Behind The Scenes With Mind The Gap 36
Dance Source Houston continues off the 2025/26 season with Mind The Gap XXXVI on September 9 at MATCH. The program includes solo and ensemble pieces by choreographers and companies working in contemporary, house, and modern dance forms. Learn more about the 6 works that will be presented on the program directly from the artists and get your tickets at matchouston.org/events/2025/mind-gap-xxxvi.
Eli Bivens
“This work involves the use of a dummy prop, affectionately referred to as “Bob”. The work varies between gestural, choreographed, and embodied movements meant to represent the cycles of behavior we either repeat or can’t escape in our intimate relationships, and the isolation experienced as a result.
“Songs My Mother Taught Me” concerns generational cycles of trauma and behavior. This piece explores how we behave in our most intimate relationships, and challenges the ownership of the choices we make inside of them. This work testifies to the emotional pain of unlearning in our search for love and understanding; it offers forgiveness and compassion for everything we do to ourselves along the way.”
Brian Buck
As a movement based multi-media artist, my work has evolved with the times, questioning points of view and varying my perspective. What do I see? How do I see it? How is it different?
This work, “What Dreams May Die?”, is informed by the fragility of life as seen/expressed through my eyes, my body, and my soul. Listening to the ambient nature of reality as it screams its reality. My work is for anyone to see what they need to see, want to see, or perhaps have to see. I have no delusion of believing I can control what others will think, experience, or even be in relation to my work. So feel free to see what you need to see, want to see, or have to see.”
Shayla Martin
“This work was born from a deep desire to connect with my ancestry—both Black and Indigenous—after losing my grandparents at a young age. I never had the chance to fully learn about that part of myself. But during my pregnancy in 2021, I felt my ancestors’ presence more strongly than ever, especially through music—Afro house, deep house, and Indigenous house. This piece is a fusion of all the dance forms I’ve studied and a spiritual expression of lineage, identity, and love. It allowed me to honor my roots while exploring who I am as both an artist and a mother.
I want the audience to know that this work comes from a deep place of joy and connection. Having my brother involved in this piece allowed us to showcase our lineage and share that connection as a family. This work is about unity, and I want them to feel that they can connect to it, too. House music and dance are all about bringing people together, and I hope the audience can experience that same sense of belonging and community through the piece. It’s meant to be an invitation to feel seen and connected, no matter where they come from.”
Adele Nickel
The title of this trio, “Libretto,” references opera’s use of “libretto” to refer to the text or lyrics of a piece of music. But what if lyrics were transmitted through movement rather than word? This dance suggests a new “text” for a beloved old song, and invites viewers to read, interpret, and enjoy. It is loosely inspired by the experience I had learning (and performing part of) Yvonne Rainer’s “Trio A” while I was living in NYC, and as such serves as a sort of homage to my time living there.
This work was commissioned by the Whirlwind Dance Company in Columbus, OH for the company’s third annual season in 2024. The dancers are all current members of WWDC, directed by Joshua Manculich, and more information about the company and its dancers can be found at whirlwinddance.com.”
NMLY.dance (Nicole McNeil + Lori Yuill)
“Decomposing in Tandem” is an improvised duet that explores the process of breaking down to be re-birthed. This motif mirrors organic cycles found in nature. This duet has grown out of our broader project “everyday more dystopian”, a growing catalog of dances, performances and workshops that aim to spark a renewed interest between humans and the natural world in an effort to inspire a deeper connection to nature, fostering appreciation for its beauty, fragility and the importance of ecological awareness and sustainability.
We regularly participate in MTG as a way of sharing and capturing landmarks in the trajectory of our creative process. This helps us to develop new ideas and feel their effect in performance as we are entering a new phase of the work. Performance is part of our process because it unlocks portals (meanings, structures, feelings, essences, residues, etc.) that are different and aren’t always accessible in rehearsal.“
Jennifer Salter + Jamie Williams
Through shifting proximity, mirrored movement, and strategic use of empty space, “Vectors” reveals the invisible forces—emotional, physical, and temporal—that define how people relate to one another in shared space over time. This work is based on the reflection of the many different relationships that we take part in and the different roles that we play within our lives. It is also inspired by a poem that describes a relationship of two people who live in “parallel lines,” living and working extremely close together, but never colliding.
As dance educators at San Jacinto College, much of the work we create is set on students and presented within an academic setting. MTG is the perfect opportunity for us to create and show work that can be presented to the Houston arts community. It is a way for our work to be seen by different audiences, and for us to stay connected.”
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