A Dance Houston Joint

Houston's hip hop happening: Defying gravity through dance

The 8th Edition doing some gravity defying dance moves.
Photo by James Wiseman
HIStory will be at Dance Houston's hip hop mega event.
Photo by Todd Spoth

Houston is a hip-hop hub. So say the mover-shaker team at Dance Houston, the city's leading presenter of local crews. "H-Town Get Down" actually gets down at 7:30 Friday night at Warehouse Live for a one-of-a-kind dance party /performance event featuring the best of local troupes, including Wyld Styl, 8th Edition, Planet Funk, HIStory, Fly, Inertia, Home Grown and the award-winning Alpha Phi Alpha step group from University of Houston.

Mr. Wiggles, of the historic Rock Steady Crew, will be performing and judging bboy battles. Local DJs, graffiti and airbrush artists will be in the house as well.

Mr. Wiggles and Mike Song from Kaba Modern, one of the top three crews on MTV's first season of America's Best Dance Crew, will be teaching master classes on Saturday at SoReal Dance Studio. "We asked the troupes who they most admire, and the answer turned out to be Mr. Wiggles," says Andrea Cody, Dance Houston's founder and executive director.

"H-Town Get Down" is Cody's brainchild; she has presented numerous hip hop events, along with her ever-popular city-wide dance festivals. After finding out that Wortham and Hobby were not quite the right venues, Cody got the idea of moving the show into Warehouse Live.

"We are bringing it back to the ground level. It's more of an event experience. It's interactive and more like a party. People can mingle, tune in and out, depending on what interests them," Cody says. "I imagine dancing, and some impromptu battles. Audiences will have a chance to show off what they have."

Cody has single handedly raised the awareness of the bounty of hip hop talent in this city, forging a relationship between the concert and street dance community.

"It all started when I invited various hip hop groups to be part of our city-wide festivals. There were so many good ones we realized that the whole lineup could be hip hop," Cody says. "Then I thought, why not do a totally hip hop event?"

She knows the hip hop world inside and out. Each group represents a different flavor in the hip hop ecology of Houston.

"There's 8th Edition, who fuse salsa and hip hop," Cody says. "There are trained Latin dancers who infuse their work with the latest trends. They are so unique to Houston."

HIStory (of America's Best Dance Crew) will be showing their latest creations, along with up and comers like Inertia, made up of top students from Westside High School, are also in the mix.

"They just got back from China," Cody says. "They have an amazing program at Westside. It's very competitive."

After spotting the University of Houston Alpha Phi Alpha step team on MTV, Cody invited them to come aboard.

"They won the central region Sprite Step Off," she said. "We tracked them down. They are awesome, and add a whole other element to the mix."

Planet Funk has been part of the Dance Houston family since the get-go.

"They are like a rock in the community, a beacon for people to join the scene," Cody says. "It's important to foster cross pollination."

Planet Funk founder Shawn Welling sees Dance Houston the same way.

"It's great how Andrea gets all these crews together," says Welling, who will be showing his Electric Light Circus 14 Fire & Ice. "It's friendly and competitive. It's also wonderful to show our work in both a traditional theater and a place like Warehouse Live."

Dance Houston, now in its eighth year, is known as one of the city's most diverse dance presenters, especially focusing on groups that may be under the radar of most dance audiences. They have just launched their Spotlight series, which has taken such troupes as Revolve Dance Company and Urban Souls on tour to Katy, Clear Lake, Stafford and The Woodlands. During the summer, they turn into a dance camp machine with "Young and Intense," their summer intensive for ages 7-17.

A national title holder in Lindy Hop, Cody finds swing dance and hip hop share much of the same lineage rooted in an African American aesthetic.

"Hip hop is fun, entertaining, young and fresh," she says. "It's always surprising me in the way dancers pushes beyond the limits of what we know the body can do. It's about defying gravity."

Sample H-Town Get Down

Planet Funk's Electric Light Circus 14 Fire & Ice

The smart and talented Inertia Dance Company from Westside High School

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HOWDY, DOCTORS

Grey's Anatomy spins off new medical drama led by Houston-born showrunner

Photo via Meg Marinis/Instagram

Showrunner Meg Marinis poses with actor Kevin McKidd, who recently exited Grey's Anatomy after more than a decade playing Dr. Owen Hunt.

ABC is bringing the Grey's Anatomy universe to Texas with a new one-hour rural medical drama co-created by longtime showrunner Meg Marinis. Marinis was born in Houston and is an alum of both the Kinkaid School and the University of Texas at Austin.

According to an exclusive report from Deadline, which production company Shondaland shared on social media, the untitled series has received a straight-to-series order from ABC and will follow a team at a rural West Texas medical center described as “the last chance for care before miles of nowhere.”

The series marks the first Grey’s Anatomy franchise show set outside the West Coast, and it's the first that's not centered around an existing main character from the original series.

The new drama will be co-created by Shonda Rhimes and Marinis, who has spent nearly two decades working on Grey’s Anatomy. She joined the series during its third season as a production assistant before rising through the ranks to become a researcher, writer, executive producer, and now showrunner.

"This opportunity will bring new characters and stories to life that will embody the same heart, emotion, and connection audiences have loved from Grey’s for more than two decades, all set in my home state of Texas,” Marinis said in a statement announcing the series. "I am so grateful to Shonda Rhimes for creating this dynamic world and feel so fortunate that I get to be a part of it.”

Marinis’ path to running one of television’s biggest franchises started in Austin. In an interview with Shondaland last year, she recounted moving to Los Angeles during her final semester at UT through the university’s UTLA entertainment program, which allows students to complete coursework while interning in the industry. While finishing school, she interned at Universal before landing a production assistant role on Grey’s Anatomy in 2006.

Marinis has also woven Texas experiences into the flagship series itself in recent years. According to Deadline, she personally knew families affected by the Camp Mystic tragedy and rewrote part of a recent Grey’s Anatomy episode after becoming emotional while working on the script.

The West Texas setting is particularly timely, as rural healthcare access remains a growing issue across the state. According to the Texas Hospital Association, more than 20 rural Texas hospitals have closed since 2010, while roughly a quarter of the state’s remaining rural hospitals are considered at risk of closure.

By centering the new series on what ABC describes as “the last chance for care before miles of nowhere,” the franchise could bring national attention to healthcare access challenges facing communities across West Texas and other rural parts of the state.

The new series joins a long lineage of Texas-set television dramas, though not all were actually filmed in the state. Grey’s Anatomy itself is famously set in Seattle while primarily filmed in the Los Angeles area. Friday Night Lights became closely associated with Austin through extensive local filming, while series like Dallas often recreated Texas from California sound stages, with exteriors of Southfork Ranch serving as the Ewings' fictitious home. Walker, Texas Ranger, meanwhile, became one of the best-known examples of a network drama heavily filmed across Texas itself.

Even after more than 20 years on the air, Grey’s Anatomy remains one of television’s most durable franchises. According to ABC, the drama is now the longest-running primetime medical drama in television history and continues to rank among the network’s strongest scripted performers.

Ellen Pompeo, who stars as Dr. Meredith Grey in the original series, is attached as an executive producer, and the new drama is expected to premiere in 2027.

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