Commanding the Stage: Women Choreographers Lead in HCDC’s “Resolve”

As recently as the 2023–24 season, data revealed that only about 31% of dance works presented across U.S. venues were choreographed by women. Women choreographers are woefully underrepresented in full-length programs but better represented on mixed bill programs, such as the most recent production by Houston Contemporary Dance Company (HCDC). Presented at the Hobby Center, HCDC’s Resolve program on April 12 featured three focused and evocative works by four women choreographers.

Forget Me Not, expanded from a 2024 premiere by local choreographer and dance educator Andrea Dawn Shelley, was a heavy but moving production opener. Shelley, whose work has been commissioned across the U.S. and internationally, is on faculty at both the Institute of Contemporary Dance and Vitacca Vocational School for Dance. She also serves as ballet mistress and rehearsal assistant for HCDC. 

Statuesque HCDC dancer Avery Moore shone in this solemn and dramatic work highlighting the stigma-enforced silence surrounding pregnancy loss. Dressed initially in an austere high-collared frock occasionally used to envelop her face, her character’s pain, shame and quiet defiance are palpable. Flanked by a trio of dancers Shelley’s program notes name “the eternals,” — unseen, present and “too precious to forget” — Moore transitions to a black slip dress. She draws fleeting strength and comfort from these eternals, yet her arms, anguish and isolation seem to subtly reference Pavlova’s Dying Swan. 

Moore and dancer Dwain Travis, an effectively menacing, robed “antagonist,” pass through and around a single, mobile set piece — a framed pair of white pocket doors designed by Ryan McGettigan. They occasionally move in uncomfortable silence between musical selections which range from Francois Chopin to Bach to Phillip Glass. Shelley has expertly woven prerecorded music with an exquisite live performance by violinist Elise Haukenes, who completed her Master of Music at Rice University and now plays with The Phoenix Symphony. Haukenes is also a trained dancer and it shows in her haunting interactions with Moore on stage. A recitation of the 1934 poem “Immortality” by Clare Harner interjects the comforting reminder that the deceased live on in the natural world around us but, as Shelley chooses to recloak and literally close the door on Moore, she suggests women are forced still to take this comfort, along with their suffering, in silence.

The darkly humorous world premiere The Breakroom and Breakroom After Dark, choreographed by Taryn Vander Hoop with collaboration from soloist Kacie Boblitt, provides a shift in energy in the program’s second half. The New York-based Boblitt, who appeared in Resolve as a guest artist from Vander Hoop’s own Summation Dance Company, is a Houston native and graduate of HSPVA. She begins the office satire sprawled on a large beanbag-like chair wearing a blazer backwards over her arms and chest. Her solo is as delightfully disheveled as her shock of purplish-red hair in a prologue that introduces quite literally what the breakroom might look like after dark, or perhaps the netherworld. HCDC guest artist Dylan Croy enters stage right, a sly footwear reveal demonstrating the bass isn’t the only thing pumping. The cast’s movement itself a mix of athletic club and contemporary dance vocabulary, they slowly spiral in office chairs with exaggerated smiles plastered across their faces and fling themselves into Boblitt’s beanbag chair. At one point, as the stage is bathed in red light, the music drives as relentlessly as a freight train, only to circle back (as one might say in corporate-speak) to where the workplace parody began.

Choreographer Natasha Adorlee provides an energetic close for the program with Octane, which she describes as an exploration of momentum, control and release, and an examination of the forces that drive us. Octane begins with a brief duet, laughter and an exchange of repeated phrases: “What does it even mean?” and “Say it again.” The full company of nine circles up, breaks away, and crashes together with kamikaze-style partnering as the hypnotic electronic score steadily intensifies. Hudson Davis’ lighting design is at its most striking with shifting conical shafts of white light stopping short above the dancers’ heads. The work reaches a climax when, in a fun and unexpected twist, HCDC guest artist Vivian Shock emerges in florescent green tap shoes. Her feet flying with precision, she ushers in another surprising shift. The dancers melt into their hips with sultry twists of their spine. They smile and exchange flirtatious glances as Paul Anka croons, “Put Your Head on My Shoulder,” wrapping up the song and the dance with a couple of clamorous but futile bids for romantic attention. What does it even mean? I can’t say that I’m sure, but I’d willingly see this charming performance again.

HCDC artistic director Marlana Doyle, who appeared in striking attire at the show’s opening, intermission and curtain call, has curated another fine performance well-suited to her small ensemble of very capable dancers. Her values and vision ring loud and clear in her choices to amplify women’s artistic voices and publicly acknowledge the indigenous lands and people of the Gulf Coast. During a brief pause while the company changed costumes before their final performance, her company’s Board Chair, entrepreneur Remington Tonar, gave an impassioned verbal reminder of the importance of art during challenging times. 

Resolve is a masterclass in why we need more stages visionary enough to let women lead. In a performance marked by inventive humor, emotional gravity and physical intensity, each piece spoke to the breadth and depth of what dance can express. In championing works by women choreographers, Doyle reminds us that representation isn’t just a number—it’s a lens through which stories get told.