The artistic road home to Kerrville

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By Louis Amestoy:

If there’s one thing that coronavirus has done to the arts community of Kerr County, it’s brought some very talented people home.

Two of those are Libbie Horton and Kä Neunhoffer, two friends who grew up in Kerrville and have stayed in touch through the years due to their mutual passion for the arts. Neuenhoffer is a composer, while Horton is a dancer.

A graduate of Our Lady of the Hills, Neunhoffer found her way to the Berklee College of Music in Boston and later to Los Angeles to work in the movie industry.

A Tivy grad, Horton discovered her love of dance during her time as a Golden Girl — Tivy’s dance team — and later at Texas State, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in dance.

Then, as they both say, came COVID.

Both found their way back home. Both spent time with their family. Both wanted to do something artistic in the face of COVID’s grip.

“I hung out with my parents for a couple of weeks,” Neunhoffer said. “I said I would like to hang out with someone under 50.”

Almost immediately, the two reconnected in person. They had remained friends through their college years, but getting together was a challenge with school and schedules, but this time here has allowed them to collaborate on a project called “Hill Shapes,” a music and dance performance slated for Friday night at Union Church in Kerrville.

“It’s funny how much our training and how we express ourselves parallel each other,” said Neunhoffer of her artistic relationship with Horton.

While in different places in their lives, Neunhoffer would share music with Horton, who would in turn dance to it. Neunhoffer would watch Horton’s dancing to see how her friend was progressing in her art.

In a time of social distance and limited arts, Neunhoffer and Horton have seemingly found a Kerrville audience hungry for the arts. Their first show is sold out, and a second Saturday performance is nearing a sell out.

The show features the music of Neunhoffer, a classically trained flutist and composer, and the choreography of Horton. The two pooled their money together and hired five dancers and five musicians to perform.

The music and dance are designed to be how the two women interpret being home in the Hill Country, and both found that they had missed the Hill Country and their connections to small town Texas.

Two of the movements feature a piece dedicated to the Treue Der Union Monument in Comfort, and another is called “Bathtub,” referring to the unique sandstone ruts found in the Guadalupe River that warm up during the summer.

“It’s more about the emotion and the reaction to these things, like ‘True to the Union’ it’s not literal,” Neunhoffer said. “Obviously, we’re not going to come out in costume and pretend to be Civil War soldiers. It’s more my emotional reaction as I work through this concept.”

The two women have worked closely through the last few months to put the show together. Horton’s focus was finding the right dancers to interpret Neunhoffer’s music. Much of it is about storytelling.

“I keep that in mind when I’m choreographing,” Horton said.

“And we’re trying to find that emotion,” Neunhoffer said.

That emotion will be fully on display Friday and then again on Saturday afternoon at the River Star Arts and Event Park.