FLY Dance is Putting on a Show Tonight

Jorge Casco didn’t need Captain America or Iron Man when he was a kid. At 15, he watched FLY Dance Company b-boys make leaps like Superman at Miller Outdoor Theatre. Casco saw them as heroes. “I was just a kid doing local break dance. Small performances,” he says. “I didn’t know you could do this for a living. That you could play to audiences of that magnitude.”

Twenty years later, Casco is FLY's dance executive director and company member. He no longer dances on cardboard for a small group of friends. Soon he'll perform at Miller in Classic FLY.  For the concert, choreographer Kathy Musick Wood sampled break dance, the tango, and modern and contemporary dance. Her arrangement is beatboxing, soul, funk, pop and classical music.

During intermission, the company will give exposure to dancers in the FLY at Miller Dance Contest. Casco wants to encourage young people just as he was supported so many years ago. Casco says he honed his skills to the sound of police helicopters and sirens. Officers interrupted his group practice sessions to search, question, and harass him and his friends. “I saw a lot of violence,” says Casco. “There was a gang on every corner.”

Now, partnered with Chris Cortez, FLY director, and FLY principal dancer Adam Quiroz, he’s reached more than 70,000 students in just the past year. And the City of Houston has declared September 30 “FLY Dance Company Day." “People laughed at me. They said I couldn’t do it,” Casco says. But “if you believe in something, and you put your mind to it, you can succeed in life.”

A performance is scheduled for 8 p.m. Friday, September 30 at 6000 Hermann Park Drive. For information, call 281-373-3386 or visit milleroutdoortheatre.com. Free.