Photo Courtesy of Psophonia Dance Company

Sophia L. Torres has always loved being onstage, even if that meant playing the Wicked Witch of the West in elementary school. "It was my first big role, and I loved it," she says, even though her mother wasn't too keen on her daughter paying the villain.

As a member of her high school dance team, she was the go-to girl for choreography advice. Her innate understanding of movement caught the attention of a senior member who told her about auditions for the High School for the Performing and Visual Arts. She was accepted and jumped at the chance to dance.

After graduation, she decided to hone her technique at Southern Methodist University where she was exposed to dance artists from the Martha Graham Company, Merce Cunningham and Twyla Tharp. SMU "really opened up my thought process in a positive way," she explains, especially in regards to her own movement style. "I learned that it's OK to be strong, to not necessarily be pretty in my movement, which is earthy. It has punch, as opposed to being light and ethereal."

In addition to teaching at the University of Houston and Houston Community College, and her work with Young Audiences of Houston, Sophia says she "now owns" the fact that she co-directs a professional dance company. She describes Psophonia as "athletic, visual, audience-friendly, and approachable."

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Photo by Wally James

Maggie Lasher is, in a word, vibrant. From the lights and fire that she weaves into her dance performances to the colors she dons around Houston, everything Maggie touches in Houston's art scene seems to glow.

Maggie currently serves as a dance professor at Houston Community College as well as the artistic director of her own company, China Cat Dance. After getting an MA in dance from Case Western University, obtaining an MFA in dance at Sam Houston State, and spending two years teaching in San Antonio, Maggie landed in Houston in August 2010.

Performing came to Maggie early, at a dance studio in her hometown of Flagstaff, Arizona. She always knew she wanted a career in the arts, although in her youth, she "hadn't really fleshed that out, besides 'movie star.'"

High school and college saw Maggie involved in performance art in a number of ways, including costume design, acting, tech theater, choreography, and teaching movement to pre-kindergartners. It was at Sam Houston State that Maggie brought together her various interests into one entity - China Cat Dance.

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Jordan Jaffe, from Asia Studies major to model to founding Black Lab Theatre

What He Does
Jordan Jaffe founded Black Lab Theatre in 2011 while still an undergraduate at Rice University. On the day we spoke, he was preparing for the opening night of Black Lab's most recent play, Chinglish, to be shown at Asia Society Texas Center through May 26.

"I bring new, interesting plays to Houston," he said, before rattling off a plethora of other tasks, from choosing the theater's seasons to working with marketing and development. "I kind of basically do it all."

"I also usually take a creative role, either acting or directing, but with Chinglish, it's been so massive, I am only producing."

Jaffe didn't start out in the theater, though. He originally started school as an Asian Studies major, until a chance encounter turned him on to theater.

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Emanuelee "Outspoken" Bean understands that being a Slam poet isn't for everyone. The process involves performing original work not only for a live audience, but also for a panel of randomly chosen judges who award each poet a competitive score. "A lot of people shy away from it because they say, 'Oh, this is my poem, nobody can judge it; it is what it is.' But the truth is you're getting judged anyway. Even if those people don't have score cards."

A member of the VIP Houston Slam team, Bean describes the Slam process as an unfair game. "But it's so unfair for everybody that no one had an advantage, so it's fair. The reason it's unfair is that you're being judged by someone who has no qualifications. They just walked in a coffee shop, that's their qualifications. And now they get to decide if your poem is any good or not."

Bean and his fellow Slam poets have a favorite trick to level the playing field a bit. "We encourage the audience to boo the judges," he laughs. "Never boo the poet, boo the judges."

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Barry Moore, architect

What He Does
Barry Moore in a Houston-raised architect who has been working for 47 years in the city. He's currently employed by Gensler, one of the largest architecture firms in the country. The company, founded in San Francisco, opened its first branch office in Houston 40 years ago.

Much of Moore's work has serendipitously been focused on institutions of learning. He's done extensive work with the High School for Performing and Visual Arts. He was also the lead architect on the restoration and preservation of the Julia Ideson Library, completed in late 2011. One of his specialities is historic preservation.

Architecture, he says, involves "intense communication with our clients to create new environments. (Architects) really like for buildings to look as nice as they can and maintain easily. You take pride in your projects when they look great."

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What He Does: You may not know it, but Houston actually does have a little bit of a video game design scene. Josh Montoute is one of the people in it. He founded Thinksquirrel in 2011, with an eye toward simplifying the design process for gamemakers and programmers in the realms of developing physics and AI responses. That said, he's not afraid to get his hands dirty and jump in more a more direct approach.

You may remember from a while back hearing about how an Android-based home game console raised more than $8 million on Kickstarter. That's the system, the OUYA, that Montoute sees as the future. His first self-published game, a word game called Wordooly, will soon see its release on OUYA. It's a fast-paced game where players search for and assemble words in an ever-changing grid. Mobile-based gaming has opened up a whole new world that changes the way people play and developers create. Montoute is right there in the middle of it.

Why He Likes It: "I enjoy the ability to create new experiences, more than anything. I use the Unity game engine for just that reason -- it allows a great degree of flexibility for smaller teams and indie developers."

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Photo courtesy Mildred's Umbrella

Ty as "Jeff McCracken in Kimberly Akimbo with Carolyn Houston Boone as "Kimberly Akimbo"

Young actors may not have the best reputation in Hollywood, but 15-year-old Ty Doran thinks that youth can be an advantage in the theater world. Doran, a freshman at Houston's Kincaid School, just finished a run of Samuel Beckett's famous Waiting for Godot with the Catastrophic Theatre playing the role of Boy. "When you're younger, you have more opportunities," Doran said. "When you age you become a specific person. I feel like I haven't really found out what I'm going be yet and that helps me be someone else because I'm not a stock character."

What he does: Doran has graced several Houston stages in a variety of roles. In addition to school productions at Kincaid, Doran was also in the production of Kimberly Akimbo put on by Mildred's Umbrella and a few shows at the Alley Theater including A Christmas Carol and Much Ado about Nothing.

Doran has also participated in screen work, acting in a few student films for students at Rice University, and even providing his voice for the American version of a Japanese anime series called Towa No Quon. Another of his projects, a proposed zombie movie called Ground Dead, never reached the silver screen, but Doran worked on the promotional material and other pre-work for the film.

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Photo by Dat Lam

Gwendolyn Zepeda at the Housotn Indie Book Fair

What She Does
Gwendolyn Zepeda is a writer of novels, children's books, blogs and poetry "and whatever else I feel like." She was recently named Houston's very first Poet Laureate.

Zepeda got her start as a blogger and was a founding writer for the early-internet TV recap blog Television Without Pity, where she recapped Ally McBeal, 7th Heaven and other late-'90s shows.

"That was the first time I was ever paid to write," she said.

In 2000, she sold her first book, a collection of short stories called To the Last Man I Slept with and All the Jerks Just Like Him. However, the book wasn't published until 2004.

"At the time, I didn't understand how long it took for a book to get published. I was going through a divorce, [Tropical Storm] Allison -- I just remember it was a really tumultuous time." Because of that, Zepeda said she thought she'd never write a book again.

"But I can't stop. No stopping."

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For Joseph Walsh, there was never any question of what he would be when he grew up. His older sister was a dancer, and by the time Joseph was three years old he was accompanying her to Nutcracker performances. "I remember being backstage and the snow ended," he says. "I started rolling around in endless piles of snow, and it was the most fun I ever had. From then on, I asked my parents if I could start taking classes."

Lessons in tap, jazz and Modern followed before he started to zero in on his ballet training.

The moment that solidified his path to a professional dance career came at age 14 when he performed at the Lincoln Center in New York City. "It was the first time I performed for more than 200 people at a time." The feeling of being on a stage of such magnitude was one close to euphoria, one he's been chasing ever since.

Since joining the professional company in 2007, Joseph's had the opportunity to dance a wide range of roles. One of his favorites includes his part in Sir Kenneth MacMillian's Manon. "It was the first three-act ballet I had to carry with a female lead. I was one of those things like the Lincoln Center performance where I had to get over this mental stage fright and realize I got this. When the performance was over, it was so satisfying."

He's also recently had acclaimed performances in Stanton Welch's The Rite of Spring and La Bayadere, but it was his leading role in last June's Rome and Juliet that captured our hearts. As Romeo, he displayed the refined elegance and gentle power that has come to characterize his dance.

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Artist Justin Garcia explores every aspect of his art, from its message to the way the human eye sees colors he uses. "Color is a viewable energy, if you will, that the eye can see. When you think about it, color is really made up of wavelengths and frequencies that the eye can detect. It's interesting to know exactly what you're looking at, instead of just accepting it and not bothering to understand it, which is what we mainly do in life."

He was still a teen when he got his first commissions for murals. To be clear, they were unpaid commissions, but commissions nonetheless. "My mother was a faux painter and designer. She would tell clients that if they wanted a mural, her son could paint one. I wasn't getting paid, but I didn't care because I was having fun."

The days of Garcia's working for free have long been over. Art is about creativity, Garcia tells us, but it's also about business. "I don't think a lot of artists like to accept that there's more than just expressing yourself. You have to know how things are and how they work in order to make sure your work gets out there. At the end of the day, it doesn't matter how good you are if nobody knows your name and nobody's seen your work. The business side is extremely important. I get that from my father, who was very into business and also very street smart. "

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