The hand was quicker than the eye at the 15th Annual Weekend of Texas Contemporary Dance’s September 25 performance at Houston’s Miller Outdoor Theater. A black tee on a hip hop dancer in “A Different Same Old Thing”, a smartly group-set piece by History Dance Company, magically morphed into a sporty wind-breaker as he was joined by the male company’s identically-dressed members for the piece’s take ‘em down finale. More spectacle arrived in the program’s third selection, “Thread” choreographed by veteran Amy Ell on Vault.

“Thread” takes our eyes from the floor upward in a hypnotic display of aerial pyrotechnics.  White swaths of shimmering fabric hang swag-like  from stage-left and -right spikes so that they meet at the floor bracketing a black backdrop. Four dancers flat on the floor are tethered together by the white skirt train descending from their costumes. Others are revealed behind them when they roll, rise and move into their preparation to ascend the spiked cloth, now forming four equidistant vertical columns.  Draped in white, the climbers wrap themselves in more of it as they slowly make their way up the columns, now scaling, now shimmying back down a foot or two, braking only to cambré back or extend all four limbs so that they are held only by the random wrap of the cloth’s stalactite-like columns.  A score arranged by Firat Ozsoy marries B.A.C.H. by Deirdre with Tejina by Aus and the result is spellbinding. It tempers our fear into faith as we witness the dancers-cum-aerialists hang from the heights.

Other works on the evening’s program draw inspiration from more traditional dance forms.  A standout is “Dichotomy” by Spencer Gavin Hering to Opera composed by Emmanuel Santaromana, danced by Paola Georgudis and Lindsey McGill. Georgudis is a Chilean dancer who was a founding member of Dominic Walsh Dance Theater and McGill has danced with several contemporary companies since graduating from Houston Ballet Academy under Ben Stevenson. Wearing white pants and black tops, their dichotomy is founded in sculptured poses abandoned in favor of sudden directional shifts and recoil movements that send equal and opposite waves through their bodies just a beat behind the tempo.  Also outstanding is “Village of Waltz” by Jane Weiner, danced limpidly by Hope Stone Dance. HSD members have fashioned themselves into an admirable ensemble deftly led by Bonnie Collins, Spencer Gavin Hering and Brit Wallace.  The piece will be seen in its full version later this season at the Cullen.  Here we saw triad chassés to jazz piano in a score composed and performed by Peter Jones, free-wheeling movement adroitly foreshortened by adage combinations.

Former Houston Ballet dancer Caleb Mitchell gave us a swirling tempera of steps in  “Stirring Simple Gifts in Shades of  Blue” where his circling dancers were costumed in blue, his stirring trio in aquamarine, and he added a splash of purple onto the others to massage this pleasing palette into a more chromatic composition.

Less successful was “Habit is a Cable” by REDDance, choreographed by Meredith Cook and Amanda Jackson and danced by Stephani Herzog and Julie Rowley.  It showed how women can tie themselves up in knots.  Less indication and reliance on a cable prop might take the piece to a better place, balletically.  “Charmed Romantics” by Polly Motley for CORE Performance Company, emerged to explore the theme of romantic couplings, where refinery coveralls androgenized the sexual identities of  dancers who presented with strong work. Such an experimental piece is probably better suited to a more intimate venue.  Urban Souls Dance Company’s “Across the Waters” alludes to the disempowerment that results when we appear to turn in on ourselves, as represented by tribal conflicts in certain of the African nations such as Rwanda and Darfur. Instead  of finding dance vocabulary, choreographers Harrison Guy and Walter J. Hull, lean on frustrated gesture and a scream that comes at the top of the gestures to convey loss of self. This weakens the piece.  Bournonville taught us that the goal of the choreography is to inspire the audience to get up and dance. Contrarily, if the dancers scream in frustration, the audience is not likely to.  “Fray” by former Birmingham Royal Ballet principal Houston Ballet dancer David Justin and danced by Rosalyn Nasky, brings cellist Jeffrey Wang to the stage to accompany Nasky with György Ligeti’s Sonata for Cello Solo. Nasky gives a credible performance, but is hamstrung by the inescapable reality that the music is center stage here, so much so that Justin has her pushing the cellist’s rolling platform by degrees toward center/center, until her movements are literally peripheral to the music.

The film “Tetsujin” featuring a martial artist, Reyie Degado, supported by three dancers in cheerleader-type, two-piece leotards, seems out of place in this lineup. Filming multiple takes offers an unfair advantage over the program’s danced-live works. In this case,  photographic gimmickry also served to detract from the dancers’ predictable “moves”  set in front of what appeared (to this former refinery operator) to  be an oil refinery.

How lucky Houston is to have the Miller Outdoor Theatre and Dance  Source Houston!  This event attracts a working class audience of many nationalities, races and ages, offering access to the arts at a time when we are losing much of what sustains us as a culture.  A Weekend of Texas Contemporary Dance takes its place alongside Houston Ballet and Dance Salad, configuring Houston into a third U.S. dance destination, along with New York and San Francisco. Bravo y‘all!

Toba Singer is a San Francisco Bay Area-based writer who contributes to Dance Europe and Dance Magazine. She is the author of "First Position: a Century of Ballet Artists" (Praeger 2007) and is working on the forthcoming book "Fernando Alonso: the Art and Science of Ballet" (University Press of Florida 2011)

www.tobasinger.com