Straight Outta Huntsville: NobleMotion Dance's KinkyKool Choreography

NobleMotion's Photo Box D with lighting by Jeremy Choate

​Huntsville might seem an unlikely base for a contemporary dance company, but choreographers Andy Noble and Dionne Sparkman Noble aren't looking for a safety net. In their mission statement, they say they want to challenge both their own boundaries and those of their dancers and collaborators. On Friday night they accomplished that and more at the Barnevelder Movement/Arts Complex with a cutting-edge program of formally sophisticated and socially provocative dances. For us, it's the most exciting dance news of the summer.

The married couple has performed as a duo for more than a decade, assembling a pick-up company at times, and often creating works for other ensembles. Now that both serve on the faculty of Sam Houston State University, they're devoting their attention to their students and NobleMotion Dance.

The eight-member company debuted at Houston's Big Range Dance Festival in June 2009 and is quickly gaining momentum in the area. "The beginning is always nerve-wracking," Andy Noble said after the show on Friday, "but you have to trust yourself at a rudimentary level." It's thrilling that even though the co-artistic directors are dance professors, their work doesn't have that dull, academic flavor seen on so many other campuses.

Noble didn't take the safe route with this program, thankfully, which contained strong language and plenty of adult themes. Perhaps the most stunning dance was Photo Box D, an apparently abstract piece in which light artist Jeremy Choate created a light installation and set of cues prior to the choreography. Choate is well known in Houston as a lighting designer for dance, and he's accomplished impressive museum and gallery work in Los Angeles, New York, Boston and elsewhere. Right now he's working on a five-year installation at the labyrinthine Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art. In this unique collaboration with NobleMotion, however, his two artistic worlds collide with fascinating results.