Dominic Walsh steps out with METdance
Ask Dominic Walsh how old he is, and he answers quickly, laughing. “104,” he says. Actually, he’s 47, but he feels as though he has lived several lives already. After a long career with Houston Ballet, where he was a principal dancer, Walsh ran his own contemporary company for 12 years, creating much of the choreography.
Dominic Walsh Dance Theater had rigorous standards, beautiful dancers, a distinctive style and lofty ambitions, but Walsh ultimately shut it down in 2015, frustrated by the always tenuous business of operating a small company.
Since then he has kept a low profile, staying afloat with freelance gigs in other cities while working full time as a single dad to a beautiful daughter, Vivianna, who is now 3.
In a funny way, Vivi brought him back to the scene: Walsh reconnected with METdance artistic director Marlana Doyle 18 months ago while their daughters shared a toddlers’ music class. She invited him to come play with her dancers and found the funding to make it happen.
Their 30-minute “Aurum,” choreographed to a commissioned score by Two Star Symphony, premieres Friday at Hobby Center’s Zilkha Hall.
METdance might have seemed a poor stylistic match for Walsh 10 years ago. Its diverse repertoire included jazz and hip-hop, whereas Walsh grounded his aesthetic in European contemporary ballet. But the Met, as locals call it, has evolved. Doyle and executive director Michelle Smith, determined to be taken seriously, have firmly established their company as Houston’s only “mid-size” dance organization, with an annual budget of $1.25 million — thanks largely to its popular school.
The Met operation included the school and a junior company from the start, organized in 1995 from what had been the Delia Stewart Dance Company and Center. Its nine salaried dancers and three apprentices now have 36-week contracts. They take a company class daily and rehearse in a 5-yearold Midtown studio complex, above the restaurant Weights & Measures, that was many years in the making. They perform seven shows a season in Houston, also touring a bit.
None of that success would mean much, however, without a challenging repertoire. Doyle has networked tirelessly at national conferences to coax leading American dancemakers into the Met’s studios. She pursued New York’s Camille A. Brown for six years before Brown accepted a commission — Brown’s only work in Texas.
A-listers Rosie Herrera, Robert Battle, Larry Kegwin, Kate Skarpetowska, Kiki Lucas and Joshua L. Peugh also have created dances for the company, and like other companies of its size across the country, the Met supports new talent with an emerging-artist program.
Walsh’s “Aurum” shares the stage next weekend with a premiere by up-and-comer Robbie Moore, an HSPVA and Juilliard graduate who participated in METdance’s emergingartist program and currently performs with Belgian superstar Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui’s company, Eastman. METdance will also share a collaboration with Dallas’ Bruce Wood Dance Project, choreographed by Bridget L. Moore.
All that makes for some dynamic intersections. So running into Doyle at the toddlers’ music class was fortuitous for Walsh. To enable his residency, she applied for a prestigious Mid-America Arts Grant, and got it.
“It was time for him to create again now that he’s in a comfortable place with Vivi,” she said.
Having months to develop a piece with a group of dancers was almost like having his own company again. “It’s given me time to get to know them, which is really nice,” Walsh said. “Often, you go in for two weeks and make a piece, and that’s it. Since I live here, I’ve had the luxury of letting them reveal themselves to me.”
“Aurum,” the new dance’s title, refers to a homeopathic remedy made of gold to treat depression. Walsh said he was also thinking about the Japanese tradition of kintsukuroi, which involves breaking ceramic objects and filling the cracks with gold, to make them more valuable.
Both ideas are metaphors for themes that have fascinated him for years: the creative process and the dual role creators of any kind play. “The most poignant work is kind of private,” he said. “Yet, in our culture, the creative person also has to wear this other hat as the entertainer — the very personable, upbeat person you want to support.”
The narrative isn’t literal, although a protagonist emerges. And it’s not only drawn from his experience and the dancers’: Walsh loves any chance to collaborate with Two Star Symphony.
“Their music just has such rich character and complex emotions, funny and sad and heavy, all the things we live with,” he said. “It feels like the life of an artist when I listen to them.”
His own life as an artist is not so easy to describe.
This is his first premiere in more than two years. (The last was in January 2016, for Seattle’s Whim W’Him contemporary company.) He stages ballets for Ben Stevenson occasionally at small companies across the country and spends a few weeks each summer coaching at the Colorado Conservatory of Dance.
Walsh also draws and paints quite well, although he has only returned to that recently because it’s something he can do while his daughter is sleeping. He recently designed the costumes for a new production of Ben Stevenson’s “Cinderella” that the National Ballet of China will unveil in September — a big commission that required making 70 watercolor renderings.
“I never really identified as just one thing, a dancer or a choreographer or a teacher. I always felt there were other things,” he said.
He’s thrilled to be creating dance again and loved the Met experience. But for now, with no regrets, his most constant identity is “Dad.”