Dance Houston presents Special Salute to Legacy Teaching Dance Artists for the 14th Annual Celebration of Dance

 

 

Come see a dazzling evening of awards and performances at The Wortham Center as Dance Houston’s  presents their 14th Annual Celebration of Dance on Saturday, November 5, 2016, at 8:00 p.m.

Dance Houston will honor Mary Martha Lappe, Mitshi Shen, and the late great Patsy Swayze. There will also be feature performances by Houston Ballet, Met Dance, Dance of Asian America, HSPVA, Houston Ballet, The Houston Dance Lab, Inertia Dance Company, Lilly Grove Missionary Baptist Church, Lunchbox Dance Crew, METdance, Nritya Dance Company, Pretty Cultured, Swing, Baby, Swing!, and Wheeler Avenue Baptist Church.

Tickets range from $45.50 – $95.50. VIP benefits include preferred seating and a pre-concert reception beginning at 6 p.m. in the grand foyer.

The evening will feature a vignette performance of Swing, Baby, Swing!, a new musical production by Norma Miller, a woman whose strong determination through God and faith had the wherewithal to become the best queen of the Lindy Hop.  Swing, Baby, Swing! features music inspired by the legends of the Big Band Era Count Basie, Chick Webb, Louis Armstrong and Ethel Waters.

MORE ON THE HONOREES: 

Honoree Mary Martha Lappe is a dancer, choreographer, teacher and writer who served as HSPVA’s Founding Dance Chair for 25 years and HSPVA Friends Founding Executive Director for 15 years. She authored and implemented the State of Texas’s first dance curriculum and raised several million dollars in private support for young artists and special arts projects at HSPVA including a fifteen-year campaign for a new HSVA facility in Downtown Houston.Lappe has appeared in the national touring companies of West Side Story, Brigadoon, and Wish You Were Here!, and has choreographed hundreds of works for dance and theatre companies.

Patsy Swayze is a choreographer, dancer, and teacher whose kind heart and Swayze School of Dance helped to build the careers of many successful dancers including Dwight Baxter, Kathy Singleton, Leanna Sparacino, ten-time Tony Award winner Tommy Tune, and her son Patrick Swayze.

Mitsi Shen is a graduate of the Beijing Dance Academy who founded Mitsi Dancing School in Houston in 1984 after immigrating to the USA from China where she was a principal dancer and teacher for the Shanghai Dance Troupe and Academy. She and her daughter, Janie Yao, led Mitsi Dancing School to the Quarter Finals of America’s Got Talent at Radio City Music Hall in 2013. Mitsi Dancing School has since changed new owners but Mitsi Shen’s legacy carries on in Dance of Asian America – a non-profit founded by Janie Yao and Mitsi Shen to promote and preserve the rich cultural heritage of China through authentic and contemporary dance reaching over 50,000 people annually.

Details on tickets , go to www.dancehouston.org.