Dance Source Houston Announces 2022 Groundwork Grantee Cohort
Dance Source Houston is excited to announce the recipients of the 2022 Groundwork Grants, including 12 dance nonprofit organizations and 6 fiscally sponsored projects. Awardees include Ashley Horn, Bay Area Houston Ballet & Theatre, Bones and Memory Dance, Frame Dance, Garage Arts Project, Group Acorde, Hope Stone Inc., Houston Contemporary Dance Company, Houston Metropolitan Dance Center, Kristina Koutsoudas, Mezclada Dance Company, Nia’s Daughters Movement Collective, NobleMotion Dance, Open Dance Project, Silambam Houston, Social Movement Contemporary Dance, The Pilot Dance Project, and Vitacca Ballet. Each grantee will receive a $4,200 operating support grant.
The Groundwork Grant progra was created out of a need for additional funding sources for small to midsize dance companies and fiscally sponsored projects operating in the Greater Houston area. This was identified as a critical need in The State of Houston Dance report published in 2019 which was the culmination of a community-wide needs assessment of the local dance sector. The funds provided through the Groundwork Grant program, now in its third year, remain vital to recipients.
“Houston is home to a robust and diverse dance community, and it needs support to come back stronger than before,” said DSH Executive Director, Mollie Haven Miller. “The Groundwork Grant program provides resources to many of the artists and organizations that kept us moving and engaged through online classes, outdoor performances, and other creative ways of keeping dance in our lives throughout the past two years.”
Meet the Groundwork Grantee Organizations & Fiscally Sponsored Projects
Ashley Horn is a Houston-based choreographer, dancer, costume and set designer, video, and installation artist. Her work has an immersive quality exemplified by her unique and highly detailed production elements paired with athletic, innovative, and intensely human movement vocabulary.
Bay Area Houston Ballet & Theatre
Bay Area Houston Ballet & Theatre, founded 46 years ago, strives to be a destination for artists and audiences seeking a unique performance experience which combines the rich heritage of the classics with the limitless possibilities of contemporary dance, theatre, and performance art. The work of this organization is crucial to bringing the arts to the south side of Houston.
Under the direction of Heather vonReichbauer, Bones and Memory Dance engages audiences with curious dance creations fueled by the creepy and macabre, creating work that is accessible, theatrical, and humorous. We aim to connect movement and storytelling to give audiences an original experience with repertory works about Lizzie Borden, Edgar Allan Poe, and Appalachian murder ballads.
Frame Dance brings 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,” 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.
Garage Arts Project is an organization dedicated to providing a platform for artists and audience to foster creativity, increase appreciation of the arts and strive for better cultural understanding. Our goal is to promote cross-cultural collaborations across ethnicities, genres, art forms by providing an immersive, interactive and enriching experience for the artists and the audience.
Group Acorde is a performance company formed by two contemporary dancers and two improvisational musicians, who innovatively collaborate in all aspects of the creation process. Its mission is to cultivate and educate diverse audiences through live, thought-provoking, original and affordable performance collaborations between contemporary dance and experimental music.
Founded in 1997, Hope Stone Dance (HSD) brought a new energy to Houston’s modern dance scene. Celebrating its 25th season, HSD continues to present work that’s “intellectually challenging, profoundly human, and fresh with humor.” The company is recognized for collaboration in Houston’s artistic community, and known as an ensemble with “effortless partnering” and “gorgeous, big-hearted movement.
Houston Contemporary Dance Company
The Houston Contemporary Dance Company’s mission is to ignite passion for contemporary dance by providing world-class professional repertory concert performances and community engagement activities that are accessible to all regardless of race, culture, sexual orientation, gender, gender variance, or nationality.
Houston Metropolitan Dance Center
For 26 years, the Houston Metropolitan Dance Center has been defined by its footprint and impact on its community, continuing to evolve, develop and sustain its facility, providing three areas of programming; open public classes, educational outreach and support of dance creation and performance. This commitment to community helps stabilize the arts and ensure the continuation of dance creation.
Engaged in both scholarship, research, and innovating performance and choreography, Kristina re-envisions and presents women’s sacred and secular dances of North Africa, Middle and Near East, and Mediterranean for contemporary audiences. Staging compelling accessible works, she aims to entertain, uplift, and educate her audiences with performances that are powerful, joyful, and intimately human.
Mezclada Dance Company is dedicated to celebrating diversity through mixing cultures and dance styles to create harmonious, original, and widely relatable blend’s of dance. Mezclada also aims to educate and positively represent these cultures and artforms within in it’s performances, outreach, and projects.
Nia’s Daughters Movement Collective
Stacey Allen holds a BA in Dance and MA in Cross-Cultural Studies. Stacey was a company member for Urban Souls and began pursuing her own artistic visions and co-founded Pretty Cultured and Nia’s Daughters Movement Collective. In addition to choreography, Stacey has co-created the installations Formed in My Grandmother’s Womb – Project Row Houses and A Single Thread Weave a Future – Fresh Arts.
NobleMotion Dance, one of Texas’s premier dance companies, is recognized for their intense physicality and unique collaborations. Since the organization’s inception, NMD has collaborated with light artists, composers, poets, A.I., neuroscientists, and industrial designers. NMD accolades include being featured on an Emmy Award winning TV show and being named “Houston’s Best Dance Company.”
Open Dance Project is a contemporary dance theater company whose highly stylized performance experiences break down conventional barriers between artist and audience to make dance more accessible. ODP’s performance and education programs invite the audience to explore dance and dance making from their own self-determined vantage point- simultaneously demystifying dance and making dance matter.
Founded in 2002, Silambam Houston is Houston’s premiere Indian classical arts organization, offering a unique blend of arts education programs, strong and diverse outreach efforts, hosted performances by local and visiting artists, and a robust professional Company.
Social Movement Contemporary Dance
Social Movement Contemporary Dance (SMCD) promotes social consciousness through creative arts and community engagement by expressing the breadth and depth of the human condition through dance and storytelling. Founded under the Artistic Directorship of Elijah Alhadji Gibson in 2019, SMCD has created 4 programs and is actively involved in arts education in the private and public school sectors.
The Pilot Dance Project is a multi-faceted dance organization with the mission “to empower and transform communities through innovative dance and performing arts experiences.” The organization fulfills its mission by producing new dance works by celebrated choreographers, producing a year-long program of multidisciplinary performing arts festivals, and an accessible fiscal sponsorship program.
Vitacca Ballet is excited to share dynamic contemporary ballet performances that combine beauty, intellect, and athleticism under Artistic Director Kelly Ann Vitacca. In pursuit of growth and support for the local arts community, we seek to nurture appreciative, diverse audiences by contributing entertaining, thought-provoking dance works to the Houston arts scene.
About Dance Source Houston
Dance Source Houston is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization dedicated to empowering the diverse individuals and organizations working in the field of dance throughout the Greater Houston region by means of advocacy, inclusive community engagement and support services. Founded in 2005, Dance Source Houston is a resource for all things dance in the Greater Houston area and provides programs and services to address the evolving needs of the local dance community. Dance Source Houston is funded in part support from The City of Houston through the Houston Arts Alliance, the Cullen Trust for the Performing Arts, Houston Endowment, and Texas Commission on the Arts. www.dancesourcehouston.org
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