Andy Noble
Co-Artistic Director

Andy is Executive/Co-Artistic Director of NobleMotion Dance and an Associate Chair/Professor at Sam Houston State University. He also serves as the Associate Artistic Director of the Dance Gallery Festival, an international festival that occurs every year in New York City and Texas. During the summer, Andy is a faculty member at Dance Italia in Lucca, Italy. Houston Press recognized Andy as one of Houston’s 100 Creatives.

Andy’s body of work includes 23 evening-length productions and over 150 dances. His focus on innovation and interdisciplinary work has led to collaborations with neuroscientists, A.I. designers, industrial designer, light artists, composers, poets, musicians, and photographers. Most notably, he worked with Academy Award winner John Ridley to create original choreography featured on the Emmy Award Winning and Golden Globe Nominated ABC TV show American Crime. Andy is part of an art science collaborative team that is examining the neuroscience of dance. In November of 2023, he presented a TEDx Talk titled “Science Worth Dancing About,” that discusses the impacts of dancing on brain development and health. This research has been invited to be performed at the United Nations in Geneva, May of 2024.

Andy’s choreography has been set on Repertory Dance Theatre, Dallas Black Dance Theatre, Bruce Wood Dance, Malashock Dance Company, Moving Current Dance Collective, and Urbanity Dance. Additionally, his choreography has been selected three times for the National Dance Festival at The Kennedy Center in Washington, DC and performed at Wolf Trap for the Performing Arts as part of the 2022 International Workshop on the Neural and Social Bases of Creative Movement. Andy’s creative endeavors have been supported by the National Endowment for the Arts, National Science Foundation, Mid-America Arts Alliance, Texas Commission for the Arts, and Houston Arts Alliance. He has also received over 40 positive reviews by press including Entertainment Weekly, The Boston Globe, Houston Chronicle, Arts+Culture Texas, and the Utah Review and his work has been presented at venues such as The Lincoln Center, The Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston, and The Ailey Citigroup Theatre. Andy’s work directing NobleMotion Dance has led to the organization being awarded Houston’s Best Dance Company 3 times by the Houston Press and a listing in Dance Magazine as one of Houston’s “A-list” dance companies.

Andy’s performing career includes six years with Repertory Dance Theatre (RDT), where he performed in over forty choreographic works by such noted masters as Martha Graham, Merce Cunningham and Jose Limon. He also had the honor of working first-hand with many cutting edge contemporary and international artists such as Gideon Obarzanek (Chunky Move), Jø Strømgren and Zvi Gotheiner. Andy holds a BA in Modern Dance from the University of South Florida and a MFA with an emphasis in Dance Technology from Florida State University.

Dionne Sparkman Noble
Co-Artistic Director

Dionne Noble is co-artistic director of NobleMotion Dance and an Associate Professor of Dance at Sam Houston State University where she directs the graduate program, handles marketing for the Department of Dance and teaches modern technique, choreography, research methods and dance and technology. Additionally, she has served as faculty at Florida State University, University of South Florida and Western Washington University. Dionne received a BA in dance from the University of South Florida and a MFA in modern dance with an emphasis in dance and technology from the University of Utah. Dionne was named one of Houston’s 100 Creatives of 2013 by the Houston Press and her choreographic work has been featured on ABC’s television series “American Crime,” at The Kennedy Center, and at Wolf Trap for the Performing Arts as part of the 2022 International Workshop on the Neural and Social Bases of Creative Movement.

Dionne was a member of the Demetrius Klein Dance Company in Miami, Florida and performed with Repertory Dance Theatre, Paradigm Dance Project and Moving Current Dance Collective. She has also had the great opportunity to work with other artists such as Joe Goode, Molissa Fenley, Stephen Koester and Sean Curran. Dionne’s choreographic work has been produced by Tallahassee Ballet, Moving Current Dance Collective, American College Dance Festival, Repertory Dance Theatre, University of Utah, Bellingham Repertory Dance Company, Paradigm Dance Project, Western Washington University, University of South Florida, Florida State University and FSU’s Dance Repertory Theatre (DRT). She has also been a guest artist at several colleges and performing arts high schools throughout the United States.

Dionne’s technological credits include being a contributing writer and consultant for ChoreoVideo.com, a web-based media resource designed in 2007 to promote innovative instruction in the area of dance technology. In 2009, she, along with colleagues Andy Noble and Tim Glenn, were invited to attend the Hawaii International Conference on Arts and Humanities to present Dance & Video: Merging Theoretical and Aesthetic Components of Two Motion Arts, a panel presentation utilizing ChoreoVideo.com. She has had dance films show in InShadow – International Festival of Video, Performance and Technology, Lisbon, Portugal, Utah Dance Film Festival, and Motion Captured, An Evening of Dance on Film, Houston, TX. She received funding from SHSU’s Office of Research and Sponsored Programs to collaborate with AI architect Jeremy Stewart, choreographer Andy Noble, lighting designer David J Deveau, composer Alex Davis, and dancers Colette Kerwick and Evelyn Toh on the creation of a AI generated dance film, My Flesh, My Fog. Another film, Pit Stop (created in 2020 that premiered in a 40-minute live streamed NMD event titled We All Fall Down) has been selected for screening by Dance Films Association #MyDanceFilm 2022 (Lincoln Center), enCore: Dance on Film 2022 (GA), Austin Dance Festival’s Dance on Film 2022, Boston Contemporary Dance Festival’s  On Film Showcase, and ADF’s Movies By Movers.