Made in Houston is a choreographic initiative designed to establish creative development space for Houston based choreographers and support dancemakers who are looking to engage with their peers, and expand their roster of dancers while developing a supportive and informed audience for their work.

With bedrock support from Houston Endowment, Houston Met Dance has been empowered to retool their 26+ year history of dance production through the company model and transition to artist centered programming that provides: Creative Residencies, Workshops, Space Grants, and Presenting opportunities that inspire the practice, creation and presentation of dance in Houston.

Our 2024/2025 Made in Houston activity is supported by Houston Endowment INC, Dance Source Houston, Texas Commission on the Arts, National Endowment for the Arts and the city of houston through Houston Arts Alliance. We are grateful for their support and the support of our Houston Met Dance patrons, Staff, Faculty, Students, administrators and Artists.

It is all of us working and believing together that create the holistic support that is essential for these programs to exist. Programs that assist independent dancemakers, organizations and companies in continuing the creation, rehearsal and presentation of their work.

Scroll down to see what our resident and Guest artists are up to …

Workshop and Jam facilitators: Brian Buck and Persi Mey

Each month with feature a facilitated workshop at 6:30pm,

followed by an Open Jam Space from 7:30 - 9:30pm

Fall dates:

FRiday November 8th

Friday December 13th

There are many ways of defining the dance form Contact Improvisation. Here More information available on the contact quarterly website

Contact Improvisation is an evolving system of movement initiated in 1972 by American choreographer Steve Paxton. The improvised dance form is based on the communication between two moving bodies that are in physical contact and their combined relationship to the physical laws that govern their motion—gravity, momentum, inertia. The body, in order to open to these sensations, learns to release excess muscular tension and abandon a certain quality of willfulness to experience the natural flow of movement. Practice includes rolling, falling, being upside down, following a physical point of contact, supporting and giving weight to a partner.

Contact improvisations are spontaneous physical dialogues that range from stillness to highly energetic exchanges. Alertness is developed in order to work in an energetic state of physical disorientation, trusting in one's basic survival instincts. It is a free play with balance, self-correcting the wrong moves and reinforcing the right ones, bringing forth a physical/emotional truth about a shared moment of movement that leaves the participants informed, centered, and enlivened.

—early definition by Steve Paxton and others, 1970s,
from CQ Vol. 5:1, Fall 1979

Additional resources, articles and information on Contact Improvisation:

• Contact Quarterly

• Texas Dance Improvisation Festival

• TDIF JAM GUIDLINES

• The 4 Rules That Will Get You Through Your First Contact Improvisation Class, Dance Magazine, Jan. 2018

• A Beginner's Guide to Contact Improvisation, Dance Spirit, July 2019

Jasmine Hearn is a migrating interdisciplinary artist, director, performer, choreographer, organizer, doula, and teacher. They are committed to performance as an expansive practice that includes a spectrum of dance and somatic traditions and techniques, sound design, garment design, and the archiving of matrilineal memories. They give gratitude to Spirit, their mothers and aunties, and all the mothering Black people who have supported their moving, remembering body. 

Hearn has performed their work at venues such as the Kelly Strayhorn Theater, Pittsburgh, PA (2021); New York Live Arts, New York, NY (2021); Moody Center for the Arts at Rice University, Houston, TX (2021); Danspace Project, New York, NY (2019, 2017); and BAAD! Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance, Bronx, NY (2016). They have also performed with the companies Helen Simoneau Danse, Urban Bush Women, and David Dorfman Dance, among others, and collaborated with many artists, including Holly Bass, Maria Bauman, Marjani Forté-Saunders, Gerard & Kelly, Vanessa German, Li Harris, Bill T. Jones, Solange Knowles, Ayanah Moor, Lovie Olivia, Staycee Pearl, Alesandra Seutin, and Alisha B. Wormsley.

Hearn is the recipient of a Cynthia Hazen Polsky and Leon Polsky Rome Prize in Design with collaborator Athena Kokoronis of Domestic Performance Agency (2023), a Creative Capital Award (2022), New York Dance and Performance “Bessie” Awards for Outstanding Performer (2021, 2017), a Jerome Hill Artist Fellowship (2019), and Foundation for Contemporary Arts Emergency Grants (2022, 2017). They have been awarded residencies through Movement Research, New York, NY; Pittsburgh Foundation, Pittsburgh, PA; and the Camargo Foundation, Cassis, France.

Hearn, born and raised on occupied lands now known as Houston, TX, studied dance and sound with a multitude of teachers, including their sister, cousins, aunties, instructors, and friends at family events, church, and took class at the Houston Metropolitan Dance Center. They have also been greatly influenced by teachers, mentors, and collaborators, including Byronné J Hearn, Claudette Nickens Johnson, Joy KMT, Barbara Mahler, Pamela Pietro, Kendra Portier, Samita Sinha, Sandra Organ Solis, jhon r. stronks, Sherie van den Wijngaard, Charmaine Warren, Marýa Wethers, Bennalldre Williams, Marlies Yearby, and Jawole Willa Jo Zollar. Hearn received a B.A. from Point Park University.

Follow NMLY.dance

@loriyuilldance | @nmlydance | @lady_nic83

Made In Houston Artist Persi Mey's Riddles Three performs in this year's Barnstorm Dance Fest April 29 - May 3rd. Riddles Three will be performing How We Move Together, a quartet that navigates the space between herd mentality and individualism.

The work premieres on Barnstorm Dance Fests Program A on April 29 & May 2 @ 7:30pm.

Persi is a multifaceted movement artist originally from the metro Detroit area. They have trained in many movement styles including: Modern, tap, jazz, contemporary, breaking, muay thai, capoeira, and ballet- the culmination of which has shaped their sense of exploring connection and athletic nature. In addition to movement, Persi enjoys costume creation and often incorporates their original designs into their performance works.

After receiving their BFA in contemporary dance from Indiana University, with a portion of their studies being spent internationally at the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance, Persi moved to Kansas City where they performed as a company member in both City in Motion Dance Theater and Tristian Griffin Dance Company.
Now based in Houston, they are creating works as an artist in residence at the Houston Metropolitan Dance Center, and performing with Urban Souls Dance Company.

Artistic Statement

Why do we hide the effort? In this piece I explore the relationship between physical exertion in the act of performing and the performance itself by fighting my ego’s want to equate mastery and ease. Only by letting go of how we think we should be can we discover what we could be. 

@persimey | @_riddles_three_

Join Dance Source Houston for Barnstorm Dance Fest 2025, happening April 29 - May 3 at Midtown Arts & Theatre Center Houston! Celebrating its 10th edition, Barnstorm showcases the vibrancy of dance in Houston and provides audiences with an exciting sampling of dance genres. Barnstorm Dance Fest showcases the breadth, depth and diversity of dance in Greater Houston and beyond. Don't miss this #HOUdance favorite!

BDF Press Release

katelynhalpern.com | @katelynhalperndotcom 

Guest ArtistS -  slowdanger

Excavating: Practice, Process and Presentation w/ slowdanger

October 18th and 19th - 2024

HMD is excited to be hosting guest artist - slowdanger for a 2 days of Excavating Workshops,

including a Sound Lab and Open Studio! 

Excavating: Practice, Process and Presentation w/ slowdanger

October 18th and 19th - 2024

HMD is excited to be hosting guest artist - slowdanger for a 2 days of Excavating Workshops, including a Sound Lab and Open Studio! 

Location: Houston Met Dance | 4916 Main Street Suite 100, Houston, TX 77002

Schedule:

Friday 10/18 12:30-2:30pm Sound and Movement Lab w/ slowdanger 

$20 pre - registration/ METwork Member Discounts apply**

Come experiment with sound. slowdanger will guide a walk through of their sound gear and facilitate a learning lab where participants play with movement sound to engage in a conversation around sound design for dance.

Saturday 10/19 1:30-3:00pm Movement Workshop / SPI 

$20 pre - registration/ METwork Member Discounts apply**

slowdanger’s ‘SPI’ is an explorational movement experience accompanied by an evolving sound score. Inspired by their studies in somatic practices, BodyMindCentering, Laban Movement Analysis, Movement Theater, Corporeal Mime, improvisational and compositional studies, slowdanger guides participants to investigate non-verbal processing mechanisms through movement, groove, and sensory stimulus. SPI is designed as an open-level practice. It challenges participants to explore connections to body, sound, and their environment. These connections are used to play, investigate, and regenerate. SPI is an open-level workshop.

Saturday 10/19 6:30pm Open Studio 

Meet the artists and learn about the time they will be spending in Texas as the Inaugural New Work Development Artists In Residence at Texas A&M’s College for Performance, Visualization, and Fine Art!

More about anna and taylor!

anna thompson and taylor knight, are co-founders of Pittsburgh, PA based multidisciplinary performance entity, slowdanger. Since 2013, they’ve fused sound and movement through improvised, contemporary and postmodern dance frameworks using found material, vocalization, emerging technology and ontological examination to engage in collaborative work. slowdanger continuously transforms its shape to adapt to a variety of different containers. Their performance work has been featured in venues ranging from proscenium theaters and galleries to nightclubs and dive bars in the production of  performances, immersive experiences, soundscores, albums, and open-level workshops/educational initiatives. They’ve been featured in/by Dance Magazine’s “25 to Watch”, Carnegie Museum of Art, Kennedy Center for the Arts, The Warhol Museum, Usine C, and more. They were 2022 awardees of the NPN Creation Fund, Mid-Atlantic Arts CONNECT and NEFA National Dance Project Production Grant for their work, SUPERCELL which premiered at the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center, Kelly Strayhorn Theater, the Flea, and Velocity Dance Center between 2023-2024. They are currently inaugural New Work Development Artists in Residence for Texas A&M’s College of Performance, Visualization, and Fine Art and adjunct faculty at Point Park University’s Conservatory of the Performing Arts.

www.slowdangerslowdanger.com

Spectrum of Strength

An Improvisation Class with Jasmine Hearn

Saturday Afternoon 1:30pm - 2:30pm (60mins)

• November 16th - December 21st

$20 pre-registered/ $22 Walk up

This weekly class is open to all bodies that want to move, remember, and listen. 

Intention is to share an interdisciplinary practice rooted in traditions, practices, and methodologies of improvisation, dance, somatics, performance, preservation, sound composition, garment design, and cooking.

Every Tuesday, we will warm up and attune our bodies – connecting our sensorial experience to memory and imagination. We identify and learn from our individual experiences to source embodiment material that is unique to each of our personal stories. 

We will dance together – following where our bodies want to go. 

together by talking and practicing using the languages

This will be followed by time and space held for play, practice, and craft. As we build creative relationships with one another, there will be space reserved for collaboration to make  multi-dimensional compositions together.

As the facilitator, I am asking

…how can we source familiar rhythms to move caught memory through our bodies with care and attention? 

…how can my / your body use memory, sensation, and imagination as ways to enter embodied practices to articulate story, ancestry, and personal truth?

…how can each of us reference our own spectrum of learning? How can we reference any way we have learned to dance?

You will be asked 

to take care of yourself. 

to move, still, and rest with the body, voice, experience, and space that you have in the present moment.

Houston Met Dance is excited to present everyday more dystopian: entropic playground by Creative Incubation Residency Artists, NMLY.dance under the co-artistic direction of Nicole McNeil and Lori Yuill.  

Houston Met Dance is excited to present everyday more dystopian: entropic playground by Creative Incubation Residency Artists, NMLY.dance under the co-artistic direction of Nicole McNeil and Lori Yuill.  

everyday more dystopian: entropic playground, is a feature length multidisciplinary presentation/installation that explores themes of destruction, nature, environmental impact, and human relationships. The work invites the audience to consider “what’s next” as it traverses a dystopian landscape incited by the kinetic energy in loss. The performances  feature projection design by Brian Buck and a collaboratively development set installation initiated by multidisciplinary artist Katelyn Halpern’s 2 part World Building workshops that were offered in early September.

entropic playground is part of Nicole and Lori’s 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. The process for this body of work takes a deep dive into the archive to revive and reprise dances and phrases that were created between 2020 and 2023 with the goal to draw out new stories and meaning. As the work evolves, each presentation is shaped by a botanical sound score and projection design.

Performance Details:

When: November 15th, 22nd, 23rd, 29th and 30th @ 8:00pm

Where: Houston Met Dance, Phoenix Studio Theatre, 4916 Main Street, Suite 100 Houston, Texas 77002

Tickets:

$20 at the door

***Online tickets are no longer available for saturday November 30th | Tickets are still available at the door.

Support:
This production is presented as part of Houston Met Dance’s Made in Houston programming and supported by Houston Endowment Inc, Dance Source Houston, Texas Commission on the Arts, National Endowment for the Arts and The City of Houston through Houston Arts Alliance.

Excavating: Practice, Process and Presentation/ Movement Research Week with NMLY.dance and Guest Artist Katelyn Halpern

September 16th - 20th 

Workshop days and times: Monday - Friday 9:30p - 3:00pm

Open House/ Informal Showing: Friday September 20th @ 3:00p

Full Workshop - $150

Day Pass - $30

***MetWork Membership discounts applied at checkout

Workshop Description:

Description:

This week is built on the movement research that informs NMLY.dance's current project "everyday more dystopian", a performance work that aims 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.

Through daily classes, movement research and workshop sessions NMLY.dance will engage participants in experiments and explorations of liminal spaces: the space between narrative and abstraction, the space between visual image and moving image, the space between nature and technology.

This week also includes 2 workshops with Guest Artist Katelyn Halpern on Wednesday and Thursday.

• World Building Part I: honestly, when is it not a disaster. - A process talk with the artist on constructing worlds with and within unease (but in a fun way!) with available materials and meticulous intuition. Guided reflection and conversation included. (offered Wednesday September 18th 11a - 1p)

• World Building Part II: whose imagination are you living in? - A sandbox for affirmative world building based on available materials and meticulous intuition. This is a making/doing session (again, in a fun way!) (offered Thursday September 19th 1p - 3p)

Morning Class faculty includes HMD resident artist Persi Mey who will offer their weekly Open Contemporary Practice Classes as part of this movement research week.

Daily Schedule:

9:30a Morning Class/ Somatics

11:00a Morning workshop session

12:00p Lunch Break

1:00p Afternoon workshop session

3:00p Public Showing (Friday only)

About NMLY.dance:

After many years in the studio together Nicole McNeil and Lori Yuill are working collaboratively to meld their creative practices. NMLY.dance is a convergence of their individual studio practices and their intersectional interests. NMLY.dance projects explore multimedia performance using dance, projections, and sound design. 

Nicole and Lori’s inaugural project everyday more dystopian takes a deep dive into the archive to revive and reprise dances and phrases that were created over the last 3 years with the goal to draw out new stories and meaning.  As the work evolves, it is being shaped by a botanical sound score and projection design. They are also entering this project with a desire to deepen their collaborative practice, calling on multiple voices to shape the direction of the new work. Their goal is to meld their different artistic practices together in order to build a new world for the audience to experience.

About Katelyn Halpern

Katelyn Halpern is a multidisciplinary artist, curator, and facilitator from Austin, Texas living in Jersey City, New Jersey. Trained as a dancer and writer and self-taught in other media, she works in installations, performance, multimedia visual art, and the written word on subjects of peace/not peace, intimate relationship, space dust, possibility-freedom-futures, and the experience of moving through the world in a feminine body. Hailed as a “compelling conceptual artist,” “mischief maker,” and “born searcher,” (Jersey City Times), she is a 2024 Rabbinic Arts Fellow, a 2024 Interdisciplinary Arts Finalist and 2023 Choreography Finalist with the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, a New Jersey Performing Arts Center Jersey New Moves Fellow (2019-2022), a Dresher Ensemble Artist in Residence (2020), Hambidge Fellow (2016), and the inaugural Choreographers in Residency Program (CHiRP) choreographer at County Prep High School (2017). She has presented at galleries, parks, sidewalks, call-in lines, and theaters including BAM Fisher, Deep Space Gallery, Gibney, NJPAC, Gallery Aferro, Philadelphia Contemporary, Omaha's Under the Radar Festival, and San Francisco's Switchboard Presents, and been commissioned by Jersey City's Exchange Place Alliance. She is the founding artistic director of SMUSH Gallery, an art space dedicated to creative and community work in Jersey City. - Website: katelynhalpern.com | Instagram: @katelynhalperndotcom

About Persi Mey

Persi Mey is a movement artist based in Houston, Texas. Their work is informed by a variety of athletic styles including: contemporary, breaking, tap, jazz, modern, muay thai, and ballet. They create for both stage and film; Notably having had their work shown at the Blaffer Museum in Houston, the Tanzahoi Film Festival in Hamburg, Germany, and the Barciff Indie Film Festival in Barcelona, Spain. Persi grew up in Clawson, Michigan and relocated to Houston in 2022 after spending a couple of years in Kansas City, Missouri. They received their BFA in Contemporary Dance from Indiana University ‘20. During their undergrad, they also had the opportunity to spend a year studying on scholarship at The Rothberg International School at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem and at the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance. Instagram: @persi_mey

About Excavating Workshops and Research Weeks:

Houston Met Dance offers Excavating workshops and research weeks to support dancemakers  who are interested in sharing their practice and process with the public through workshops and classes that culminate in documented presentations. The program is part of HMD;s choreographic initiative Made In Houston and designed to support artists who are looking to engage with their peers, and expand their roster of dancers while developing a supportive and informed audience for their work.

Excavating Practice, Process and Presentation with

NMLY.dance, Katelyn Halpern and Persi Mey

Friday September 20th, 3:00pm 

Houston Met Dance, 4916 Main Street

Free and open to the public. 

Join NMLY.dance, Katelyn Halpern and Persi Mey for an afternoon showing of work in progress. This showing is the culminating event of the week long Excavating: Practice, Process and Presentation Research Week. 

Workshop participants will showcase the movement research they have been engaging in over the week with NMLY.dance co-Artistic Directors Nicole McNeil and Lori Yuill. Katelyn Halpern will offer "A Ritual Ceremony for Becoming Several Types of Beast" inviting the audience to imagine, witness, and enact seven steps of transformation and to consider -- what beast are you to become, out of necessity or of your choosing? Audiences are encouraged to wear or bring clothes of all one color; other materials will be provided. The showing will also include the premiere screening of a new dance film “Bear-ied”, a dark comedy by Persi Mey. 

Houston Met Dance offers Excavating workshops, research weeks and presentations to support dancemakers  who are interested in sharing their practice and process with the public through workshops and classes that culminate in documented presentations. The program is part of HMD;s choreographic initiative Made In Houston and designed to support artists who are looking to engage with their peers, and expand their roster of dancers while developing a supportive and informed audience for their work.

Question? Contact Office@metdance.org

Excavating Contemporary Practice, Process and Presentation is a contemporary workshop series that activates the dance making and sharing process.

Each 5 class series culminates with an informal public showing in Houston Met Dance’s Phoenix Studio Theatre.

These workshops are available for registration Workshop participants that are interested in participating in the informal showing should be prepared to stay for the rehearsal period. There is no additional registration required to participate in the Rehearsal or Showing.

Please contact classes@metdance.org if you have any questions.

Workshop (6:30 - 8:00pm), Rehearsal (8:00 - 9:30pm)

Workshop registration can be found our Open Adult Class Schedule.