NobleMotion Dance announced that it is among a select group of regional artists and organizations to receive a Mid-America Arts Alliance Artistic Innovations grant. This award will support NobleMotion's newest production Catapult at The Hobby Center on August 25 & 26, 2017. NobleMotion Dance will also be involved in providing outreach programming through an outreach series called Structura: Dance Meets Design, for 9-17 years olds to engage with professional designers and choreographers in the construction of their own movement and structural designs in the Houston area.
Funding for NobleMotion M-AAA's grant is drawn from generous underwriting by the National Endowment for the Arts, the Texas Commission on the Arts, and foundations, corporations, and individuals throughout Arkansas, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, Oklahoma, and Texas.
Mid-America Arts Alliance, the nation's oldest regional arts organization, was founded in 1972 to foster cultural growth in heartland communities. Today, M-AAA primarily serves communities throughout Arkansas, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, Oklahoma, and Texas, and it develops and delivers arts and humanities programs for a national audience. Mid-America Arts Alliance programs attract more than one million people annually in more than 300 communities.
Todd Stein, M-AAA's Chief Executive Officer said, "NobleMotion Dance is to be commended for their commitment to serving their community with this distinctive event. Audiences in Houston will have the opportunity to see the exciting work of NobleMotion Dance, many for the first time. Mid-America Arts Alliance is proud to help support this work and NobleMotion."
More About Catapult
NobleMotion Dance is flying high in Catapult an evening of daring jungle gym choreography. NobleMotion has partnered with an industrial designer to create 5 custom built interactive sets, reimagined from everyday structures, that shape the space and offer new terrain challenges for the dancers. Deconstructed tunnels, flipping doors, and a 12-foot spinning/teetering stone mill are a few of the landscapes. Each structure will offer surfaces for projection mapping and will be engineered as a surreal dancer obstacle course, providing innovative ways to climb, swing, and vault. It's a physically exciting show; think dance meets parkour with a dash of cirque.
Stone Mill: Ziggurat, a world premiere in collaboration with Jared Doster and David J Deveau, is inspired by the structural feats of early civilizations. Dancers construct a 12-foot stone mill structure on stage and portray a societal hierarchy from laborers to deities. At times mythical, Ziggurat has an old-world feel and showcases the dancers' physicality and teamwork. Ziggurat will be the first dance made for a new mix of dancers as NobleMotion is welcoming several fresh faces to the company this season.
Doors: Portal reimagines how doorways can be used as dancers jump through memories to pivotal moments of life. Two doors transform into a table, a seesaw, and ramps as scenes of children playing, love teetering, and family conflict unfold. Some moments nostalgic and others surprising, portal comments on the universal nature of love and loss. Choreography and set concept by Andy Noble, industrial engineering by Jared Doster, projection design by Jonathan Kinsey, and light design by Bryan Ealey define the world.
Tunnels: Aorta is a female take on the superhero genre and plays with the notion that "behind every good man is a woman." Choreographed by Dionne Sparkman Noble in collaboration with light artist Bryan Ealey, Aorta uses tunnels to excavate a relationship rife with complexities. "It's like looking into a telescope at a hero's moment of weakness," states Sparkman Noble. The tunnels and cyclical movement create an illusory effect that draw the eye deeper into the action as the dancers propel through lifts and momentarily dance sideways on concave walls.
Ramps: Echo is a dynamic and socially conscious work that examines a war torn community. Composed in two parts, Echo features 25 dancers storming down ramps into the chaos of battle. It continues NobleMotion's trend of putting big visceral dance on stage. The second section, an introspective duet, shows a couple left picking up the pieces. The juxtaposition of the two sections speaks to the world's current challenges as well as the endurance of the human spirit.
Chamber: Last Flight Home quietly looks at the final moments of a loved ones battle with terminal illness, specifically cancer. Using a striking set comprised of a glass chamber, hanging plastic, and a large digital clock, images of childhood memories wrap themselves around abstracted CT scans and chemo treatments. Last Flight Home uses techniques from theater of the absurd to question the meaning of life. "It is a thoughtful work," states Andy Noble, "it slows down time and takes you to still waters." Set and light design is by Noble and David Deveau and projection design is by Jonathan Kinsey.
Photo credit: Lynn Lane
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