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Tuesday, January 21, 2020

Frame Dance plans a fun look at social anxieties with “Oh, I have to wash my hair” - Houston Chronicle

Forget lame excuses if you think you can skip Frame Dance Company’s “Oh, I have to wash my hair.”

Choreographer Lydia Hance, the company’s founder and artistic director, knows them all.

A self-professed introvert, Hance created the 75-minute dance-theater piece partly to explore her own social anxieties. “It appears to a lot of introverts that the world is full of extroverts,” she says. “I’m always fascinated about what makes people tick… We all concoct narratives about ourselves in the world.”

No one who knows her company would describe it as a shy organization. Frame is pointedly out there. Often working outside the confines of traditional theater spaces, they have staged performances in broad daylight, engaging passers-by on the Galveston pier, on METRORail, in the backs of U-Haul trucks and in downtown tunnels.

Hance planned “Oh, I have to wash my hair” for MATCH’s black box theater partly because she is eight months pregnant and also because she wanted production designer Ashley Horn to have more possibilities. Horn also created the costumes, which involve bathrobes and hair towels.

Hance says there’s plenty of humor, along with “a theme of water and coming up with business to avoid connecting with others.”

Frame Dance’s history of meaningful connections with composers goes back nearly a decade. Hance acquires music for the company’s productions by organizing a national competition each year. Three of the four 2019 winners contributed to “Oh, I have to wash my hair” — the Shepherd School’s Jake Sandridge and New Yorkers Paul Kerekes and Hannah Selin.

Singer/songwriter Alli Villines, cellist Patrick Moore and Sandridge (on piano) will perform along with the dancers. “It’s almost a musical or a dance opera,” Hance says. “We’re exploring a different direction musically. There’s so much singing in it.”

This isn’t the first time Hance has produced a show during a pregnancy. Her toddler Micah decided to join the world during a dress rehearsal three and a half years ago. Her second child, a daughter, is due in early March. “Being pregnant has forced me to rely more on my collaborators,” she says. “It’s taught me a lot. The show becomes so much more fruitful when I force myself to let go.”

Frame Dance performs “Oh, I have to wash my hair” at 8 p.m. Friday; $25 (dress rehearsal 8 p.m. Thursday, $10); MATCH, 3400 Main; 832-781-0808, framedance.org.

molly.glentzer@chron.com

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Frame Dance plans a fun look at social anxieties with “Oh, I have to wash my hair” - Houston Chronicle
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