjiman Britten.
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Michele Kitchen, originally from Austin, TX, started her formal training at Festival Ballet Atlanta in Georgia. She then continued her studies at Ballet Austin Academy, where she trained in the Pre-Professional Division until graduating in 2006. She received additional training from American Ballet Theater, Pittsburgh Ballet Theater, and Boston Ballet. In 2010, Michele graduated cum laude with a BFA in Dance as part of the inaugural class of Alonzo King’s LINES Ballet/Dominican University. While at LINES, Michele had the opportunity to work closely with Alonzo King, Maurya Kerr, Gregory Dawson, Arturo Fernandez, Carmen Rozestraten, Julie Adams, Ben Levy, and Yannis Adoniou. Since moving to Houston, Michele has taught for Houston Ballet, The Clair School, Precision Dance Academy, and Hope Stone. As well as teaching, Michele dances with Earthen Vessels (Sandra Organ) and teaches gyrotonic.