Harrison Guy Revisits Prairie View A&M Through Dance

Dancer, choreographer, and creative force behind Houston’s Urban Souls Dance Company, Harrison Guy, is always plumbing the depths of Black history, especially looking for the stories that aren’t always told—a feat for a corner of history that is already often hidden. For Guy, these histories always intersect with the personal.

Take his new work, presented by Performing Arts Houston the first weekend of September, Dear Prairie View. That Prairie View A&M University (PVA&M), an HBCU (Historically Black College or University) just north of Houston, is celebrating its 150th anniversary might have been enough to capture Guy’s attention, but his personal connection to the institution is life shaping. It was where he, as a young student, first saw concert dance.

“I had the opportunity to see the Classic Dance Ensemble, which is the modern dance troupe at the university, perform at a campus event,” he recalls. “I was very moved by the performance. They had a lot of gentlemen dancing, and I had never really seen guys do any type of modern dance. I’ve always had dance as a part of my life in some kind of way, but definitely not taking any dance classes and understanding the art form in that way.”

Guy was hooked. He auditioned for the Ensemble and started taking dance classes. Eventually, he left PVA&M to pursue dance opportunities. “They didn’t have a dance major at the time,” he explains. “They had a dance minor, but I was not really interested in majoring in anything,. because once I figured out I wanted to dance, it was what I wanted to do.”

He took an opportunity to study at the Alvin Ailey School in New York City, where he studied not only dance technique, but also explored the business and marketing end of dance. He brought all that knowledge back to Houston, where he’s been making dance ever since.

Building on that personal connection to the university, Guy proposed Dear Prairie View to Performing Arts Houston’s New/Now Houston Artist Commissioning Project, following up on his inclusion in the first cohort of artists in 2021. Up until now, the New/Now evenings have always been shared programs, featuring three artists on the bill. With Dear Prairie View, Performing Arts Houston, planning its own milestone 60th anniversary, decided to offer Guy something more. They saw in the proposal a full evening presentation.

Given the expansion of time onstage, Guy’s vision for the piece expanded. What was first a piece narrowly focused on Prairie View is now an exploration of HBCU culture more broadly, seen through the lens of PVA&M’s history. A single narrative has become several. “It is definitely a piece that has a lot of storytelling because that’s what I do dance-wise,” Guy confirms, but not only “telling the story of how the school was founded but also looking at several human-interest stories.” He describes the evening in three acts, the first act focusing more on the social aspect of being on campus, dating and fraternity and sorority life, the second act looking at the history of activism at PVA&M, with the third act being a broader celebration of the HBCU experience.

When asked about surprises in his research, Guy admits, “There are tons that I found out and then of course I have to edit down because I can’t tell everything.” Something he had not considered before his time in the university’s archives was the story before the founding. “I originally was going to start the piece with these eight gentlemen, they’re known as the Unknown Eight because we don’t have their names,” he says. “That is kind of where we’ve always been taught that the story starts.”

But then Guy came to understand something more. “We have these Black politicians after Reconstruction that played a large role in pushing for this opportunity to have a college in Texas,” he says. The archives opened his eyes to the work in the Texas Legislature that made the university possible. “That was the story that really made me take some steps back. So, the story actually starts at Juneteenth now, which doesn’t have anything to do specifically with Prairie View but certainly the world changed after Juneteenth, and so learning about those [legislators] was an opportunity for me to reshape how I wanted to start the story.”

Let it not be said that Harrison Guy is doing only one thing at a time. As this story is being written, a project that is an expansion of Urban Souls is the Black Arts Movement Houston, which is preparing its first cohort of fellowships, a group of Black artists who are committed to the Black community but also committed to the larger life of Houston. He sees this project as building leaders to sit at decision-making tables, not only in the arts communities but in civic organizations and school boards. “There’s some staple things we want to work on; one of them is racial healing for the city and how could Houston become a model city for how it handles racial equity and really looking at Black artists being at the forefront.”

With that community mindedness, Guy hopes audiences will come to Dear Prairie View, regardless of their connection to the university. “When you do a piece about a place, oftentimes people don’t know if the show is for them,” Harrison recognizes. “It’s my goal to teach people about Houston and not just in Houston, so my pieces are designed for everybody to come and learn about the human story that we can all connect to. I think it’s a piece that everyone will enjoy.”

WHAT: Dear Prairie View – part of Performing Arts Houston’s New/Now Series
WHEN: September 4–5, 2026
WHERE: Cullen Theater, Wortham Center
INFO: tinyurl.com/guy-dear-prairie-view