Peter London Global Dance Co.’s Spotlight On Women’s Choreographic Voices

Clinton Harris, left, and Eden Collier rehearse Armando Gonzalez’s “Steppe Tango,” which will be featured in Peter London Global Dance Company’s “Women’s Choreographic Voices: The Rising,” on Saturday, April 1. (Photo courtesy of Tt’Shaylah Lightbourne)

There are two themes that leap out in Peter London Global Dance Company’s “Women’s Choreographic Voices: The Rising.” They are the celebration of women choreographers, dancers and performers and Argentine tango as a medium for expressing creative passions.

The program, on Saturday, April 1 at The Sanctuary of the Arts in Coral Gables, spotlights the female artistic spirit with new productions and two world premieres by Peter London Global Dance Company dancers and choreographers, Kashia Kancey and Brooke Skye Logan.

A dance professor at New World School of the Arts since the early 1990s, London counts many of the emerging choreographers on the program as former high school or college students from dance programs at New World. Some of the dancers started training when they were even younger at the Pinecrest dance studio, Dance Empire, where London also taught.

Kancey is a former London student from New World who grew up in Miami’s Overtown neighborhood. Her new work “Merged” is a duet featuring Tt’Shaylah Lightbourn and Clinton Harris.

For Kancey, the work is about merging two souls.

“It’s about having someone in your life no matter where they are in the world,” explains Kancey.  “You are both still connected, sensing, and in constant conversation with one another.”

Kancey set the choreography to an original composition by former New World college friend,  Cristina Moya-Palacios.  As an artist, Moya-Palacios’ training blurs the line between dancer and musician.

“My first introduction to music was through piano lessons as a kid,” says Moya-Palacios.  “As I got older, I eventually became a dancer and continued to be inspired by those lessons and began to explore making scores on (the app) GarageBand.”

Another premiere in the program, “Wildflower’s Luminous Prayer,” was created for the company’s ensemble by Logan, a  choreographer and former London dance student, too.

Like “Merged,” Logan’s new work took inspiration, its title, and even its structure from a new composition by a female composer, violinist Ari Urban.  Logan titled the solo first movement, “Wildflower,” and the second movement, “Luminous Prayer.”

“This is my first work with the entire company, and I am very excited,” says Logan. “There are seven dancers in the group section and a soloist (Leon Cobb) at the beginning of the work.”

When asked what motivated the creation, she says that it came from reflecting on the question: “How beautiful it would be, if we could all just fall in love with humanity?”

Another piece by the choreographer, “Eomeoni,” also uses dance to communicate a universal message.

“The title refers to the word ‘Mother,’ ” she explains. The Peter London Global Dance Company premiered the work in 2018. “It is one of my most prized works.  I would describe this piece as a call to humanity. To see and love one another as (he or she) truly is.”

The themes of women and tango intersect in Melissa Verdecia’s “Que se encuentra Los Arrabales,” a new production of a company work that premiered in 2015.  Verdencia, a former student of London’s at New World, attended Juilliard and then was a soloist with “Ballet Hispánico,” based in New York City.

“I was definitely not trying to recreate an authentic tango,” Verdecia says of her work, “but use the knowledge that I had learned about the Argentine tango’s origins –  how it evolved over the decades due to other cultural influences, such as the African dance culture and then (also the) more commonly known European traditions of waltz and polka that eventually led the tango to be commonly known as a ballroom style dance.”

When asked how Argentine tango came to figure so prominently in a program celebrating women, London relates his first experiences of Buenos Aires and the energy he felt while touring there.

“I performed in Argentina in 1988 for the first time with José Limón Dance and then again later with Martha Graham Dance,” he says.  “When José Limón performed in  Buenos Aires,  they told me to go to Calle Florida (Florida Street).  When I stepped onto that street, I was struck by the energy, the dress, the swagger and sophistication and the cafés – it was just fabulous.”

He danced tango until 5 a.m., he recalls, while sweating to the bone.

“I always felt like I needed to express the emotion and the feeling of Buenos Aires of that time in a dance.”

London’s experiences in Buenos Aires became the stuff of London’s own “Calle Florida” – a 2015 piece also on the upcoming program, set to tango music and reprised by dancer, Isabelle Vazquez, one of London’s former students from New World.

“When I saw her (Vazquez) dancing it for the first time,” explains London, “she  danced it like she was transported and the entire room exploded in applause.”

The full company will also perform London’s piece, “Kaiso Bacchanal,” with costumes by the choreographer. London describes the work as a colorful explosion of rhythm and fiery movement that brings to life the Carnival celebrations of Trinidad & Tobago.

With so many contributions from former students on the program it could be expected that London would have deep involvement in their creative process. On the contrary, London insists that after he commissions a new work he takes a strictly hands-off approach.

And for good reason.  London’s former students come packed with talent and grace the line-ups of the nation’s top dance companies including Alvin Ailey, Martha Graham Dance, Paul Taylor Dance and Dance Theater of Harlem.  They include Robert Battle, current artistic director of Alvin Ailey, and Jamar Roberts, Alvin Ailey’s first resident choreographer.

Still, he sometimes admits wrestling with wanting to become involved while witnessing the twists and turns of their creative processes, although he says holds back. This was the case in the 2015 “Steppe Tango” by choreographer and dancer, Armando Gonzalez, whose piece will be performed in the upcoming program.

Gonzalez started dancing with London at the age of 14 and is now a principal dancer with the Ballet du Grand Théâtre de Genève, Switzerland.

“Armando used Bulgarian Folk music to open the dance, and I thought, ‘why is he doing that for tango?’” says London.  “But, I thought, ‘these are young people and leave them alone.’ ”

The outcome was Gonzalez’s “Steppe Tango,” set to both Mongolian throat music and Argentine tango.

Gonzalez, whose mother is Argentine, didn’t grow up listening to tango, but he was attracted to the dance form.

“The dance form has always had a special place in my heart. Astor Piazzolla is super danceable,” adds Gonzalez referring to the Argentine classical composer (1921-1992) who created compositions that included tango rhythms and iconic instruments like the bandoneón in his works. “There have been countless ballets created to (Piazzolla’s) music,” continues Gonzalez. “Around the time Peter asked me to choreograph, I was watching a Netflix series set in Mongolia.  The throat singing was captivating, so I tried to mix the two and see if it would work . . . and surprisingly, to my ears, it did.”

WHAT: Peter London Global Dance Company presents “Women’s Choreographic Voices: The Rising”

WHEN: 7:30 p.m., Saturday, April 1.

WHERE: Sanctuary of the Arts, 410 Andalusia Ave., Coral Gables

COST: $25

INFORMATION: 786-362-5132 and pldc.org

ArtburstMiami.com is a nonprofit source of theater, dance, visual arts, music and performing arts news. Sign up for our newsletter and never miss a story.

Review: Urban Bush Women’s ‘Haint Blu’ evokes past in site-specific performance

Chanon Judson with Courtney Cook in “Haint Blu” by Urban Bush Women at Historic Hampton House. (Photo courtesy of MDC Live Arts Miami)

You summon ghosts, you don’t know where they’ll take you. Happily, the spirits brought to haunting life by Urban Bush Women’s “Haint Blu,” an extraordinary dance-theater event at Miami’s Historic Hampton House, took us from benign gathering to harrowing memory to explosive emotion to culminate in a luminous, otherworldly sense of power, affirmation, and redemption.

That this astonishing event, the result of three years of collaboration by UBW with Miami Dade College’s Live Arts and local artists and community figures, was staged just four times (from Thursday, March 9 through Sunday, March 12) reinforced its power. “Haint Blu” (a color that Blacks in the southeast United States believed would ward off malignant spirits) seemed as much ritual as performance, embodying lives and feelings in a singular, intensely meaningful act.

Urban Bush Women’s history with various incarnations of Miami Dade College’s cultural division goes back to the late 1980s. But “Haint Blu” is its most in-depth and community-connected project together. Founded by the visionary Jawole Willa Jo Zollar in New York in 1984, UBW is now led by co-artistic directors Chanon Judson and Mame Diarra Speis. Performers on an incandescent plane of their own, Judson and Speis are charged with guiding a company whose mission extends far beyond performance to profound work in community building, fostering artists, and activism. Judging by “Haint Blu,” UBW is in excellent hands.

For me, and likely for others, setting “Haint Blu” at Brownsville’s Hampton House, probably Miami’s most significant Black historical site, where culture-shifting figures like Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, and Muhammed Ali stayed, implied that the piece would invoke the former hotel’s specific history. It did not – at least not that I could tell. But the Hampton’s pristine, bright-colored, modernist interiors made for a dramatic and visually striking setting, while our awareness of all that Black history, those Black icons, imbued the site with a significance you could never get in a traditional theater. Wilder sections, set in raw spaces upstairs, brought to mind the underlying violence of the racism that created this segregated hotel.

Sunday evening’s final performance opened with an audience of 60 people gathered in the Hampton’s high-ceilinged former nightclub for explanatory welcoming speeches by Live Arts executive director Kathryn Garcia and Hampton House brand manager Edwin Shepherd. But the piece began when we filed into the small lobby, to encounter Judson, imperious and possessed, burning with intensity, twisting in invitation and incantation to the spirits. “I’m the transporter,” she says. “A witness to what they want me to show.”

Moving to the interior patio around the pool, the atmosphere was, at first, casual. White-clad performers invited participants to add to a shrine filled with candles, offerings, and photos of famous Black figures; to get a drink at a bar; to cleanse themselves from a bowl of scented water; to explore. In addition to the eight UBW performers, the ensemble included Michelle Grant-Murray, the powerhouse dance professor and coordinator of dance at Miami Dade College Kendall Campus, and members of her student Jubilation Dance Ensemble. All radiated a fierce,  joyful engagement that was essential to the power of “Haint Blu.”

As the audience settled into chairs, dancers in white dresses (the wonderful costumes were by Arianne Zager) stalked around the pool, arms undulating and summoning to an echoing soundscore. The invocation intensified as Grace Galu Kalambay, a towering woman in skintight black pants and a wide black hat, entered strumming a guitar and singing “Oh, Susana” in a magnificent, bluesy voice, riling up the audience to sing along to a gospel-sounding tune. Speis, a compact woman with wild graying hair and the force of a gale wind, raced up stairways and across the patio, bellowing: “What do you remember? Who’s calling you? Can you hear me?!”

There was a confusing amount going on – multiple performers moving and speaking. But maybe this is what happens when you call on many ghosts, many stories. We were sent off to explore. I ended up in the former café, with two dancers moving to a recorded tale of a bootlegging grandfather who shot two white sheriffs. Then we were all guided upstairs to the second floor; past a hypnotized-seeming Judson, performing a kind of ritual in an alcove; past a stairwell filled with a rippling line of dancers to dark, raw rooms stripped down to concrete and ragged silver hangings on the wall. (Nicholas Hussong did the beautifully detailed production design.) Kalambay and percussionist Lucianna Padmore, drumming fiercely, added to a musical dance party storm, EDM and Parliament Funkadelic, the dancers screaming (at one point “the roof, the roof, the roof is on fire!”), pumping, cheering each other on, lights flashing red and blue. It had a familiarity, like an underground club, with an eerie edge – as if demons and ghosts were attending the party.

“You can find it, you can find it!” a performer howled, and ripped down the silver hangings to reveal a line of windows and glass doors, the outdoors suddenly showing. There was a dancer on the opposite balcony, framed in red neon; then a slow parade of arching, red-lit dancers, as if on an epic, otherworldly journey. Moving back to the patio, we could be submerged – Kalu booming the children’s song “there’s a hole in the bottom of the sea” was ominous. Speis yelped from stairways and a balcony with the fathomless pain of a woman giving birth, then plunged into a bathtub full of water, overcome, until two dancers, draped in gold netting, tenderly raised her up and draped her too. The performers, wrapped in gold, huddled, rose, and circled as the mood and movement shifted from apocalyptic to defiant to celebratory. Then, Kalu and Padmore thundered into the blues anthem “CC Rider.” One of the Urban Bush Women told the story of her great-grandmother, who persisted in dancing though her husband forbade it. “I been HERE,” she pronounced, pointing to herself, “I been HERE the whole time.”

Another voice called out, repeating, “Don’t look down, keep moving, press on to higher ground” as she moved away from us, arching, lunging, reaching, towards a doorway filled with light, moving through and beyond, taking the memories with her and leaving the ghosts behind.

Urban Bush Women’s “Haint Blu” was performed Thursday, March 9 through Sunday, March 12 at the Historic Hampton House, 4240 NW 27th Ave., Miami in collaboration with Miami Dade College’s Live Arts. To find out more about Live Arts, go to liveartsmiami.org

Greats Grace Miami Flamenco Festival XIV And Sara Baras Is One Of Them

Sara Baras brings her company in “Alma” to the 14th annual Flamenco Festival Miami at the Adrienne Arsht Center beginning Thursday, March 16 and Sunday, March 19. (Photo courtesy of Sofia Wittert)

Of the many gifted musicians performing in the Adrienne Arsht Center’s Flamenco Festival XIV Miami, two stand out, their places secure not just in Spain’s pantheon of greats, but in the world’s.

Guitarist Rafael Riqueni, who is celebrating his 45th anniversary as a performer, will be making his Miami debut. The festival opens Thursday, March 16 and runs through Sunday, March 19.

The other, Sara Baras, brings her company of 14 terrific dancers and musicians for a record third appearance at the festival, the most of any artist in its history, performing for three shows Friday, March 17, through Sunday, March 19.

As a dancer, Baras is known worldwide for the feline beauty of her line, the dervish-like velocity of her turns and the captivating power of her 1,000-megawatt smile that pulls audiences in like moths to a flame. Her charismatic presence and technical prowess have made her the most famous flamenco dancer performing today.

But Baras is also a musician, a virtuoso percussionist who plays the stage floor like a snare drum and who could go head-to-head with Travis Barker and not break a sweat. With bursts of machine gun speed and metronomic precision, she can lay down a groove on hardwood like few others.

Baras, who once said she could take reggaeton and make it flamenco, delights in mixing it up with musicians from other genres. She has performed with artists ranging from Chavela Vargas to Josep Carreras, from Russian cellist Mstislav Rostropovich to American saxophonist Tim Ries. For my money, you won’t find a more delicious flamenco-jazz fusion than when, in 2008, her footwork met Ries’ sax in a late-night single take of the Rolling Stones’ “Jumping Jack Flash” with vocalist Lisa Fischer.

(Watch the fusion happen in the video below in the clip at 5:30)

Under the musical direction of guitarist and composer Keko Baldomero, “Alma” (“soul” in Spanish) is its own brand of alchemy, taking traditional boleros and interpreting them through a flamenco prism. The stage is set with minimal props: a see-through fringed curtain that divides the performers, retro-looking mikes on stands, and a solitary clothes rack. The women’s costumes, ranging from tight pants and smoking jackets to silky gowns in shades of blue, lavender, and grey, complete the tableau. Visually, “Alma” makes a nostalgic nod to the great cabarets of the 1950s. Musically, it manages to sound completely modern.

Baras says that her inspiration for the piece arrived in a curious fashion. It came from her father, she explains, who she said was her biggest fan, but who clearly was not born with the family gift for flamenco.

“My father loved boleros. But he always talked about how hard it was to tell the different flamenco rhythms apart. One day, it started almost like a game. We would take a melody from a bolero that he knew and give it a flamenco rhythm, so he could remember them.” She dedicates “Alma” to his memory.

“He died a month after the debut,” she says, “so “Alma” has taken on a different meaning . . . It started as one thing and ended up being something very profound. The emotional element in it is really powerful. Without heart, without soul, it wouldn’t be the same. It’s not mathematical, it’s much more emotional, it’s a feeling . . . Our language, our heart is flamenco.”

Like Baras, Riqueni, who performs in an outdoor concert on Sunday, March 19, threads the needle of remaining true to deep flamenco roots while welcoming other influences from the jazz and classical realms. He, too, has performed with an impressive array of dancers and singers throughout his career, from pop divas like Isabel Pantoja and Rocío Jurado to iconic flamenco singers like Enrique Morente and José Mercé. Today, cutting-edge younger performers like Rocío Molina and Rosario la Tremendita seek him out as a collaborator. One of the form’s most sensitive and gifted composers, his creative output shows no signs of slowing down in this, his fifth decade as a professional artist.

“I feel like I am playing better today than when I was younger,” he says. With recent albums like “Parque de Maria Luisa” (2017) and the Latin Grammy-nominated “Herencia” (2021), listeners can hear the broad spectrum of texture and mood Riqueni evokes in his works. These range from a deeply meditative tone poem like “Aquel Día,” from “Parque de María Luisa,” to a seductively danceable tango like “Pureza,” from “Herencia,” a piece that pulls you inexorably into its melodic orbit and plunges your heart into the steady and soothing cadence of its rhythm.

The guitarist and the dancer hold a fundamental musical principle in common, one that Baras remembers learning from her maternal grandfather, a classical pianist.

“He would always say, ‘You don’t beat a piano, you caress it,’ ” she recalls. “I say the same thing. The dance floor, the stage—you caress it.” Riqueni does the same, seeming to effortlessly pull complex and timeless melodies from the very air around him.

These two extraordinary performers have both forged their artistic genius through countless hours, days, and decades of practice. As a boy of 12 or 13, Riqueni says, he was lucky to be taken on as a student by guitar legend Manolo Sanlúcar. “He showed me how to study. He taught me that discipline, and I would practice for seven or eight hours a day.”

“We have a gift,” Riqueni says simply. “That gift doesn’t belong to us. But we have this gift, and then there’s technique . . .Without technique, we can’t do anything with our gift.”

Baras concurs.

“If the inspiration finds you, it has to catch you with many hours of work behind you so that you are able to make something of that moment,” she says. “If not, nothing will come of it.”

WHAT AND WHEN:   Flamenco Festival Miami with Irene Lozano: “Las Mujeres Que Habitan En Mi,” 7:30 p.m., Thursday, March 19, Peacock Foundation Studio. Sara Baras, “Alma,” 8 p.m. Friday, March 17 and Saturday, March 18; 2 p.m. Sunday, March 19, Knight Concert Hall. Rafael Riqueni, 7:30 p.m., Sunday, March 19, Thomson Plaza for the Arts.

WHERE:  Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts, 1300 Biscayne Blvd., Miami

COST: $20 – $135 depending on performance.

INFORMATION: 305-949-6722 or at arshtcenter.org

ArtburstMiami.com is a nonprofit source of theater, dance, visual arts, music and performing arts news. Sign up for our newsletter and never miss a story.

MDC Live Arts’ Partnership with Urban Bush Women Comes Alive At Hampton House

MDC Live Arts Miami presents “Haint Blu” by the Urban Bush Women, a site-specific work inside Miami’s Historic Hampton House Thursday, March 9 through Sunday, March 12. (Photo courtesy of Woosler Delisfort)

Haint blue, the color of a cloudless sky, was traditionally used to paint porch ceilings from Key West, Fla., to Charleston, S.C.. The Gullah Geechee people of the islands off the Carolinas, Georgia and Florida believed that “haunts,” malignant spirits, could not cross water, and could thus be tricked to turn back when confronted with an expanse of blue paint at a home’s entry.

You won’t find a blue ceiling when you enter Brownsville’s Historic Hampton House, where the Urban Bush Women will be performing its newest choreographic work, “Haint Blu.”  You might, however, sense the presence of the many Black luminaries who stayed there in the motel’s heyday. Martin Luther King, for one, was a frequent guest at the Hampton House, and even gave an early version of his “I Have a Dream” speech there in 1960. Entertainers such as Nat King Cole, Sammy Davis Jr. and Aretha Franklin all performed there. And the meeting between Cassius Clay (soon to be Muhammad Ali), Malcolm X, Sam Cooke and football player Jim Brown depicted in the film “One Night in Miami” took place at this Green Book motel nearly sixty years ago.

MDC Live Arts Miami presents “Haint Blu” by the Urban Bush Women, a site-specific new work at Historic Hampton House, 4240 NW 27th Ave., Miami, from Thursday, March 9 through Sunday, March 12.

In a city not known for valuing its history, it is a miracle that we can visit the Hampton House at all. The midcentury modern structure was clearly overdue for its date with the wrecking ball when, in 2008, Brownsville preservationist and elemental force of nature Enid Pinkney, now 91, spearheaded the fight to save and restore the building. It now houses a small museum and hosts art exhibitions, classes, film screenings, and live performances like this one. In developing the site-specific performance piece “Haint Blu,” New York’s Urban Bush Women, together with a host of local collaborators, take a deep dive into the meaning of this formidable landmark for the past—and future—of Black Miami.

Founded by cultural icon, MacArthur “genius grant” recipient and Florida State University professor Jawole Willa Jo Zollar in 1984, UBW has been creating engaging, fierce, socially responsive work since its inception. They were recently among 20 national arts organizations named by the Ford Foundation as one of “America’s Cultural Treasures.” In 2021, the group received a multimillion-dollar grant from MacKenzie Scott (formerly Bezos) for its extraordinary work in “Empowering Voices the World Needs to Hear.” For almost 40 years, the company has used dance, music and spoken word to seek out and bring forward seldom-heard voices and stories we need to hear.

“We’re amplifying and we’re lifting up an overall charge,” says co-artistic director Mame Diarra Speis, “an overall fight for liberation.”

UBW’s relationship with Live Arts Miami, the presenting arm of Miami Dade College, is decades long. Both organizations share common core values, says Live Arts director Kathryn Garcia, including their mutual interest in the intersection of the arts, civic engagement and social justice. When Garcia was approached with the opportunity to be a part of activating the Hampton House with work by this globally acclaimed dance company, she was immediately on board.

“Let’s do a major event in Brownsville,” she recalls thinking. “You know, that doesn’t happen, and it should be happening more, right? I was just like, let’s roll up our sleeves and get to work, let’s figure this out.”

“With site-responsive work, you’re in collaboration with the space, you’re in collaboration with the land, you’re in collaboration with the people, the community,” says Speis.

The collaboration has involved multiple visits to Miami over the past three years by Speis, co-artistic director Chanon Judson, and assistant artistic director Courtney J. Cook. Speis explains that, aside from the performances themselves, UBW’s goal is “to really amplify what communities are already doing—what they’re doing to rejuvenate, regenerate and to heal collectively—and to create and to be a part of organizing.”

“For me, what I’ve realized,” says Cook, “is that you’ve got to go beneath the surface of what is presented in the history, specifically with regards to Black people.”

The choreographers have forged new ties with local preservationists such as Pinkney and historians like Marvin Dunn and Nadege Green, who also will be appearing in “Haint Blu.” They have deepened long-held bonds with dancers such as Miami Dade College professor Michelle Grant-Murray, whom Cook calls a member of the “UBW diaspora.” Grant-Murray, who will be performing in the piece, points to the need for this kind of work in Miami.

“Miami would not be a city without Black Miami,” she says. “There is a level of creativity that exists inside of Miami, particularly for the African diaspora . . .that’s going to push the narrative of where innovation and creativity really lives inside of the city.”

Just as the Hampton House isn’t your ordinary dance venue, “Haint Blu” isn’t your traditional dance concert. Cook calls the work “a ritual performance” in which audiences are guided by dancers to different areas of the motel where they won’t merely be witnesses, but also participants in the piece. Only 60 tickets will be sold for each evening, and audiences will be divided into two smaller groups for the performance experience. Garcia explains that the various spaces “are all activated in different ways, you know, from the historic lobby to the cafe to the courtyard, to completely unfinished space on the second floor.”

“You will experience the journey,” says Cook, an odyssey that relies heavily on both live and recorded music to tell its stories—stories “building off of the blues, building off of folk music, ring shout, those kinds of ideas that are cultural markers,” she says. “Sound as a way of conjuring, and sound also as a medicinal heirloom being passed down.”

Grant-Murray says that “the audience will be asked to definitely sing, and they will be asked to dance . . . to have some fun and—find your joy. They’ll be asked to be free. They’ll be given permission to be free but also with their permission to be free, they’ll leave with a liberated understanding of what it is to live here. To actually live.”

WHAT:  MDC Live Arts Miami presents “Haint Blu” by the Urban Bush Women

WHERE: Historic Hampton House, 4240 NW 27th Avenue, Miami

WHEN: 7:30 p.m. Thursday, March 9,, Friday, March 10 and Saturday, March 11; 6:30 p.m. Sunday, March 12

COST: $30

INFORMATION: 305-237-3010 or  liveartsmiami.org 

ArtburstMiami.com is a nonprofit source of theater, dance, visual arts, music and performing arts news. Sign up for our newsletter and never miss a story.

Miami Dancer One Of Ailey II’s ‘Next Generation of Dance’

Ailey II company will perform William Forsythe’s “Enemy in the Figure” when it comes to the Adrienne Arsht Center’s Knight Concert Hall on Saturday, Feb. 25. (Photo courtesy of Erin Baiano).

Miami ties run deep in the storied New York City-based Ailey II, the second company of the world-renowned Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater.

Ailey luminaries like  current artistic director and choreographer, Robert Battle, and 2016 Bessie Award winner, Ailey dancer and choreographer, Jamar Roberts, both hail from Miami.

Now in his first year, Ailey II dancer, Andrew Bryant, joins Battle and Roberts in calling both Miami and Ailey’s Manhattan studios “home.”   He’ll perform with Ailey II  at the Adrienne Arsht Center’s Knight Concert Hall on Saturday, Feb. 25 in its program, “The Next Generation of Dance.”

When asked how growing up in Miami prepared him for his career in dance, Bryant says that his first inspiration came while he was attending Norland Middle School in Miami Gardens. He recalls watching his older brother, Shaquille Braham, dancing for Miami icon Traci Young-Byron.

“I went to his show and saw him alongside (dancer) Keenan Washington,” says Bryant. “I was so inspired by the way (Washington) performed each piece. His length, musicality, and overall swag he possessed in each ballet left me in awe.”

The experience inspired Bryant to audition for the Miami Northwestern Performing and Visual Arts Center under the direction of Byron.  Bryant also went on to perform in Byron’s Miami-based company, Young Contemporary Dance Company.

The Ailey II company appeared on his radar while Bryant was still a sophomore at Towson University outside Baltimore. “I originally went to Howard University for my freshmen year of college,” he says. “In search of new scenery and a different way to approach dance, I auditioned for Towson University where I met former Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater member Linda Denise Fisher-Harrell who introduced me to Ailey II.”

He says his relationship with Ailey II was born out of his time at Towson. “They had a partnership with the university and would visit every year to do technical rehearsals for their upcoming tour,” says Bryant.  “There I would get invited to sit in on rehearsals, take classes, and get mentorship from the artistic directors.”

Earning his bachelor of fine arts degree from Towson, Bryant enrolled at The Ailey School where he studied for the next three years performing works by Alvin Ailey, Bradley Shelver, and Rebecca Margolick before receiving this year’s invite to join Ailey II.

Bryant says that having the chance to be a company member of Ailey II has been life-changing.

“Being in Ailey II has forced me to make a lot of life changes for the better,” says Bryant. “It’s allowed me to be more organized, to eat healthier, be more expressive, and to also embrace love and change in any situation.”

Founded in 1974 as the Alvin Ailey Repertory Ensemble, Ailey II has emerged as a training ground for up-and-coming dancers, pairing fresh talent with cutting-edge choreographers.  In the process, Ailey II has earned critical acclaim for showcasing a high-energy and diverse repertoire.

In her second year as artistic director of Ailey II, Francesca Harper’s basically grew up with the company.  Born in Chicago and raised in New York City, her mother, Denise Jefferson directed The Ailey School from 1984 to 2010.

Harper admits her history with the company makes her current role feel surreal.

“I enjoy entering the building (of the Ailey Studios) and seeing so many of the people I grew up with that are still working there,” explains Harper. “As I work with the talented young dancers, I have memories of all of my mentors at Ailey that poured so much love into me.”

Her long history training in the Ailey studios also explains Harper’s career as a dancer and choreographer with some of the world’s top companies including a decade with “Ballett Frankfurt” under avant-garde director and choreographer William Forsythe in the 1990s.

Forsythe’s provocative 1989 choreography, “Enemy in the Figure,” will be performed by Ailey II as part of the upcoming program in Miami.

Inspired by Thom Willem’s percussive electronic score, “Enemy in the Figure” is notable for its radical use of light and shadow.

Harper performed the work several times while at Ballett Frankfurt.  “(Enemy in the Figure’) is challenging but I am a risk-taker,” says Harper, “so I always found the challenging aspect of the work exhilarating.

She admits that she included the work on the program as a nod to Forsythe whom she counts as a mentor.

For her part, Harper has compiled a formidable set of choreographic accomplishments. The Knight Concert Hall program includes “Freedom Series,” Harper’s six-part, 27-minute work for eleven dancers premiered by Ailey II in 2021.

Compositions by Esperanza Spalding, Slowdanger, Sampha, and Jon Hopkins inspired the work.

“It is a love letter to Alvin, The Ailey Organization, and it travels down a landscape of lifetime memories while also sharing my vision for Ailey II,” says Harper.

Miller, the current artistic director of Brooklyn-based company, GALLIM Dance, took the title for the work from the Greek word for “soul.” Miller became the first choreographer ever to be named the Choreographer-in-Residence for the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2017.

Created for the Ailey company, the current version of the work is a revamp of the original and features new lighting and new costuming designed by Elias Gurrola.

For Harper, Miller’s work is a natural fit with this year’s program. “Andrea is a risk taker as well,” explains Harper. “Her movement is very physical and imaginative and so many aspects of the movement embody the new vision of the company.”

And for Bryant, Miller’s choreography makes him think big. “When I think of Andrea Miller’s ballet Psūkhe, the words ‘sensual, godly, larger than life’ come to mind to describe the ballet.”

Bryant says working with Harper has been nothing short of amazing. “She’s really pushing us to be bigger than ourselves artistically and intellectually. The new vision she has for Ailey ll really shines bright in each and every rehearsal, and that truly propels us to reach new heights,” he says.

WHAT: Ailey II’s “The Next Generation of Dance”

WHEN: 8 p.m., Saturday, Feb. 25.

WHERE: Knight Concert Hall, Adrienne Arsht Center of the Performing Arts, 1300 Biscayne Boulevard, Miami

COST: $30, $45, $55, $65

INFORMATION:  305-949-6722 and arshtcenter.org

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Review: Miami City Ballet Showcases Love in ‘Modern Masters’

Katia Carranza and Steven Loch in Martha Graham’s “Diversion of Angels” from Miami City Ballet’s “Modern Masters,” which continues its run in Broward and Palm Beach counties after premiering at the Adrienne Arsht Center, Miami. (Photo courtesy of Alexander Iziliaev).

A program pairing of two titans of 20th-century dance with two 21^st-century up-and-comers showcased the versatility of Miami City Ballet’s dancers in the company’s second program of the season.

Miami City Ballet’s “Modern Masters” opened on Friday, Feb. 10 at the Adrienne Arsht Center with shows on Saturday, Feb. 11 and Sunday, Feb. 12, with the choreography of Martha Graham and José Limón and new works by Amy Hall Garner and Pontus Lidberg.

Versed in the technique of choreographer George Balanchine, the MCB dancers showed great flexibility adapting to very different schools of modern dance technique.

Set to music by Norman Della Joio, a company premiere of Martha Graham’s “Diversion of Angels”  opened the evening with a work for eleven dancers.   It first premiered at Connecticut College in 1948 with the original title, “Wilderness Stair.”

The choreography unfolded through vignettes that featured three couples –  Dawn Atkins (dressed in white) and  Chase Swatosh, Katia Carranza (in red) and Steven Loch, and Juliet Hay (in yellow) paired with Ariel Rose.

Each couple represented a different aspect of love with white for mature love, red for romantic love and yellow for young love.

The piece opened with MCB principal Chase Swatosh standing behind principal soloist Dawn Atkins.  Swatosh raised his arm then brought his hand behind Atkins’ head making a halo of his fingers.  In response, Atkins raised her left arm straight overhead.

The two formed a sculptural centerpiece as the other dancers circled them.  The men entered at a run – bare chested with beige pants – then stopped dead on one leg, leaning forward, left hands scooping the air.

The women joined them in brown skirts, hopping and skipping across the stage, arms overhead.

The movements of the men and women had a tribal feel that contrasted sharply with the Hellenic-like pose struck by Atkins and Swatosh, a tension the work would sustain throughout.

Each of the couples wonderfully brought to life the different kinds of love they represented.

For instance, the duet between Juliet Hay and Ariel Rose in the role of “young” love showcased delightfully breathless chase sequences that featured Hay equal parts frantic and playful, arms flailing, legs kicking even as Rose scooped her overhead.

Next up was choreographer José Limón’s, “The Moor’s Pavane,” which first premiered at Connecticut College in 1949.

Premiered by Miami City Ballet in 1988, Limón’s work is loosely based on Shakespeare’s 1603 play, “Othello.”

Both the play and the choreography relate the tragedy caused by a husband’s jealousy that leads him to kill his blameless wife on suspicions fueled by a treacherous friend.

Limón organized the choreography in the form of a “pavane” – a form of Renaissance court dance.  The use of this structure created tension during the piece as powerful emotions churned beneath a façade of courtly courtesies.

Steven Loch as “The Moor,” Chase Swatosh as “His Friend,” Hannah Fischer as “His Friend’s Wife,” and Katia Carranza  as “The Moor’s Wife,” were each astonishingly powerful in their respective roles on Friday.

Swatosh saturated his performance of the traditional Iago role with duplicity as he disarmed Lochs’ barely contained rage and desperation with a submissive bow or glance.

The Opus 1 Orchestra, under the direction of conductor and Artistic Director Gary Sheldon, marvelously handled the demands of Baroque composer Henry Purcell’s score.

Next were two world premieres from contemporary choreographers Garner and Lidberg.

“Resplendent Fantasy” is the second MCB commission from Garnger, a Huntsville, Alabama native. The first was the 2021 digital premiere of “ViVa.”

“Resplendent Fantasy” is a high energy, flowing, three part work for five dancers set to music from composer Oliver Davis’ “Infinite Ocean,” Jonathan Dove’s “Piano Quintet” and Komitas’s “Krunk.”

Beautiful costuming dressed the women in peacock blue and scarlet dresses for the women and the men in silvery gray pants and blue tops.

In the first movement, Mayumi Enokibara – her arms circling – picked her way en pointe across the stage.  She was followed by Ellen Grocki pivoting in chainé turns before flowing through lunges.

Garner built sequences with an emphasis on balletic steps but embellished them with quirky turns of wrists and ankles or unexpected body twists.

This was especially the case in the splendidly danced final movement marked by Rui Cruz who entered with a powerful leap then glided across the stage, kicking to accents in the violin solo.

The evening closed with the world premiere of Swedish-born Lidberg’s “Petrichor.”

The title is composed of the two Greek words for stone and ichor and refers to the scent of the earth when rain falls on dry soil.

Set to Philip Glass’ iconic three movement first “Violin Concerto,” the 25-minute piece for ten dancers makes free use of digital technology effects.

As the dancers executed their sequences, the back scrim bled shades of dark gray like a spreading ink stain and suffused much of the action on the stage with a strong sense of foreboding.

In the second movement, the scrim darkened to black during the duet between Cameron Catazaro and principal Katia Carranza.  Carranza seemed to absorb the black mood melting languidly over the arms of Catazaro or spreading motionless on the floor.

With the last movement, the scrim glowed with greens and reds and the heaviness of the dancing vanished with sequences full of energy and the women repeatedly running at the men who scooped them overhead.

The work ended a few times.  First, the dancers formed a “V” then morphed into a pyramid before finally closing with principal Nathalia Arja, her back to the audience, glancing over her shoulder then walking toward the front as the curtain closed.

Miami City Ballet’s “Modern Masters” continues with performances through March 5 at the Kravis Center in West Palm Beach and the Broward Center for the Performing Arts.

WHAT: Miami City Ballet’s “Modern Masters” 

WHERE, WHEN:  7:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday, Feb 17, 18; 2 p.m. Saturday, Feb 18; 1 p.m. Sunday, Feb 19, Kravis Center for the Performing Arts, 701 Okeechobee Blvd., West Palm Beach

7:30 p.m. Saturday, March 4; 2 p.m. Sunday, March 5, Broward Center for the Performing Arts, 201 SW Fifth Ave., Fort Lauderdale

COST: $39, $40, $79, $115, $189, depending on showtime and venue. 

INFORMATION: 305-929-7010 or miamicityballet.org

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Miami City Ballet Journeys Into Worlds of ‘Modern Masters’

Miami City Ballet dancers Francisco Schilereff and Samantha Hope Galler in “Resplendent Fantasy,” choreography by Amy Hall Garner, as part of “Modern Masters,” opening on Friday, Feb. 10 at the Adrienne Arsht Center, Miami. (Photo courtesy of Alexander Izilieav)

Miami City Ballet’s second program of the season brings together new and venerable creative voices, showcasing the back and forth between ballet and modern dance.  Two here-and-now works are in good company with two classics in “Modern Masters,” which opens at the Arsht Center on Friday, Feb. 10.

The program’s title points to Martha Graham and José Limón, towering 20th-century figures who could provide points of reference for the highest aims of the featured on-the-rise choreographers, Amy Hall Garner and Pontus Lidberg. To this track also come the MCB dancers, not only amply skilled in the ballets of George Balanchine but always game for an array of expression. Just so, noble spirits of the past and practitioners full of present energy will converge for the splendor of timeless artistry.

On view, Limón’s 1949 quartet “The Moor’s Pavane,” using music by English Baroque composer Henry Purcell and distilling drama from Shakespeare’s “Othello,” was created in a period when there were still notable artistic barricades between ballet and modern dance camps.  Yet by 1970, this found its way into the repertory of American Ballet Theatre, and even the legendary Rudolf Nureyev embraced the Moor. MCB first staged the work more than three decades ago.

Graham’s “Diversion of Angels,” to American composer Norman Dello Joio’s pulsating score, premiered under a different name a year earlier than Limón’s piece at the same venue, Connecticut College, then hosting the American Dance Festival, a hothouse for modern dance. It was a burst of enduring brightness, with Graham’s admiration for the vibrant colors in Wassily Kandinsky’s paintings informing her design, the lead women’s costumes hue-coded to choreographic themes: yellow for the flickers of young flirtation; red for romance on high heat; and white for maturity’s cut-marble devotion. MCB first performed this at Jacob’s Pillow in Becket, Mass., just last summer.

Those journeys of modern dance to ballet companies, so frequent and valued now, might seem wondrous seen from the foundational era Limón documented in his “An Unfinished Memoir.”  Though appreciative of contemporary ballets himself, he reports, “The clash of artistic ideologies during this period occasionally had a tragicomical aspect.” He describes, for instance, how in a lecture-demonstration Graham—her tigress defense at the ready—was heckled by none other than ballet luminary Michel Fokine.

Even so, militants in stylistic trenches could also turn into comrades-in-arms. And its camaraderie Dante Puleio, artistic director of the Limón Dance Company, salutes in MCB’s staging of “The Moor’s Pavane.” As he puts it, “An opportunity like this lets us extend our work, and that’s how dance history gets passed along—continuing the story of who Limón was.”

Puleio refers to the accomplishments of the Mexican immigrant to the U.S., a great choreographer and an unsurpassed exemplar of male dancing, who proved exceptional in his time and place. Notably, Limón’s body of work is the first to have stayed active so long in his own and other companies after the creator’s death.

According to Puleio, “The Moor’s Pavane” excels in choreography “so clear and beautifully executed that in twenty minutes four dancers in their courtly dance wrap you up intimately in storytelling with the impact of the big works in ballet repertoire.”

Puleio counted on Kurt Douglas, the first African-American to perform the Iago-based role in “The Moor’s Pavane,” to set the piece on the MCB casts.  They were then fine-tuned with coaching from specialist Daniel Lewis, founding dean of dance at Miami’s New World School of the Arts and once a Limón company star.

“Whereas ballet is mostly about how light you can be,” Puleio explains, “in Limón, dancers must drop their weight exhibiting heaviness when needed.”  And that exploration of gravity extends to Graham’s language, alongside her particular use of midriff contractions and floor work.

“In ‘Moor’s Pavane,’ performers also need to not just show but live inside emotion for greater impact,” says Puleio. Spatial awareness here also involves not anticipating but reacting to what others are doing.

Luckily, MCB dancers have proven true to the task.  And they’ve shown comparable eagerness crossing into Garner’s “Resplendent Fantasy” and Lidberg’s “Petrichor,” company commissions from artists at ease with stylistic fluidity.

With a career covering ballet, modern dance, and musical theater, Garner traces her artistic range back to her Alabama roots and through a Juilliard education. Commissions led her, mid-pandemic, to an MCB-Paul Taylor Dance Company joint project, a remotely choreographed screen duet titled “ViVa.” A recent MCB collaboration with Joffrey Ballet funded her “Rita Finds Home,” a young people’s ballet being performed by MCB School’s pre-professional division throughout South Florida. (Remaining performances are at 1:30 p.m., Saturday, Feb. 11, Arsht Center; 2 p.m., Saturday, Feb. 25, Society of the Four Arts, Palm Beach; 2 p.m. Sunday, March 12, Haulover Beach, 10800 Collins Ave., Miami Beach.)

The whimsical portrayal of an artistic girl’s journey has special meaning for Garner now that she’s the mother of a six-year-old boy.

Through all her varied creative endeavors, Garner confesses, “It’s music with momentum that gets my choreographic wheels turning.”

The three-section “Resplendent Fantasy” uses mood-setting compositions by Oliver Davis (the born-to-be-danced “Infinite Ocean”), Jonathan Dove (the third movement of “Piano Quintet”) and, intriguingly, early 20^th-century Armenian priest Komitas (the folk-inspired “Krunk”).

“I really want this to be about the marriage of movement and music,” Garner says. No better entry point, then, for the five-member MCB casts, already standard bearers for Balanchine’s oft-repeated dictum to see the music and hear the dance.

 

Rehearsing the Davis section of “Resplendent Fantasy” at an MCB studio a few days before her premiere, Garner encouraged Ariel Rose and Rui Cruz in both classical amplitude and her own brand of energy, running in quirky circuits from their mid-section to their limbs. They seemed to be pulling in bliss from the music—from the air.

“I like to make dances full of positivity and joy,” emphasizes the choreographer. “It empowers audiences by leaving them on a high.”

Ten dancers in another studio—from corps members to principals interweaving briskly across ranks—were learning to scuttle and cluster in Lidberg’s “Petrichor,” the choreographer tightening up their patterns to Philip Glass’s “Violin Concerto No. 1.” The breeze-by moves and sudden surges—robust but elusive—gave hints of  “The Smell of Earth After Rain,” the subtitle Lidberg gives to his piece’s recondite name.

“It’s something we all know but can’t quite put our fingers on,” explains Lidberg. “And I like it when dance evokes that. I want my piece to be transportive—with a degree of abstract narrative but not necessarily a story.”

The Swedish dance and filmmaker’s commissions have ranged from the Martha Graham Dance Company to Paris Opera Ballet. In fact, it was a screen work of his that first caught the attention of MCB artistic director Lourdes Lopez more than a decade ago. “Petrichor” now plumbs the possibilities of ballet—in which he was trained though he also studied modern dance.

“We all rest on the shoulders of giants, but there are many giants,” Lindberg says. Yet he remains “more of a searcher than a follower. I’m very open and can push in many different directions. But my process starts with finding out all that lives in the dancers’ bodies, what the soul of a company is, and then I move forward.”

Lidberg and Garner discovered bounty in MCB dancers. As Puleio judges, “They have what ballet and modern dance look for at the moment—as much versatility as possible. That comes down to not being afraid of vulnerability in exploring a new space. They are such exquisite artists it’s easy to share that with them as they take it and make it something incredible.”

WHAT:  Miami City Ballet’s “Modern Masters”

WHEN: 7:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday, Feb. 10, 11; 2 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 12.

WHERE:  Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts, 1300 Biscayne Blvd., Miami

 ADDITIONAL PERFORMANCES: 

 7:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday, Feb 17, 18; 2 p.m. Saturday, Feb 18; 1 p.m. Sunday, Feb 19, Kravis Center for the Performing Arts, 701 Okeechobee Blvd., West Palm Beach

7:30 p.m. Saturday, March 4; 2 p.m. Sunday, March 5, Broward Center for the Performing Arts, 201 SW Fifth Ave., Fort Lauderdale

 COST:   $39, $40, $79, $115, $189, depending on showtime and venue.

 INFORMATION: 305-929-7010 or miamicityballet.org

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Cultural Side of Twerking Explored By Olujimi Dance Collective

Dancers from the Olujimi Dance Collective rehearse at the Moss Center in Cutler Bay for the upcoming performance of T.W.E.R.K. (Photo courtesy of Olujimi Dance Collective)

Twerking.

Just the mere mention of the dance style can set off a fierce debate.

While some may dismiss it as a booty-popping, hips-gyrating dance craze best relegated to the dance floor, for Michelle Grant-Murray there is more to it than meets the eye.

The choreographer, educator, and artistic director of Olujimi Dance Collective, will explore this and more through the lens of four performances at the Dennis C. Moss Cultural Arts Center in Cutler Bay. The event will be held from Friday, Jan. 20 to Sunday, Jan. 22.

“We’ll have a live musician. We have some video elements and we have some vocalization going on through the spoken word,” says Grant-Murray.

Dancers will perform against the backdrop of something else that is known for movement: a train, she says.

“Four women all get on this train for different reasons, but they all have a connection through their stories,”  Grant-Murray explains. “What happens on the train is that they’re time-hopping so they’re coming from different places and spaces in time. We’re looking at culture, history and philosophy over a time period in telling these four individual stories.”

Grant-Murray says the presentation has evolved as part of a larger conversation she has been having on twerking. She tackled the topic in depth two years ago at a Black Artist Talk event held at Deering Estate. The subject, she said, is one that is worth exploring.

“It is a very deep conversation,” says Grant-Murray. “I’ve been thinking about this since 2014.”

She recalls that at the time she was seated on the porch of the Oloffson Hotel in Port-au-Prince, Haiti.  Surrounding her was an eclectic group that included a historian, a life coach, and an artist (and a New Orleans second-line reveler), when the subject of twerking bubbled up as they belted out a string of gospel songs.

She realized that for every person who sees the style of dance as hypersexual or even vulgar, she, on the other hand, sees a dancer. A dancer whose hips are steeped in tradition and whose pelvic thrusts answer the call of the Congo.

Carole Boyce-Davies, a featured speaker for the Black Artist Talk event and professor of Africana Studies and Literatures in English at Cornell University, explains that twerking traditionally served a specific purpose.

“(It’s now on) Tik Tok and all the various social media, Instagram and so on and it’s something that people are doing in a flagrant way to use their sexuality and their body without realizing that historically, many of these dance patterns had a very specific meaning, Whether they were fertility dances or dances for agricultural purposes (or other) reasons, just shaking the body was not part of the intent.”

Grant-Murray said that another opportunity allowed her the freedom to pursue the issue further.

“I’d already started to deconstruct the word T.W.E.R.K. (as) ‘Transnational Dance Works and Practices that Evoke Revolutionary Kinship.’   That was already a part of the conversation, deconstructing the word and what it actually looks like and how this movement, this practice, brings so many people together and so from that point, I  was offered a residency at the South Miami Dade Cultural Center and I was like, This is perfect. I can work on T.W.E.R.K.”

Her investigation eventually culminated in a series of programs that included a T.WE.R.K summer dance intensive and collaborations with noted dancers and choreographers including Yanique Hume, Ph.D., head of the culture studies department at the University of the West Indies.

“We invited dance artists from different genres of the African diasporic movement form. So we had traditional West African and we had something called Umfundalali dance technique, which is a fusion of African dance forms that come from the continent and that was created by (the late) Dr. Karimu Welsh (an early scholar of African diaspora dance).”

With a wealth of knowledge under her belt,  Grant-Murray views her latest event at the Dennis C. Moss Cultural Arts Center as the culmination and celebration her previous work combined. It also serves as the perfect opportunity to leave her audience with a larger message.

“I would like for them to walk away with a broader perspective of how movement has traveled over space and time and how we live with that information inside of our body and how valuable that information is,” she said. “The wealth of that knowledge and that level of power, we carry that in our body. And what I would like for them to walk away with is empowerment.”

WHAT: Olujimi Dance Collective presents T.W.E.R.K.: Transnational Dance Works and Practices that Evoke Revolutionary Kinship

WHERE: Dennis C. Moss Cultural Arts Center, 10950 SW 211 St., Cutler Bay

WHEN:  8:30 p.m., Friday, Jan. 20 and Saturday, Jan. 21. 3:30 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 21 and Sunday, Jan. 22.

COST: $35 general admission, $10 discounted student tickets also available.

INFORMATION: 786-573-5300 or mosscenter.org

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Choreographers speak to personal experiences in Peter London Global Dance Co.’s ‘Ancestral Ground’

Peter London Global Dance Company’s “Ancestral Ground” is in the Carnival Studio Theater at the Adrienne Arsht Center Wednesday, Dec. 28 through Saturday, Dec. 31. (Photo by Edison Boodosing)

Several of the works from Peter London Global Dance Company’s latest program, “Ancestral Ground,” recall the time when the pandemic’s lockdown restrictions finally began to lift. The centerpiece of the program, “La danse vie,” is a three-part bacchanal of movement Peter London created in the wake of the initial two-month lockdown.

When restrictions eased, London took his dancers to the beach.

“It was great being out in the open and in the fresh air,” London says, “and we performed the dance right when the sun was rising.”

London conceived the opening of “La danse vie” as a ritual to the sun.

Peter London Global Dance Company performs at the Carnival Studio Theater inside the Adrienne Arsht Center with shows from Wednesday, Dec. 28 through Saturday, Dec. 31.

The choreographer calls the first movement “Kalinda Wash.”  Performed by nine dancers and set to the percussion-rich composition, “D Train to Prospect Park,” by Palms Down, “Kalinda” is a Sanskrit word that refers to health and replenishment.

A native of Trinidad and Tobago, London drew inspiration for the second movement, “King Carnival,” from the Trinidadian Carnival.

“In Trinidad, during the Carnival season, it’s like the Carnival comes alive at 4 a.m.,” says London. “The second movement is an all-male quartet of solos and group sections and is fiery and vibrant and intense.”

Etienne Charles, a Trinidad-born trumpeter and percussionist and 2015 Guggenheim fellow, composed “Creole Soul” to accompany the movement.

“La danse vie” closes with “Bacchanal Tuesday,” a piece for nine dancers whose title refers to the Tuesday before Lent.

“That’s when all the big masquerades come out and everyone drinks and eats,”  London says.  “All hell breaks loose.  It’s a physical and spiritual explosion.”

London turned again to Charles to capture Carnival’s spirit. The result is music that not only exudes explosive energy, but it also tells a history of creative musical resistance on the part of Trinidadian slaves.

“If caught playing the drums one could have one’s hand cut off, since the drum made a code language that the plantation owners tried to subvert,” explains London.  “When the plantation owners banned the slaves from using drums, we picked bamboo and we cut it at different lengths and sizes and that’s what we used to play the rhythms.   The music makes you want to jump to your feet and dance in the theater.”

A dance professor at New World School of the Arts since the early 1990s, London says many of the company’s dancers and choreographers are former students.  Some of his dancers started with him even younger at the Pinecrest dance studio, Dance Empire.

London’s students have gone on to work in top companies including Alvin Ailey, Martha Graham Dance, Paul Taylor Dance and Dance Theater of Harlem.  They include Robert Battle, current artistic director of Alvin Ailey, and Jamar Roberts, Alvin Ailey’s first resident choreographer.

Dancer and choreographer Justin Rapaport, one of London’s former students, will premiere, “Around, As You Turn.”

Rapaport began training with London at Dance Empire when he was eight years old. He followed London to New World of the Arts before being accepted to The Juilliard School. In 2016, he joined the Vancouver-based company, Ballet BC. It was a piece created as part of Ballet BC’s choreographic workshop, “Take Form,” that won him the Danish Dance Theater Award at the Copenhagen International Choreographic Competition in 2021. In 2022, he decided to strike out on his own.

“Our relationship has grown throughout the years, from teacher-student to mentor-mentee and now to artistic collaborators and better yet, friends,” says Rapaport when asked about training with London.

“Around, As You Turn,” is an eight-minute duet performed by PLGDC dancers Clinton Harris and Leon Kobb (Dec. 28 and 30) and Herne Jean-Baptiste and Leon Kobb (Dec. 29 and 31).

The work grew out of Rapaport’s reflections on the idea of individual progress.

“No matter how much we may change, we return to a place where we have been before,” says Rapaport.  “Circumstances might be different: new people, new environment, new sense of self, and, yet, there is a sense of return and familiarity.”

Also, on the December program is “Embers” by choreographer Terry Springer.  PLGDC dancers Macey Rowan and Clinton Harris (Dec. 28 and 30) and Brilley Rowan and Leon Cobb (Dec. 29 and 31 the 29th) solo to the music of Woodkid, Ambrose Williams and Jonatan Szer.

“Embers” addresses the theme of returning to life during the pandemic, which, for Springer, occurred like embers reviving into flame.

The program also includes Haitian-American choreographer Vitolio Jeune’s, “I am My Brother’s Keeper,” a duet danced by Harris and Cobb (Dec. 28 and 30) andJean-Baptiste and Cobb (Dec. 29 and 3).  The work dramatizes the complicated, but loving, relationship Jeune had with his brother, he says.

Now in her second season with PLGDC, dancer Eden Collier first met London as a dance student at New World, though she began dancing at the age of three.

Collier – who dances in most of the program  – identifies strongly with London’s “Eye of Zimbabwe.” In this piece Collier shares solos with Harris, Cobb and Tt’Shaylah Lightbourn.

“It (‘Eye of Zimbabwe’) reminds me that I’m not alone,” says Collier, “and to remember to have gratitude for all that they’ve given me.”

“A lot of times we talk about racial trauma, but oftentimes we forgot to talk about the blessings that our ancestors passed down to us,” she says.

The first act closes with, “And So I Run,” choreographed by Kashia Kancey, a former London student from New World who grew up in Miami’s Overtown.  Kancey’s new work reflects on the death of George Floyd, an African-American man killed in police custody in Minneapolis in 2020.

“Black folks many times run from the police and run for their lives,” says London about Kancey’s piece.  “And so, the whole time you’re living you have to run.”

“The energy of the dancers (in ‘And So I Run’) is breathtaking and sometimes it is painful to watch,” London says.  “We’ve been running for 500 years.  Running is part of the experience of being free and trying to stay alive. And with all that running a lot of creativity happens.”

WHAT: Peter London Global Dance Company’s, “Ancestral Ground”

WHEN: 7:30 p.m., Wednesday, Dec. 28, Thursday, Dec. 29, Friday, Dec. 30; 2 p.m., Saturday, Dec. 31.

WHERE: Adrienne Arsht Center of the Performing Arts, Carnival Studio Theater.  1300 Biscayne Boulevard, Miami 33132.

COST: $53. 

INFORMATION: 305-949-6722 or arshtcenter.org.

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Miami City Ballet’s ‘The Nutcracker’ through the eyes of a principal dancer

Dancers in Miami City Ballet’s production of “George Balanchine’s The Nutcracker” at the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts beginning Friday, Dec. 16 through Saturday, Dec. 24. (Photo courtesy of Alexander Iziliaev)

In 25 years of performing George Balanchine’s “The Nutcracker,” Miami City Ballet principal Tricia Albertson has been the Sugar Plum Fairy, Dewdrop, a waltzing flower, and confections of Spanish chocolate and marzipan. Those credentials already make her an ambassador from the Land of the Sweets. But add to them a snowflake, a dancing doll, a genteel hausfrau, and a ready-to-party grandma in Act One’s Stahlbaum-family Christmas festivity, and that certifies her all-inclusive view of the holiday spectacle, a yearly ritual MCB will bring back to South Florida stages beginning its run at the Arsht Center on Friday, Dec. 16.

Considering what makes “The Nutcracker” a ballet unlike any other, Albertson credits the sparkling craft and joyous spirit that conjures up the marvels of childhood. And, for a ballerina, she says, “Every year it’s great to revisit it and try to find new aspects.” Other fine works that come up, at best, a few times in a career simply don’t afford so much repeated opportunity.

Albertson estimates she’s danced the Sugar Plum Fairy around 70 times throughout 17 seasons, which makes it—well, the plummiest of plum roles. The fairy drives the action in the beloved second act: her raised-lights entrance and solo as the guardian of the Angels (little girls from MCB School); her welcoming of Marie Stahlbaum and the Nutcracker Prince before overseeing diversions in her high-calorie queendom, and the culminating pas de deux with her Cavalier.

That lovely pairing puts the royal icing on the ballet with the scene’s sweep of leaps and pirouettes: Its peaks of ballerina run-jumps onto her consort’s shoulder and one top-tier balance when Sugar Plum lets go of the Cavalier‘s steadying hand and, firm in arabesque, claims the pose on pointe solely on her own—in case anyone had any doubts as to who rules the roost here.

Among all of Albertson’s partners, Sugar Plum’s Cavaliers hold a special place. Standing out as her first one was Didier Bramaz, a friend from their time at New York’s School of American Ballet, who “had a very calm presence that helped me feel grounded. I also danced with Reyneris Reyes for many years, and we had a unique chemistry I loved. I knew he was always there for me.”

This year she’s partnered with Steven Loch, only in his second season with the company but experienced in this part from a decade at Pacific Northwest Ballet.  “We did our roles together last year and from our first rehearsal, everything worked,” Albertson says. “We have the same musicality, which makes it easier. He’s also taller than lots of guys I’ve danced with, so I feel well connected.”

Still, Albertson points out it’s when Sugar Plum first comes on the scene to herd the Angels that eases her—after long weeks of rehearsals—into the luminosity of the role. “It’s one of the nicest touches Balanchine put in,” she says.  “The ballerina gets to look at all those children around her, and the magic takes the nerves away.”

Since she joined MCB as a coryphée (pre-soloist), Albertson hasn’t missed a single Nutcracker run. “I played the grandmother at 17, the youngest dancer doing the oldest character,” she recalls.  And even while getting over an injury in 2019, she acted in Act One’s party scene as Frau Stahlbaum. Naturally, she’ll never forget the 2004 shows in which she first danced Sugar Plum, the butterflies in her stomach soon turning into a commanding ballerina’s wings.

Nonetheless, early in her career, Albertson sometimes preferred dancing Dewdrop in the Waltz of the Flowers. “I had more power in my legs then and loved all the jumping and fouettés.  But I came to learn there’s so much more to this piece—so grand, so beautiful—which lets you fly to the music with the corps all around you.”

For the current production, Albertson is also coaching the snow scene, which closes Act One and signals the fantasy to follow. Not that there’s any shortage of hocus-pocus in the previous sections, which include a Christmas tree growing into a colossus, toys battling comically menacing mice, and the mysterious Drosselmeier, who not only fixes a broken nutcracker but devises transforming it into a prince to gladden Marie’s heart.

“Staging Snowflakes has brought back how hard this is for the ballerinas—the hardest thing in Nutcracker, I’d say, with that amount of jumping and fast pointe work,” judges Albertson. “And it has to be perfectly in sync, or the charm’s not there.” She tips her Sugar Plum’s tiara to all those diligent corps members who stay on tireless duty through a half-month-long run.

Of course, she also recognizes the support of the score, with “musical cues, little twinkly sounds making you think of snow and how light you’re supposed to be on your feet. It’s fun to read into that different intentions—certain steps I feel like snow flurries, and others like shards of ice, almost dangerous.”  She laughs noting she grew up in Santa Cruz, Calif., has lived in South Florida most of her life, and for her by now “snow is a foreign concept.”

But it’s true Tchaikovsky’s score brims with dramatic suggestion.  Though many of its selections have become clichés we hear in seasonal TV commercials, shopping at the mall, or driving to a workplace party, those are only trivial ghosts of sound. Animated by live orchestra, the music regains a robust presence that—teasing, caressing, arousing—leads us to a realm of wonders.

And we love to keep going back, the pleasure not lost on Albertson’s close friend and fellow principal Jennifer Lauren—herself a Nutcracker trouper since her days at Alabama Ballet, among only a handful of companies licensed to stage Balanchine’s work, which debuted at New York City Ballet in 1954 and MCB adopted in 1990.

In the midst of readying her own interpretation of Sugar Plum alongside Renan Cerdeiro’s Cavalier, Lauren attests to the primacy of “The Nutcracker” in the repertory and to the deep-seated grace of Albertson’s portrayals.

“This ballet is like a family member I get to hug every Christmas,” Lauren says, acknowledging the work’s noble values. “And Tricia is someone I’ve always looked up to. By nature, she keeps things light and loves to laugh. She’s so serene. And that shines in her dancing.”

Sorting through Nutcracker memories, both splendid and quirky (once in Clearwater, a fist-fight broke out in the audience, but to great applause the show went on), Albertson can retrace her remarkable artistic journey as she draws near retirement, which comes especially early for dancers. Other gems from choreographic masters and premieres from young creators have brightened her way. But, among these blessings, the yuletide classic remains a constant gift.

“Whether I’m performing or watching from the front, it always strikes me how free and big this show is. Nothing about it comes off as stressful,” says the ballerina, offering the best description of what everyone needs right about now.

WHAT:  Miami City Ballet’s “George Balanchine’s The Nutcracker”

WHEN: 7 p.m. Friday and Saturday, Dec. 16, 17, 20-23; 1 p.m., 6:30 p.m. Sunday, Dec. 18; 2 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 17, 21-23;  noon, Saturday, Dec 24

WHERE:  Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts, 1300 Biscayne Blvd., Miami

ADDITIONAL PERFORMANCES:  7 p.m. Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, Dec. 28, 29, and 30; 2 p.m. Thursday and Friday, Dec. 29 and 30, Kravis Center for the Performing Arts, 701 Okeechobee Blvd., West Palm Beach

COST:   $39-$269 depending on show-time and venue.

INFORMATION: 305-929-7010 or miamicityballet.org

ArtburstMiami.com is a nonprofit source of dance, visual arts, music and performing arts news. Sign up for our newsletter and never miss a story.

‘Dance Now’s’ adult take on holiday favorite isn’t your grandma’s ‘Nutcracker’

Dancers David Harris and Amanda Davis in Dance NOW! Miami’s “Clara” to be performed at Miami Theater Center, Miami Shores, on Saturday, Dec. 10. (Photo courtesy of Simon Soong)

The traditional “Nutcracker” ballet tells a children’s story of a young girl transported to a magical world of sweets accompanied by her Nutcracker doll who transforms into a prince.

The ballet is also performed with a large number of children in key roles and auditoriums frequently packed with families.

For Dance NOW! Miami co-artistic directors, Diego Salterini and Hannah Baumgarten, it’s time for a new “Nutcracker.” The pair say they are taking the holiday classic in a new direction with “Clara,” a ballet that reconceives the “Nutcracker” story using mature themes with an adult audience in mind.

“Clara” tells the story of the self-discovery of a young woman.  A main feature of DNM’s new “Nutcracker” is the notable absence of the Nutcracker role.

“This is both supposed to be a holiday experience, and it is expected to be enjoyed by adults,” says Baumgarten. “No one under 13 is allowed,” she says as the DNM dancers set up for rehearsal of the new work on a recent Wednesday at the Little Haiti Cultural Center.

Baumgarten and Salterini came up with the idea last year but began to create new choreographies for the company in October.

“Canadian composer Davidson Jaconello took Tchaikovsky’s original music and put it through the mixer,” says Salterini referring to Russian composer Pyotr Illyich Tchaikovsky who wrote the traditional ballet’s original score.  “The traditional music is recognizable  . . . but he (Jaconello) has taken it to a different place.”

In Jaconello’s re-imagining, the music begins and the ballet’s opening melody is instantly recognizable but enveloped by jazzy rhythms and instrumentation that conjure a Manhattan lounge club vibe.

The dancers enter in gray pebble coats jogging from one side of the floor to the other.  Nine boxes are piled on the sides, each square painted in a way that, when combined, form the ballet’s key props from a Christmas tree to a throne.

Dancers Austin Duclos and Julia Faris open with a duet and are quickly joined by Allyn Ginns Ayers, Amanda Davis, Renee Roberts, David Jewett, Anthony Velazquez and DNM newcomer Rae Wilcoxson.

The traditional “Nutcracker” ballet opens with the arrival of guests to a holiday party at the house of Dr. and Mrs. Stahlbaum.

DNM’s revised version shows a young-adult Clara (danced by Amanda Davis) welcoming friends by executing quick, flirtatious pirouettes with each as they arrive.   Once greeted, the guests mass at the back of the stage suggestively grinding and entwining together.

Also, in the traditional “Nutcracker,” Clara’s mysterious godfather Drosselmeier performs a supporting, non-dance role, which drops out before Act II.

For DNM’s “Clara,” Drosselmeier – danced by David Harris – wears cigarette pants and a purple corset.  During the opening of the piece, his main objective is to prevent Clara from getting too close to the other dancers.

“He (Drosselmeier) is first so focused on blocking Clara from growing up and exploring herself that he doesn’t get to know himself,” explains Harris.  “As things progress, he gets intrigued to discover who he is.  When he is finally forced to reveal who he is, he doesn’t know why he was keeping (himself) in all the time.”

The scenes that follow innovate on the traditional sequences in a way that recasts the themes of the tale in an adult frame.

In the dance of Chocolate, the trio of Duclos, Roberts and Faris are together for a pas de trois that quickly morphs into a menage a trois, working out every combination possible of passionate couplings.

Finally, where the traditional “Nutcracker” closes with Clara and the Prince flying off in a magical sleigh, “Clara” closes with Davis and Harris dancing a final duet to a light piano solo. Then with a crash of cymbals, the other dancers join in as jazzy trumpets and saxophones on melody shed Christmas for a New Year’s countdown party vibe.

DNM’s Program 1 also includes the American premiere of the Italian company, Compagnia Opus Ballet.

In 2019, DNM traveled to Florence where they performed “Bridges Not Walls,”  the company’s choreographic response to former President Donald Trump’s immigration policy.  During the tour, DNM collaborated with the Florentine company, Compagnia Opus Ballet (COP).

At the upcoming performance, COP makes its United States debut with an excerpt from “The Labyrinth.”  Danced by Sofia Galvan, Stefania Menestrina, Riccardo Papa, Giulia Orlando and choreographed by Arianna Benedetti, the work presents a psychological take on the myth of Ariadne and the Minotaur.

COP also performs the light and playful, “Ototeman,” choreographed by Sofia Galvan and Stefania Menestrina who are also the dancers in the piece.  “Ototeman” is about shaping a dance work without having a basic concept, which allows the two dancers complete creative freedom.

On the same program is “And First They Slaughtered the Angels,” a 1974 work by Daniel Lewis, choreographer and former founding dean of dance at New World School of the Arts.

Lewis composed the 15-minute work for twelve dancers drawing inspiration from poet Leonore Kandel’s 1967 six-part poem of the same name.

“I used the poem as my inspiration,” explains Lewis.  “She (Kandel) was one of the Beat poets from the ’60s.  One dancer – the Black angel – reads some of the poem’s lines, and three women perform the roles of white angels and three men perform as Hell’s Angels.    Then there is a Superstar angel and two couples who do pass-throughs.”

Lewis says it is one of his favorite works.

“It always closed any program I ever did and audiences loved it.  The whole purpose of this piece is for everyone to walk away with a different idea.  People walk away smiling,” he says, adding that part of the reason is the music – the Johann Pachelbel Canon in D. “People just love it.”

WHAT: Dance NOW! Miami’s Program 1: “Clara” featuring guest performances from Italy’s Opus Ballet

WHERE: Miami Theater Center, 9806 NE 2nd Ave, Miami Shores, FL 33138

WHEN: 8 p.m., Saturday, Dec. 10

COST: General admission, $40 in advance, and $45 day of the show; $25 for Miami Shores residents. Student tickets $5 in advance only at cultureshockmiami.com

INFORMATION: 305-975-8489 or dancenowmiami.org.

(Note: The performance includes some profanity, adult themes and content. It is not recommended for children under 13.)

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