Though the Miami New Drama-commissioned “Queen of Basel” will have its official world premiere at Studio Theatre in Washington D.C. next season, you don’t have to wait or travel to discover how playwright Hilary Bettis has reimagined August Strindberg’s controversial 1888 classic “Miss Julie.” With three powerful actors and a small audience sharing the stage space at Miami Beach’s Co..
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Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, now 33, was named a MacArthur “genius” grant winner in 2016, the same year his play “Gloria” was chosen as a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for drama. Earlier, his provocative, stylistically diverse, subversive plays “Appropriate” and “An Octoroon” (the latter was produced by Coral Gables’ Area Stage last fall) each won best new American play Obie Awards. ..
"The Other Mozart" is a suitcase play – one of those shows where a single actress can pack the entire contents that creates the setting – costume, wig, and props, and go anywhere in the world. It is the way Samantha Hoefer will arrive in Miami to present Sylvia Milo's one-woman play about Maria Anna Mozart, the not nearly as famous older sibling of that 18th century rock star Wolfgang Ama..
Early on in the Argentinean film “El Último Traje” (The Last Suit), which makes its U.S. theatrical debut this week, a deceptively quaint and humorous scene takes place between the film’s protagonist, 88-year-old Abraham Bursztein and his young granddaughter. The little girl refuses to join in a family photo with Abraham surrounded by his many grandchildren. When he cajoles and insists, ..
Gone are the days when filmmakers needed huge budgets, and major movie studios backing them with big bucks to get their films seen, according to two producers who spent decades in Los Angeles, and have now moved their base to Miami Beach. "From a creative standpoint, there are amazing opportunities for filmmakers today," says producer Kevin Chinoy, who, along with producing partner Frances..
Mark St. Germain has achieved ongoing success with small-cast plays involving historical figures in fictional scenarios, and South Florida has been as welcoming to his work as the rest of the country. St. Germain’s “Camping With Henry and Tom,” about a 1920s camping trip involving Henry Ford, Thomas Edison and President Warren G. Harding, was produced in 1996 by New Theatre in Coral Gables..
Mexico City-based theater collective Teatro Ojo's works are constantly evolving. Nothing is ever really finished. That's because they take from every performance. Whatever the audience experiences, observes, feels, and offers feedback, which they highly encourage, all is used, considered, and included in the evolution of the same piece, or introduced into another new work. Two of the ..
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“America’s Greatest and Least Known Playwright.”This is how the Cuban-American playwright Maria Irene Fornes is referred to several times throughout Michelle Memran’s documentary “The Rest I Make Up,” which makes its Florida debut this Saturday as part of Miami-Dade College’s Miami Film Festival. Fornes has been called the “Mother of Avant-Garde Theater.” Theater giants like Edward A..
“Once” has always been touched with magic. And as anyone who has seen the sublime new production of the show by Actors’ Playhouse in Coral Gables would tell you, the musical’s spellbinding pull is as powerful as ever. When Irish director-screenwriter John Carney first told the tale of a heartbroken Irish street musician and the spunky Czech pianist who reignites his passion, a 200..
Consider the idea of land in Palestine, and conflict may be the first thing to come to mind. But for Jumana Emil Abboud, the Palestinian landscape evokes other, older, associations – with mythological creatures like water spirits and ghouls. “These stories were told way before 1948,” says the Galilee-born artist, speaking by phone from her home in Jerusalem. She suggests looking back ..
Dimensions Dance Theatre of Miami has been on a trajectory best described as meteoric. In its first 18 months DDTM has been a 2017 Knight Challenge Grant recipient and now will debut at New Y..
Amirah Sackett came up as a dancer in Chicago’s hip hop scene at a time when women were rare in the mostly male community. But she also visibly stood out as a Muslim. She keeps her hair cover..
Inside the Little Haiti Cultural Complex, where Dance Now! Miami is in residence, there is a hub of activity as the company prepares for its performance on Saturday night of Contemporanea 201..
One of the signatures of the National Water Dance project since its inception seven years ago was that dance troupes, large or small, professional or school groups, were free to perform whate..
Miami City Ballet is in league with Russians – in a good way -- and this promises to make a selection of dances look great again. The company’s final program this season brings back Apollo an..
Hidden behind a busy street in North Miami Beach is the Ancient Spanish Monastery, where Dance Now! Miami will bring the past into the present – and back into the past. Ekphrasis describes th..
Sometimes dance seems as easy as walking down the street. John Heginbotham, founder and artistic director of Dance Heginbotham, describes his dancers as moving in an unaffected, natural manne..
On the heels of a year-plus parade of #MeToo confessions, celebrity shamings and women’s marches, comes Marisa Alma Nick’s female-power-packed “A Rebel in Venus.” “It wasn’t planned that ..
Choreographers are usually curious people. Augusto Soledade’s curiosity leads him in many directions, including ideas on Madonna, voguing, and selfies. It all began with “thoughts on identity..
Ira Sullivan has been a musician for a long time. His father, part of a large musical family, was in the restaurant business. But he played trumpet for fun and stored his horn behind the couch, Su..
The music of Thelonious Monk has been a source of endless fascination and with good reason. Monk’s universe has its own laws. Beautifully constructed and quirky, soulful but also paced by br..
The first time the Amernet performed “The Seven Last Words of Christ” during Holy Week – the week leading up to Easter -- the string quartet played in darkness. Just hours before, cellist Jas..
Drummer Dafnis Prieto and pianist Omar Sosa closed this year’s Global Cuba Fest at the Light Box in Wynwood, Miami, with shows on Friday and Saturday, March 16-17 that suggested a sort of mus..
Mention flamenco and the immediate associations are with dancing, singing and the guitar. The piano has a rather tentative history in flamenco. While some scholars include the instrument in p..
The ancient Japanese art of Taiko drumming comes to Miami this Friday, with Tao: Drum Heart, which premiered at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and has gone on to tour internationally, getting ..
It’s not by chance that the music of Cuban drummer, composer, educator and bandleader Dafnis Prieto unfolds with such purpose. An accidental immigrant in 1999 — he was living with ..
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In the music of Las Cafeteras and Orkesta Mendoza, presented by Fundarte at the South Miami-Dade Cultural Arts Center Saturday, the border is no place for walls but rather, a moveable feast. ..
Performance Hall at New World Center was packed Saturday, Feb. 3 for the New Work program, which NWS conductor and artistic director Michael Tilson Thomas introduced as “one of the more adve..
Nadie como el bailarín y coreógrafo español Antonio Gades para describir el arte que lo hizo internacionalmente famoso cuando vivía: “Un extracto de fuego y de veneno, eso es el flamenco”.
Fuego, veneno y, lo que es imprescindible, pasión, colmarán el escenario del Knight Concert Hall del Adrienne Arsht Center de Miami cuando se celebre la décima edición de Flamenco Festival Miami del 2 al 5 de marzo.
Flamenco Festival Miami X abrirá con el estreno en Estados Unidos de Stars of Flamenco, el espectáculo de gala (2 y 3 marzo) que dirige uno de los más cotizados exponentes del género, Manuel Liñán, con la participación de 14 intérpretes de primera categoría como Juana Amaya, Olga Pericet, Jesús Carmona, Patricia Guerrero, y la vocalista Rocío Márquez, entre otros.
A eso siguen, también en estreno, los espectáculos Pisadas, de la Compañía Olga Pericet, con la titular Pericet y el coreógrafo, bailarín y pedagogo del flamenco, Juan Carlos Lérida, el 4 de marzo, y el 5, Jesús Carmona y su compañía presentando un nuevo trabajo, Ímpetu’s.
Con ímpetu marchará luego el Flamenco Festival a la ciudad de Nueva York, no sin antes haber cautivado, como cada año, al sur de Florida.
En la variedad está el sabor
“Lo que queríamos transmitir, era abrir al espectador todos los distintos perfiles que hay en el mundo del flamenco”, dice el director de la gala Manuel Liñán vía telefónica desde Madrid. “Queríamos buscar artistas con una personalidad fuerte y que, a la misma vez, fueran muy diferenciados entre ellos”.
Ampliando la visión común que pueda haber sobre el flamenco como danza y cante en el que priman castañuelas y vestidos de lunares, Liñán tenía claro cuál era el mensaje que él y los otros intérpretes buscan llevar a todo tipo de público.
“Dar a entender que el flamenco se puede vivir de varias maneras”, dice quien ha vivido el flamenco desde que tenía seis años. “Y que puede ser canalizado de una forma o de otra. Por eso la unión de estos artistas tan diferentes y con personalidades tan marcadas”.
La finalidad, prosigue Liñán, es “aunar estos criterios, independientemente de que se expongan unas texturas y unos colores muy diferentes. Siempre nos estamos moviendo en el mundo del flamenco, dentro de su riqueza”.
Clásico y moderno a la vez
Como artista al frente de la compañía que lleva su nombre, Liñán se ha dado a conocer por presentar piezas de corte vanguardista que ponen de cabeza los roles tradicionales de lo masculino y lo femenino en el flamenco (en su Nómada, por ejemplo, Liñán, en calidad de bailarín, desafía portando una bata de cola y haciendo piruetas con un mantón como si fuera capote de torero). En Flamenco Festival, canaliza esa creatividad de otras formas.
“Personalmente, me considero una persona inquieta, y siempre que produzco un espectáculo, intento buscar unos estímulos diferentes con la finalidad de ir progresando y descubriendo nuevos conceptos”, analiza Liñán. “Pero concretamente, en la gala de Flamenco Festival, lo que he aportado es parte de mis criterios y, digamos que todo se mueve en un entorno clásico pero moderno. Puede ser interpretado de cualquier de las dos formas”.
La reinvención
El flamenco se reinventa, una y otra vez, sin perder su espíritu andaluz. Eso siempre lo tiene en cuenta uno de los más audaces e intrigantes exponentes del género en los últimos años, Juan Carlos Lérida, cada vez más conocido en Estados Unidos.
Dentro de la experiencia que representa Flamenco Festival, Lérida había participado en la edición de Londres de 2013. Su intervención en la de Miami marca su debut en Flamenco Festival de Estados Unidos.
“Pienso que este festival procura presentar un catalogo de artistas que actualmente representan las tendencias escénicas del flamenco, tanto musicales como dancísticas”, comparte Lérida desde Barcelona. “Su programación muestra a una serie de artistas jóvenes que navegan entre la tradición y la modernidad”.
Para Lérida, esto es una “oportunidad de mostrar en nuevos territorios mi posición estética y artística sobre el flamenco. Una posición que muestra la evolución del flamenco que yo practico y que se dirige hacia proponer inéditas perspectivas sobre lo escénico, lo corporal y lo percutivo en el flamenco”.
Cuando Liñán, Lérida y las nuevas generaciones del flamenco, abrazan la experimentación y la evolución, los públicos, incluyendo en Miami, los han acogido. Han dado la bienvenida a ese espíritu de innovación y de riesgo que asegurará la permanencia del flamenco. Y durante su primera visita a Miami, ese afecto de la gente por el flamenco sorprendió a Liñán.
“En verdad, fue una gran sorpresa para mí”, dice. “El público de Miami es un público muy cálido, que valora mucho nuestro arte, y que lo agradece mucho. Que al año lo necesita. Nos sentimos como si estuviéramos en España”.
Cuándo: del 2 al 5 de marzo, 2017.
Dónde: Knight Concert Hall del Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts, Miami, 1300 Biscayne Blvd., Miami.
Boletos: $35-$100
Teléfonos: 305.949.6722, 877.949.6722
Detalles: http://www.arshtcenter.org/Tickets/Subscriptions/Flamenco-Festival/Flamenco-Festival-2017/#
Journalist, arts writer, instructor of English and Spanish
A bilingual journalist and writer for over 20 years, Juan Carlos studied Communications at Fordham University in New York. He holds a Master&rsquo..
