Dear Loyal and Fabulous Fans of Frame,

A year ago, we were accepted enthusiastically to screen an audience-favorite film, Crease, in Dance Houston.  We have been diligently advertising the festival and our participation in it.  We are disappointed to tell you that Frame Dance will not be presented in Dance Houston this year.  Because our work is a dance film, it was cut from the program.  We are incredibly disappointed and regret knowing only a week before the event, and apologize to our fans for the last minute news.  Below is a letter from the director emailed to me today.  The show is this weekend, and if you have bought tickets to see Frame, you are entitled to a refund.  Please contact Dance Houston if needed.

Dear Lydia,

Thank you for your interest in participating in Dance Houston and for your understanding of our decision to exclude Crease from our upcoming festival.  We were thrilled to have the opportunity to present it last summer at Zilkha Hall; however, we do not have the resources to present it at Cullen Theater at this time.  We are sorry for disappointing you and your supporters.  Frame Dance Productions does outstanding work and we hope to have the opportunity to work together in the future.

Regretfully Yours,

Andrea Cody

Director, Dance Houston

andreacody@houstondance.org

406 W. Clay

Houston, Texas  77019

office – 713.526.1049

fax – 832.201.9296

www.dancehouston.org

Denise Wilborn, Donna Meadows and Jacquelyne Boe by Lorie Garcia, Studio 4d4

Step. Step.  Turn.  Lift. Recover.

Repeat.

Step.  Step.  Turn.  Lift.  Recover.

Repeat.

Step.  Turn.  Recover.  Step.  Lift.

Repeat.

For Martha Graham the solar plexus was the center of dance, of movement.  She challenged her dancers to reach and stretch from the solar plexus and take that risk of falling and learning how to recover, only to do the same once again.   Being on the edge, reaching to the next place, and recovering only to begin the process anew are so much an aspect of engaging, challenging dance.  Dance that engages the heart and challenges the mind.  These are also key characteristics of life.

The past few weeks as I’ve worked with Houston area dancers of all ages and abilities, the challenges to reach, lift, and recover are ever present.  I have not danced for decades!  I am not as sure of my balance, my strength, my flexibility as I once was.  And, yet, I am relishing the physical, mental, and emotional challenge of this process. I am relearning the physical act of lifting and recovering.

My heart is also in the process.  As we are challenged to reflect on the ever elusive ideal of love, my emotions are following the same pattern of risk, lift, recover.  Some of the falls are old, never fully explored before putting them away.  Those old falls still inform my new risks, my newer loves.

Each step in this amazing process is a bit surer than the one before.  I gain a bit more strength and balance as I practice and repeat the physical reflections of the written words on my pages.  Each repetition of the movements scaffolds the peeling of my emotions, allowing me the existential faith to lift and stretch to the next place.

I don’t think the tasks, the steps, are that important.  Rather it is the lifting of the solar plexus or the heart, knowing I open myself to the possibility of falling.  In dance and in everyday life, it happens.  How do I recover as I keep dancing, keep loving, keep living?

Denise Livings Wilborn

Get your tickets at framedance.org/boxoffice. Thursday, February 23, 7:30pm at Archway Gallery.

Lydia Hance is a recipient of an Individual Artist Grant Award. This grant is funded by the City of Houston through Houston Arts Alliance.  Frame Dance Productions’ Framing Bodies is  funded in part by the Puffin Foundation.  Frame Dance Productions is a recipient of a Rice University Dance Program Space Grant.

Nichelle Strzepek by Lorie Garcia, Studio 4d4

Lift arm, pull hip, touch shoulder, push ankle. Actions and body parts. Words of common understanding suddenly require new analysis, especially when the task is to apply them to another person. Lift her arm. Touch his shoulder. But how? With what? Faced with the choices, they can seem either impossibly vast or stiflingly limiting.

Dancers become well-practiced at these kinds of ‘assignments’. So the analysis is short, committing doesn’t feel as final. The choices are still vast or limiting but, oh well. We know it will all work out. If not, it’ll be changed, cut, rearranged. No “right” path, just decision. No moment but this one. Dancer Zen.

For this particular exercise, the choices we make with our partner aren’t even lasting (though they are filed away for possible use). Lydia asks us to take what once was a partnership and without changing it (much), let it be a solo. But not for long…

Cut and paste. A new partner. Two solos become a duet. More choices. A new energy. Different points of contact. A fresh addition to the file.

The choreography file fattens. Each week, variations and options multiply before our eyes. Words on the page add to the realm of possibilities.

I’ve been on the choreographer side. Zen can be much harder to achieve when sitting in the director’s chair, whether for the stage or for film. I’m feeling glad not to be responsible for the final slice, dice, mix, and stir, though all that possibility is as much a rush as it is daunting.

I get to just enjoy the process. Be surprised. Be fascinated. Be present.

But I look forward to the finish, to seeing the choices Lydia makes. What she creates from all the puzzle pieces.

I look forward to looking back. To how these pieces were carved and created. To remember the spark, the inspiration, the task, and to marvel how each and every time, magically, things travel from Point A to Point B. To the memory even of a moment in time before my child (still within) becomes an individual, a reality, a relationship I can’t live without.

Nichelle Strzepek by Lorie Garcia, Studio 4d4

Get your tickets at framedance.org/boxoffice.  February 23, 7:30 pm at Archway Gallery.

Lydia Hance is a recipient of an Individual Artist Grant Award. This grant is funded by the City of Houston through Houston Arts Alliance.  Frame Dance Productions’ Framing Bodies is  funded in part by the Puffin Foundation.  Frame Dance Productions is a recipient of a Rice University Dance Program Space Grant.

Come see Frame Dance open the show with Satin Stitch! There’s a wine and cheese reception afterwards, so come hang with us!  At least four of the cast members will be there as well to give you the inside scoop about being in Satin Stitch, and anything else you’d like to know or chat about.  They’re fantastic, if I do say so myself.

Satin Stitch has been selected to be a part of the dance-on-camera festival.  Come check it out along with many other films from all over the world!