Break-In Dance Fest Features Outstanding Texas Talent

Connoisseurs know that exceptional flavor is about locale. Unique geographies and histories, traditional and innovative uses of matter and method, it all combines with time to a distinctive yield, a family of products that share characteristics and tendencies that become an identity, recognized and referred to by experts, fans, and lovers of the genre.

Jessie Ferguson grew up in Texas dance. A graduate of the High School of the Performing and Visual Arts, she returned to Houston after earning her BFA from George Mason University in Fairfax, VA. In a full circle move, she is a devoted teacher at Move Dance Family under director Mallorie Marion, who also directed Ferguson’s childhood home studio. This is how the flavor of local dance is generationally reproduced, refined and intensified, as homegrown standouts uproot, learn to operate outside of the supports of their youth, absorb new perspectives and nutrients, and return to their old environment with new eyes. Ferguson is not content to distill her mastery into classes for the next generation, but, as a dancer who has always prioritized her own choreographic work, is determined to make the landscape rich and accessible to other emerging dancers and choreographers – and audiences! – in the Houston area specifically and in the state of Texas broadly. She is not only a passionate product and producer of Texas dance, she is a farsighted propagator.

And out of her vision, her own need to produce and her desire to create and curate opportunities for others, Ferguson created BOOT Dance Project, an organization with the triple goals of developing Texas dance art, artists, and audiences. With the Break-In Dance Fest, held August 7 at the Midtown Arts and Theater Center Houston (MATCH), Ferguson brought together seven young choreographers to present works that are in fresh and new – some premiers, some resettings – and in need of “breaking in” on the local stage where Houstonian audiences can observe and integrate emerging elements of local dance.

The Break-In audience was large and lively. Many had familial or dance training connections to the dancers and choreographers on the program, and most were repping Texas in their cowgirl boots; the tagline of the festival is “Like a good pair of boots, good choreography needs breaking in.” I had seen a request for the audience to wear boots, so I wore mine: a pair of vegan leather wingtips. I’ve lived half my life in this state, but I still don’t have all my Texas bona fides. SMDH.

The program opened with In Your Orbit choreographed by Drew Phipps, danced by Lauren Dorset and Catalina Duong. Each choreographer was in attendance and was given an opportunity to introduce themselves and their work. Phipps is a dance and kinesiology student at UT Austin and, like Ferguson, a native Houstonian who trained under Mallorie Marion. Phipps described In Your Orbit as being about the similarities of people and planets, exploring the cosmic and human forces of attraction and deflection, gravitational pull, and orbital movement. Her point was well-illustrated by the duet of Dorset and Duong, who began the dance in separate orbits delineated by identical wide circles of white light on the stage, reading like a cold universe against a gray background. There was warmth in the dancers’ movements, especially when they came into contact with each other’s flesh, the impacts and weight of each other’s bodies. The choreography really sang in these moments of balance and intricately shared space. As the piece began with parallel movements each in their own sphere, it concluded with separated synchrony in a single, shared orbit of a larger spotlight, where they eventually collapsed into each other before returning to independence, illustrating the way life brings us in and out of intimacy and influence with each other, perhaps as inevitably as the crossing of planetary orbits.

Second on the program was VEIN by choreographer Grace Reagan. Reagan, who trained at Killgore College in Killgore, Texas, premiered this piece at the F3 Film Festival, where it received a best choreography award. Here in Houston, she set it on dancers Rosie Adams, Kellie Hoffmeyer, Brooklyn Hunter, Cassidy Huebel, Summer Martin, Grace Reagan, Trinity Ray, and Haylee Ritter. Reegan described VEIN as being about vulnerability and raw emotion. In many ways, it was the audience’s vulnerability and raw nerves that the piece addressed. As the sizeable cast danced dynamically and synchronously, there was no obvious vulnerability on stage. Everyone was of a precise and united piece. There was an unnerving auditory buzz that drove through the music, and then the entire theater was struck by flashing red lights as a solo and a duet danced, exposed in the frantic setting. When the stage returned to cobalt lighting and the full cast refilled the stage, a series of lifts could be interpreted as vulnerable, though the supine dancers were well-supported and under threat from the group. The dance featured many instances of body-made acoustics, a lot of slapping sounds. With the buzz, the slaps, and the emergency lights, the audience felt the effects of embodied stress at least as much as they viewed it on the stage.

Interestingly, Nikolas Darrough also used flashing red light to indicate and create a critically stressed environment in his piece, In an Eggshell. In fact, he opened with it. Darrough, a University of North School of the Arts graduate who has made a mark on Houston stages as a company member of Vitacca Ballet, described the piece as exploring touch from the perspective of a failing relationship. The dance began in this state of crisis with Madison Medina and Darrough – the people in the relationship – facing upstage away from the audience (while the couple was danced by a traditional boy-girl pair, the roles felt decidedly ungendered). The audio at this point was a syncopated whoosh of blood running through veins coupled with monk-like choral chanting. The touch between the dancers was questioning and accusatory, the movement of people who knew each other thoroughly and intimately. Darrough’s character frequently plunged into movements of abandon, in both senses of that word, while Medina’s movements were controlled and controlling. They came together in dance that was consummate, accomplished. Suddenly, a dramatic pause of sound and movement occurred while the couple occupied a large circle of light, separated, alienated from each other, connecting with themselves. A spoken word soundtrack took over the speakers. When the dancers eventually reconnected, it was with a sense of independent resolve before separating into conversation at a distance. In the end, Darrough defiantly exited the stage and Medina was left alone in movement still controlled but agonized in a way she hadn’t succumbed to until now, as the spoken word piece ended by wishing her success. In a dance packed with narrative drama, Darrough’s choreography was athletic, human, and artful.

Jessie Ferguson’s dance, Forge, was fourth in the lineup, and it was a masterful piece of storytelling Ferguson explained that the festival staging was a reworking of a piece about migration narratives, specifically her grandparents’ journey from Scotland to America. There were sweet moments that referred specifically to this couple – their meeting and their journey and their new home and new family – but the dance also told a larger story about migrants as persistent opportunity-seekers, relentlessly working for every chance they had to build the path that would lead to comfort if not prosperity, for themselves and for the community they found or brought with them. Much of the dance is, in fact, about hard manual work, with bodies echoing the sounds of factories and shipyards, all movement effortful and efficient to move the group to their accomplished goal. Costumes among the dancers were equally divided between shorts and skirts, indicating that everyone had a hand in this story of survival and success. Ferguson’s grandfather can be heard narrating his story in voiceover, and he said that his community would “succeed by using our collective effort,” an always-pertinent lesson in interdependence. Clearly, his granddaughter received the message, because Ferguson has put her efforts toward collective work while maintaining artistic output of the highest quality. It is a legacy that deserves to be celebrated. Ferguson’s work was danced by Abigail Baden, Riley Emler, Trevon Hector, Riley Miller, Drew Phipps, and Amirys Trinidad, who were all up for the challenge of dancing to bagpipe music!

Hannah Mettler’s work Mirrored Trust was the fifth piece presented. A dancer originally from New Jersey but with dance roots in Houston going back nearly a decade, Mettler is currently in the MFA dance program at Sam Houston State University. Mettler described her dance as two conversations happening in the same mind. She doesn’t necessarily see them as simultaneous, but rather one in deliberate, transformative response to the other as a person guides their inner narrative toward peace. Charlie Poulin and Dillon Bell danced this duet about duality. Their movement was supportive and complementary, in union until one train of thought turned on the other belligerently, but briefly. There wasn’t a lot of defiance or opposition; mostly the dancers moved in what felt like agreement, albeit with a nervousness, an anticipation of confrontations that never arrived. This sense was heightened by the soft, ongoing dissonance of Steven Reich’s “Different Trains III: After the War.” A lot of the movement seemed propelled or compelled by this sense of apprehension. The dancers were, mostly, copacetically engaged, sharing weight and space, creating shapes together. When they were separated, they seemed pointedly unaware of each other. All of this could indicate strategies for dealing with our own inner shadow. We might ignore it, engage and explore with it, but, even when it provokes us most sharply, we know better than to set ourselves against it. The negative will always be there to answer the positive, and this can cause trepidation. But with Mirrored Trust, Mettler has suggested that we be prepared for this, so we can respond with light, and more light, and again light.

The sixth dance of the evening was Isabella Mireles Vik’s premiere of Oculus, a solo piece based on an archetype that Vik identified in herself and in dancers she has collaborated with. She calls the archetype The Woman in the Woods, and this woman may relate to characteristics of The Huntress, The Wild Woman, or The Wise Old Woman found in archetype rosters. Being of the woods, a wild lifestyle fits, but, at the same time, a lack of cultural adherence – by substance or by choice – will get one pushed to the fringes of society, to the wilds, to the woods. So, there is a chicken-and-egg problem to solve, and it does make a difference to the interpretation of Mireles Vik’s dance to know the extent and the origin of the woman’s wildness. However, that knowledge was not necessary to appreciate the performance by dancer Lillian Glasscock, and to observe many attributes of the character she occupied. The dance began in silence with two small spotlights on the floor of the stage. Glasscock’s early movements suggested a fearful avoidance as she covered her eyes and her face and shrank into dramatic contractions. And then the contraction reversed. The convex became the concave. The dance could be seen as a series of fractal tensions and releases, of contradictions traveling through the body. There seemed to be a necessity to it; the body can curve in each direction, and so it must. As the music grew in volume, Glasscock gradually moved upstage until a small circle of light became a square (a house in the woods?). The contractions coalesced primarily along the spine in writhing movements that felt more and more wild. The wildness evolved to a loss of control as movements became purely responses, purged of intention and a sense of balance, leaving the audience to wonder how much of the woman was human and how much she was animal. To what extent was she conscious? What was the threat that propelled her into these unmoored reactions? Could it be that the wildness was simply claiming its own while the human impulse responded with boundless protest? At times, the woman in the woods was more of a scared little girl in the woods, and, again, the question was raised as to how she came to be in the woods and whether she was equipped to live there. An interdisciplinary artist from Houston, Mireles Vik practices experimental performance research as a solo artist and in collaboration through her ensemble, Aufheben. They relate the Woman in the Woods to their experience with bipolar disorder and embodied suffering.

Seventh on the program was Madison Medina’s work, drowning/realization/swimming, danced by her fellow Vitacca company members, Nikolas Darrough and Joshua Ponton. Medina is a Houston native who graduated from The Juilliard School prior to joining Vitacca Ballet. She stated that the piece was about a toxic, abusive relationship and the power to finally leave it. While it is gloriously becoming more common to have a same-sex, male gendered couple dance a duet, and while this arrangement does often signal queerness, in this case, as in Darrough’s piece before it, the gender of the dancers didn’t feel essential or heavily consequential to the relationship story on the stage. In terms of space and movement, what made a difference was that one partner was larger and the other was smaller. The larger partner could menace the smaller partner without much action. The smaller partner couldn’t physically impact the larger partner in an overwhelming way. These were the significant characteristics of the partners in this couple. The piece began with the song Maggot Brain by Funkadelic, which itself began with the provocative phrase “Rise above or drown in our own shit,” followed by aggressive rock guitar. To this, the larger partner did simple movements like briefly walking and sitting in stillness, while the smaller partner moved in tight, tortured ways. There were times that they danced separately but in synchrony, and times they danced together. There were movements that begged for attention, and movements of refusal. There was stoicism, and there was naked need. At times, they seemed almost able to meet each other, to give to each other, but mostly there was just large and still, and small and tormented. Around and around they went, doing a dance of brokenness, until the stage – mostly bathed in warm oranges until this point – was cast in a shady gray-blue. It is possible that this is an indication of drowning, but, really, the stage looked parched, the dancers’ flesh and costumes dry and dead, emotionally desiccated. (At no time was water effectively evoked through stagecraft or movement. This may not matter, but it leaves the title a spare and irritating thing). In this light, the smaller dancer lets out a primal scream that we understand to mean that he has had enough, is at a breaking point, is forced into a realization, and the music changes to the blues while the lighting returns to neutrals. The smaller partner’s movements become more possessed and purposeful, and he eventually walks triumphantly off stage past his seated ex-partner, who did have his own moment of emotionally damaged, angsty movement before the dance ended, lest the audience think he was less than fully human.

The final piece, Want by Madison Kotch, is about a utopian “workerland” where everyone puts forth effort and everyone is equally rewarded. However, according to Kotch, there are always a few who want to receive more and to give less. The dancers, Gracie Booth, Avery East, Dylan Fletcher, Addison Haggerty, Gaby Litwinenko, Riley Miller, Eaden Oluwa, Cate Raine, and JD Noblin, athletically performed the energetic dance to the song “Want” by artist Louisahhh. The techno punk song’s lyrics were “It’s good to want/It’s good to want/It’s not enough/Don’t ever stop.” While the dance was dynamic and active, and some of the movements signaled strength, it didn’t have the relationship to real, full-bodied work that was seen in the choreography of a piece like Forge. Kotch’s choreography is another layer of abstraction away from actual labor, much like the screen-centric work most people do now is several layers away from any real action. If the labor in Kotch’s system is performative and doesn’t actually fulfill a human need, then perhaps the workers who do their own dance are just asking for authentic purpose. At first, in the choreography, one dancer left the clear lines of dance production and danced independently, idiosyncratically. Eventually, she recruited a second worker, who danced the dance of the first rebel. The rebel dance wasn’t any less kinetic than the original dance, making it hard to argue that they expected more for doing less. If anything, it felt as though they just wanted choice, and wanted to be seen.

Texas dance is in passionate, well-trained hands that are determined to produce. The choreography is robust, and the dancers are capable and hardy. The flavor profile of Houston-area dance is complex but harmonious, and emphatically strong. Says BOOT Project director and Break-In Dance Fest producer Jessie Ferguson, “Texas dance feels like it’s circling back to the power of moving. I sense audiences are craving work that is bold and physically engaging. What stood out most was how many of the choreographers leaned into creating pieces that prioritized strong physicality and a sense of momentum rather than stillness or minimalism.” Ferguson also points out that it is the artists themselves who are hungry. She says that the festival choreographers are connected by “their spirit and drive. Every artist we worked with came in hungry and eager to have their work performed. There was a real sense of community in how they collectively embraced the opportunity to present their work together, take risks, and show something that reflects this moment in Texas dance.”

“What feels most important right now,” continues Ferguson, “is this combination of bold movement and genuine hunger. I hope that we are seeing the beginnings of a new chapter, one that is less about playing small and more about inviting audiences into powerful, moving experiences.”

Texas is fortunate to have an overwhelming crop of talented dance artists and thoughtful producers to showcase and nourish their work. May enthusiastic audiences near and far – and the occasional wordy reviewer – always line up to taste it.