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.
Little Framers, MultiGen Framers, Adult Workshops Children’s Classes offer a cohesive education of modern dance technique, rehearsal, and performance. Little Framers will learn how to work technically in a studio, cooperate, and collaborate in a rehearsal like professional dancers do.
In Adult classes (Multi Gen, Workshops) students discover dance as a means of self-expression, exploration, and community connection through creative experiences. Based in modern dance technique and improvisation, these classes welcome beginners of all ages and advanced students who are looking to rejuvenate their creative practices.
Frame Dance Films (also called Dance-for-Camera) – In its series of films produced annually, Frame Dance creates new experiences for audiences using technology to record and edit dance performance into dynamic video narratives that document stories that would otherwise remain unheard. Frame Dance has produced nine films since 2010 each from 3 to 40 minutes in length, including There’s a Height Limit, Satin Stich, Crease, Framing Bodies: Love Me & Shamed. Frame Dance videos are powerful because they:
offer audiences the familiarity of a screen in which to view something new and unfamiliar-contemporary dance can be
allow audiences to engage with dancers and the story outside the limitations of a live, real-time performance;
mingle and participate in the visual arts world; and
reach additional audiences members and artists via the films’ internet distribution
Built around collaborations with local artists of different genres, these performances expose dance and the artistic process to audiences. They relate the process of making dance to audiences, and develop scenarios where the audience’s presence impacts the work. Since May 2010, Frame Dance has presented over 40 live performances in the Houston area, all original works by Frame Dance with guest collaborators who are artists from different genres — painter, photographer, filmmaker, poet, playwright, composer, chef and musician. Unique venues are the hallmark of Frame Dance performances including the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, Jones Plaza, Miller Outdoor Theatre, Pennzoil Place, Photobooth on Montrose, Port Boliver Ferry, the METRORail, the inside of U-Haul trucks, art galleries, City Hall, and even a claw foot bathtub. Each performance features original musical compositions by emerging composers such as Charles Halka and Robert McClure, a rare find for contemporary dance companies in Houston. Notable performances include To the Brim for the ERJCC’s Dance Month, Quiver named a top ten dance work by CultureMap, and Dinner/Dance 19, an interactive dinner in collaboration with chefs David Leftwich, Adam Dorris, and Richard Knight.
