Best in Ten

Sandra Organ Dance Company

Miller Outdoor Theatre

May 31, 2008

by Nancy Wozny

These are not easy days to start a dance company, and they weren't much better ten years ago when Sandra Organ launched her company, The Sandra Organ Dance Company. It's a testament to her integrity and strength that she has kept it going this past decade. To celebrate her decade of dance making, SODC presented a retrospective of work of the past ten seasons at Miller Outdoor Theatre this past Saturday night. Organ collected a selection of her work that demonstrated the companies many moods and styles in an overall pleasing, if a bit too long, evening of dance.

A suite from Jose Limon's A Time to Dance is as good a way to begin an evening of dance as I can think of, and it worked well as dusk came on the grassy fields around Miller. The sight of 11 stalwart dancers linked in a circle galvanized the buzzy crowd immediately. I think even the babies quieted down for an instant. Since acquiring this suite of dances for the SODC annual Black History Month concert, SODC has presented several opportunities to view this modern dance masterwork. Certainly, the mounting of this piece is a gift to Houston dance audiences. The troupe performed nobly despite the dancer's varied training in the Limon technique. Vincent James danced with exactitude in “A time to be born and a time to die.” Richard Hubscher, Madonna Bauch, Shelley Walker, and Lauren Perrone handled Limon's intricate details with clarity in “A time to plant and a time to pluck up that which has been planted.”   Perrone exuded fiery presence in her solo “A time to hate, a time of war.”  The ensemble delivered an eloquent ending to Limon's historic work in “A time to love...a time of peace.”

Although Organ's ballet lineage is present in all of her work, she's built her reputation as a contemporary choreographer who focuses on themes of deep meaning and significance to her own life and the lives of others. (She was the Houston Ballet's first African American dancer.) In Prayer for the Farm Worker (2008), she utilizes text from Cesar Chavez, the legendary farm organizer, to create a moving portrait of a man and his work. Paola Georgudis' fluid and liquid dancing melded exquisitely with Organ's wide sweeping moves. Doubletakes (1999) consisted of three jazzy duets nicely performed by Richard Hubscher and Cassandra Shaffer, Vincent James and Madonna Bauch, and Georgudis and Jairo Lastre. The South Americans win gold here as Georgudis and Lastre's steamy chemistry wowed the crowd.

Bolt (2000) showed Organ in a whimsical circus mood while Luciernagas (2003), To the Thawing Wind (2003), and Ramble (2002), demonstrated Organ's penchant for crafting pleasing abstract pieces that fall more into a classic modern dance vocabulary. Creation (1999) and Remember (2004) both suffered from a too-literal approach to using text.

Dallas Black Dance Theatre guest artist Melissa M. Young held court in Donald McKayle's 1972 classic Angelitos Negros.  Organ's longstanding interest in bringing the work of American Dance legends is commendable and rare for a small dance company.

The middle of the evening featured a video retrospective of Organ's work over the past decade, revealing an astonishing body of work. The city owes a tip of the hat to this prolific artist who has continued to create work through the ups and downs of the Houston dance world.

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