Art and About
It's a Texas dance thing: Improvisational choreography takes off at UH
When my Culture Bro Joel Luks asked me what I wanted to tackle next on Art & About, I said, "Improvisational choreography." When it comes to dance, too often people think improvisation is what you do when you didn't have time to choreograph.
Not so, it's a highly structured field, with a sound methodology, and a well developed canon of knowledge. Few even know that Texas, specifically Lower Left's March 2 Marfa, is a nationally known laboratory for improvisation.
Thanks to Karen Stokes, head of the Dance Division at UH School of Theatre & Dance and Leslie Scates, a leading force in improvisation and adjunct faculty, UH is becoming another hotbed for improvisation performance and education.
Joel and I invaded UH's dance studios for a Dance & About, to get a sneak peak of Stokes' Inside, set to Bill Ryan's score Blurred and featuring a cast of the city's leading choreographers and UH faculty, including Toni Valle, Teresa Chapman, Becky Valls, Sophia Torres and Scates.
Scates, just back from March2Marfa, gave us an overview of her life as a spontaneously mover, outlining the rigor contained in her process for creating plan B, set to Todd Reynolds' score entitled, uh ... it all happened so fast. Chapman, Valls and Torres also have work on the program, all of which features all live music by AURA Contemporary Ensemble at The Moores School of Music.
"Between the Lines," presented by UH School of Theatre and Dance with AURA Contemporary Music Ensemble in collaboration with UH's Cynthia Woods Mitchell Center for the Arts premieres on at Moores Opera House. Many of these dances will be repeated on April 29-May 1 at UH Lyndall Finley Wortham Theatre in the UH Cynthia Woods Mitchell Center for the Arts.
