Our History
The Origins & Early Breakthroughs
Artistic Directors Andy and Dionne Noble relocated to Houston in the fall of 2008 to join the faculty at Sam Houston State University. Drawn by the region’s robust dance community, Andy met lighting designer Jeremy Choate in the spring of 2009 at the American College Dance Association premiere of his work, Barrier. This fast friendship sparked a shared vision to launch a new dance company dedicated to innovative collaborations. NobleMotion Dance made its official debut at Houston’s Big Range Dance Festival in June 2009. The performance earned immediate critical acclaim, with critic Neil Ellis Orts noting that the company exhibited an extraordinary athleticism and was a name to watch. Rapidly rising in the regional scene, NobleMotion received invitations to perform with Dance Houston, the Weekend of Texas Contemporary Dance, and the JCC’s Triple Focus. Reflecting on this meteoric rise, critic Nancy Wozny hailed NobleMotion as “the company to gush about” in her 2010 year-in-review.
Interdisciplinary Innovations & Milestone Performances
In the fall of 2011, NobleMotion partnered with Jeremy Choate to present an evening of nine interactive light installations. Titled Splitting Night: An Evening of Dance and Light, the production was named by critic Theodore Bale as the “don’t miss it” dance event of the season. The company continued its technological exploration the following fall with Spitting Ether, an evening celebrated by critics as an imaginative and exciting fusion of dance and technology. Collaborating with the Austin-based band My Education, NobleMotion presented Collide at The Hobby Center’s Zilkha Hall in downtown Houston in 2013. The company nearly sold out the venue for two consecutive nights, which was a rare box-office feat for a hometown contemporary dance company.
Primetime Success: American Crime
In 2015, Andy and Dionne Noble’s choreography was selected for the Emmy Award-winning and Golden Globe-nominated ABC primetime drama, American Crime. Working alongside Academy Award winner John Ridley, the Nobles choreographed a four-minute dance filmed entirely in a single take. Captured via a state-of-the-art NFL wire camera, the choreography was uniquely integrated to deepen the series’ dramatic narrative arc. Set to an original composition by Mark Isham, the episode aired on February 3, 2016. The broadcast marked a significant milestone for the art form, bringing modern dance into the primetime spotlight for over four million viewers.
Expanding Technology & Community Engagement
Grounded in a mission to engage the community and broaden dance audiences, NobleMotion partnered with Houston’s ER Jewish Community Center and the Holocaust Museum Houston in 2016. The resulting evening of poetry and dance, L’Dor Vador, chronicled three generations of artists journeying from Holocaust Germany to the stages of Houston. The company was then awarded the prestigious Mid-America Arts Alliance Innovation Grant in 2017 to collaborate with industrial engineers on Catapult. Pushing choreographic boundaries, NobleMotion presented Vortex in 2018, an evening that seamlessly integrated flying drones, pole-vaulting set pieces, and live-feed video technology. In August 2019, the company entered uncharted artistic territory with the first phase of an ongoing collaboration with Artificial Intelligence. In Man Overboard, the AI technology studied the dancers, generated original video elements, and responded in real time, pushing the contemporary boundaries of machine learning in live performance.
The Intersection of Art and Neuroscience
NobleMotion expanded its technological footprint into the realm of science, forging groundbreaking collaborations that investigate the neurobiology of creativity. Partnering with neuroscientist Pepe Contreras-Vidal (BRAIN Center at the University of Houston) and composer Anthony Brandt (Musiqa), NobleMotion developed LiveWire. This innovative art-science initiative utilized mobile brain-body imaging technology, where dancers wore EEG skull caps to map and record brain activity in real time. In 2023, NMD was awarded the M-AAA Innovation Grant for Meeting of Minds, a collaboration that explores the neural dynamics of social interaction by tracing a relationship from polarization to understanding. Meeting of Minds was presented at the United Nations AI for Global Good in Switzerland; Music & Brain Health Summit in Washington, D.C.; in a TEDx Talk by Co-Artistic Director Andy Noble; in Monterrey, Mexico; at Rice University’s Interface Engineering Conference; and in educational shows as part of the Hobby Center’s Discovery Series, serving fifth graders in underserved school districts. This integration of science and movement continued to evolve with the premiere of Free Rein. Developed alongside a collaborative team of scientists and artists, Free Rein utilized advanced neuro-engineering and AI to capture and project the performers’ neural data directly onto the stage. By shifting between rehearsed and spontaneous performance, the production made the invisible process of artistic inspiration visible, illustrating the profound connection between the human brain and the creative spark.