Houston's New Hobby Center Gives Home-Grown Dance A Stage - Brief Article

Dance Magazine, June, 2001 by Marene Gustin

While some communities have trouble raising funds for brick and mortar, Houston has a plethora of patrons. First there was the multimillion-dollar Wortham Theater Center, built entirely with private funding during the oil bust of the '80s, and now there is the Hobby Center for the Performing Arts. The $88 million price tag for this 248,000-square-foot behemoth is within 10 percent of being met with next to no government help. Houston's citizens have traditionally given generously to support established groups like the Houston Ballet. But with the building of the Hobby Center, arts patrons are giving the city's up-and-coming choreographers a professional space in which to show their work.

The project began in 1994 when Houston's Theatre Under the Stars (TUTS) wanted to renovate a seventy-year-old music hall. Bud Franks, an arts manager who danced in a Louisiana civic ballet troupe while attending Texas A&M University, was brought in as a consultant. Within two years Franks was head of the Houston Music Hall Foundation, charged with building a state-of-the-art theater. The Hobby Center soon began taking shape on the site of the old hall and should be completed by 2002.

The Robert A.M. Stem design will house two theaters, offices for TUTS and its Humphreys School of Musical Theatre, a 200-seat restaurant, gift shop, and grand lobby, all fronted by three stories of glass overlooking City Hall and the green of Tranquility Park. In an innovative plan, the foundation is building on city-owned land and will donate the theater back to Houston in return for a thirty-year lease. TUTS will be a permanent resident of the 2,650-seat Fayez Sarofim Hall, which will also be a venue for presenting large dance companies like American Ballet Theatre. But it's the smaller Selim K. Zilkha Hall that has Houston's burgeoning dance scene excited.

"Originally," says Franks, "we were going to do a studio or black box." But many of the city's smaller performing companies urged the foundation to create a theater they could use. "They wanted a proscenium stage." What they will get is the first 500-seat venue in the downtown Theater District, complete with 150 mezzanine seats, 350 orchestra seats, a thirty-musician pit, four dressing rooms and a 38'x 24' proscenium.

"You can only do this once," says Franks. "We want to make this building relevant to the community. That's worth the extra $10 million," he says, referring to the additional money the small theater cost. The added expense certainly hasn't gone unappreciated. Some fifteen to twenty dance companies are already lined up for a shot at the space.

"I keep calling every month to check on the progress," says Sandra Organ, the first African American ballerina with Houston Ballet. The Houston native is now head of Sandra Organ Dance Company, and has done a lot to increase Houston's appreciation for home-grown dance. "I just hope they don't price us out."

Rates for Zilkha Hall haven't been determined, but Franks assures dancers that the foundation is committed to showcasing local groups and may even present a dance series that would help underwrite smaller companies' costs.