Some neighborhood dancers have found center stage in a studio in Lake Highlands. They dance for a four-year-old company called Pieces, founded by neighborhood dancer Davis Hobdy, and they fine-tune their skills at Danse En L’air, 9205 Skillman.
When Hobdy returned to Dallas in 1990 after more than three years at college, he discovered professional performance opportunities were scarce.
He performed as an extra with Ballet Dallas (which later folded) and Dancers Unlimited, and for a year, he was a regular member of the Dance Consortium (which also folded).
So Hobdy decided to form his own dance company.
“I started Pieces because I wanted local dancers to get work locally and for local choreographers to have exposure in local settings,” Hobdy says.
“I wanted to make sure that Dallas professionals had the opportunity to work and rehearse.”
Unlike most dance companies, Pieces doesn’t focus on one particular style to the exclusion of others. Instead, it does “concert dance,” which Hobdy describes as a mixture of styles within a program.
Ballet, jazz and modern dance fill most of the company’s repertoire, but it also has been invited to perform liturgical, or sacred, pieces for churches.
For almost everyone in the company – which includes 11 professional dancers – participation in Pieces is a part-time job. Nevertheless, Pieces is evolving and growing, Hobdy says.
“We started our first year with three performances, and by our third year had 15 shows,” he says.
Many of the shows are presented for school children or kids involved in recreation center programs, he says.
Just 10 years ago, Hobdy was one of Dallas’ up-and-coming teenage dancers. He is a 1986 graduate of the Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts (also known as the Arts Magnet), where he was nationally ranked in jazz dance. He later studied ballet and modern dance at the North Carolina School of the Arts and UT-Austin before returning to Dallas.
Since returning, he has taught in area dance studios, choreographed Hockaday School performances, been on dance faculty at the Dallas Theater Center, and taught ballet to senior citizens at the Baylor Fitness Center.
Older students are among his favorites, Hobdy says.
“I learn more working with those ladies than anyone I’ve ever taught,” he says. “They come because they want to learn, and they want to have fun.”
Tickets to Pieces’ Dec. 20-21 performances at the Sammons Center for the Arts are $10 per person, with discounts available for students and senior citizens. Admission is free to individuals who bring a bag of potbellied pig food to donate to the Adopt a Pig program sponsored by the Metroplex Association of Potbellied Pig Enthusiasts.
For more information, call 601-9832.
