Men Who Dance to return for a second year, this time as a festival

Argentine twin brothers Nicolas and German Filipeli are scheduled to perform at the Inter-American Choreographic Institute’s Men Who Dance Festival 2021. (Photo courtesy of Manzo Foong)

When the Inter-American Choreographic Institute (ICI) presented its first-ever Men Who Dance program in November 2020, it sought to explore and challenge ideas of masculinity before a live audience – and marked a return to indoor shows at the Broward Center for the Performing Arts since the pandemic closures.

This year, it’s back in the same venue, with the second edition now known as the Men Who Dance Festival 2021.

“The purpose of Men Who Dance is to create a platform to do gender exploration,” ICI artistic director Rafi Maldonado-Lopez said. “The beginning of the show plays on the notion of:  What is man?”

The festival will feature many returning Miami-Dade County-based dancers and companies, including Dimensions Dance Theatre of Miami, Arts Ballet Theatre of Florida, Tango Out, Cuban Classical Ballet of Miami, and Dance NOW! Miami. But there are some newcomers also scheduled, including Miami choreographer Randolph Ward, as well as artists from Paraguay, Brazil and Denmark.

(MWD SHOW Highlights 60ss from Rafi Maldonado-Lopez on Vimeo; video courtesy of Leandro Brito)

Ward plans to debut his new work, “The Practice of 10 Years,” a two-act solo he conceived as a tribute to his 10-year relationship with his husband, Miami drag artist CC Glitzer.

“The first half is dedicated to the conflicts of a relationship, and then I pay homage to him as a drag artist,” Ward said. “He’s sugar and I’m spice.”

For Ward, an important element of dance involves challenging audience expectations.

“I think it’s important that the audience sees things that are not traditional, because it shakes your core and makes you think about your life,” he said.

One of this year’s international performers will be Pontus Lidberg, artistic director of the Danish Dance Theatre in Copenhagen. He will participate in the duet, “Wings and Ash,” set to the work of composer David Lang.

“I have explored male partnering during most of my choreographic career,” Lidberg said. “I am a hybrid choreographer that works with big dance theater and modern dance companies and everything in between. Male partnering is a red line through my work.

“I have to make work relevant to me and based on my life experiences. Not to do that would be completely weird.”

Among the show’s 2020 highlights was a performance titled, “Connected Sight,” by the Miami-based program, Tango Out, which is expected back this year.

“Their performance last year had two men dancing tango … created by Miami choreographer Ray Sullivan as a tribute to the victims of the 2016 Pulse nightclub massacre,” Maldonado-Lopez said. “It was one of the performances we received the most positive feedback about.”

Tango Out’s contribution to this year’s festival will be “Monólogo,” performed by Argentine twin brothers Nicolas and German Filipeli, who were third-place winners in the 2019 Tango World Cup.

“The brothers represent two aristocratic ‘compadritos’– defiant but friendly – who compete with one another to determine who is the better dancer,” explained Sullivan. “They represent prototypes of a style of life of a kind of ‘porteño’ (a Buenos Aires resident) from the 1920s and ’30s.”

Cuban Classical Ballet of Miami is also set to return, with a pas de deux that reenvisions Georges Bizet’s 1875 opera, “Carmen” – whose namesake, the gypsy Carmen is the love interest of the soldier, Don José, and the toreador, Escamillo.  This new version, titled “The Flower,” retells the opera as a love story between the two male leads.

“Why can’t these two men question themselves and then fall in love?” said Eriberto Jimenez, executive artistic director of the Cuban Classical Ballet of Miami. “I think it’s important that we explore our sexuality and the way human behavior works.”

 

WHAT: Inter-American Choreographic Institute’s Men Who Dance Festival 2021

WHEN: 8 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 27, and 3 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 28

WHERE: Amaturo Theater at Broward Center for the Performing Arts, 201 SW Fifth Ave., Fort Lauderdale

COST: $25-$150

SAFETY PROTOCOLS: According to the Broward Center website, “this performance is on sale at full capacity without physical distancing limitations. The Broward Center’s health & safety guidelines have been developed in collaboration with Cleveland Clinic and follow guidance of local and state health officials and the Centers for Disease Control (CDC).” To review the center’s “Health & Safety Guidelines,” visit browardcenter.org/visit/health-safety-guidelines.

INFORMATION: browardcenter.org/events/detail/men-who-dance

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Dimensions Dance Theatre’s Program I to showcase works of 3 choreographers

Miranda Montes de Oca and Kevin Hernandez rehearsing for “DECO: Danzón of Eclectic Cultural Origin.” (Photo courtesy of Dimensions Dance Theatre of Miami)

Dimensions Dance Theatre of Miami’s Paulina Zambrana step-skips across the floor on the diagonal to a slow piano ballad, arms wafting overhead, then drifting behind her back. She slow-pirouettes into a lunge, bends back deeply, then springs forward into a deliberate set of chainé turns en pointe, catching a note with each step.

She is rehearsing her solo portion in “Preludes,” a new work by South Florida choreographer and Miami City Ballet dancer Ariel Rose that’s set to debut as part of Dimensions’ Program I: “World Premieres” on Saturday, Nov. 13. The company, led by co-artistic directors Carlos Guerra and Jennifer Kronenberg, is presenting three world premieres that evening at the South Miami-Dade Cultural Arts Center in Cutler Bay.

(VIDEO: DECO Trailer | October 2021)

The first, “Preludes,” embodies a “liquid quality” in the movements, designed to “imitate how human beings flow through different situations and emotions,” according to Zambrana’s partner in the piece, Dimensions dancer Maikel Hernandez.

Out of breath as she finishes her performance, Zambrana remarks that Rose has coached her “to feel like you’re swimming underwater, [as if] everything is very fluid and lush with the changes in the music.”

That music is piano work from Jorge Mejia’s 2015 album, “Preludes,” which served as inspiration for Rose’s work. (Mejia is president of the Latin division at Sony/ATV Music Publishing and a product of Miami’s New World School of the Arts.)

Next up is “DECO: Danzón of Eclectic Cultural Origin,” a collaborative piece strongly accented with features of Persian and Indian dance, whose title word, “Danzón,” is a nod to Mexican composer Arturo Márquez’s dramatic orchestral composition, “Danzón No. 2.” Supported by a Knight New Works grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, the Art Deco-inspired piece is the work of choreographer Kevin Jenkins,  and describes Miami’s present diversity and the myriad influences that shaped its past.

“DECO” opens with a solo by Dimensions dancer Miranda Montes de Oca, who walks toward the audience inserting pronounced hip rolls, her shoulders rolling into broad circles that sweep forward to the oboe’s melody or snap and freeze in odd angles in time to the beat tapped out on the wood block. At her side, dancers Stephan Fons, Mayrel Martinez, Selah Jane Oliver, Kevin Hernandez, Alexey Minkin and Melissa and Lyvan Verdecia form a diamond. They stretch out to their sides with their legs, as their arms trace wave patterns then sweep forward as if casting a weight.

“DECO” shows off Jenkins’ distinctive style – arms, wrists, hands and fingers moving ceaselessly, forming gestures that coordinate with off-center head tilts and pigeon-like slides. The body below the torso remains calm and grounded. The effect calls to mind classical Indian dance.

“We focused attention on coordinating hand placement and the head.  We also worked on the positions of the fingers a lot,” Oliver says, referring to how Jenkins coached them in this style.

Dimensions will also debut “Landscapes,” created by South Florida choreographer Donna Murray and inspired by the poems of Lani Scozzari.

Murray developed the work during the pandemic lockdown, with the support of an Artist Innovation Fellowship funded by the Cultural Council for Palm Beach County.

“The poems described a love affair during a road trip, where the poet described the state of the couple’s relationship using features taken from the context of each stop,” Murray says.

Murray rethought the message of the poems, putting the love first and then recast it for three couples dancing three pas de deux — the first danced by Oliver and Montes de Oca, the second by Dimensions’ Yanis Eric Pikieris and Daniel White, and the third by company newcomers Melissa and Lyvan Verdecia (the married couple danced in New York City’s Ballet Hispánico before relocating to South Florida).

The duets exhibit different spaces of emotional intimacy between the couples.

For example, the piece opens to the slow notes of a cello, and Oliver and Montes de Oca sitting at the center of the room. Montes de Oca shrugs forward then reclines into Oliver’s lap. They stand and pivot, then stretch forward and embrace. Montes de Oca appears intent on containing Oliver, either by circling her or by catching her arm and pulling her back to her side. The segment ends with both dancers stretched toward the other on the floor, their cheeks touching.

As she looks forward to returning to the stage after the pandemic closures, Oliver says the pandemic has changed her approach – dance is now for fun.

“In the background is the thought: What if I can’t dance again? What if something happens? I’m trying to enjoy it rather than obsess about it being perfect.”

Click here to read our Spanish-language preview for this performance.

 

WHAT: Dimensions Dance Theatre of Miami’s Program I: “World Premieres”

WHEN: 8 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 13, 2021

WHERE: South Miami-Dade Cultural Arts Center, 10950 SW 211th St., Cutler Bay

COST: $25-$45 for general admission, $75 for VIP tickets and $10 for students with identification

SAFETY PROTOCOLS: Social-distanced seating and enhanced sanitation measures are in effect and mask wearing is “strongly encouraged” at the South Miami-Dade Cultural Arts Center.

INFORMATION: 786-573-5300; smdcac.org/events

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brigid baker wholeproject puts ‘opera’ into ‘Operation Birdsong’

Meredith Barton will appear in brigid baker wholeproject’s “Operation Birdsong,” set for Nov. 11-14, 2021. (Photo courtesy of Cristina Isabel Rivera) 

In an era when grandiose titles such as Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Warp Speed routinely announce mass mobilizations, Miami choreographer Brigid Baker has named her newest program, “Operation Birdsong,” with an emphasis on the word “opera.”

For Baker, opera is an all-encompassing artform, and her latest program “is a poem and an opera in a fever dream, whose structure erases itself and vanishes, and is designed to expose emotion. A poem is slippery and can move in between worlds, it doesn’t have to offer clarity or hope or vision, it only has to make us pay attention to the world.”

Through “Operation Birdsong,” the brigid baker wholeproject company showcases human beings’ kinship with their bird cousins — from shared song patterns to the over-the-top displays of color and costuming both species can exhibit. Presented at Miami-Dade County Auditorium’s On.Stage Black Box Theatre from Nov. 11-14, 2021, the show forms the second installment of the company’s three-part trilogy that also includes “Crown” (which debuted in November 2020 as a drive-through experience) and “Return of the Bird Tribes” (scheduled to debut spring 2022).

For decades, the calls of birds have seemingly changed due to greater urban ambient noise. When the pandemic hit, some changed their tunes entirely.

“The sudden quiet enabled them to hear each other on a wider scale and vary their communication. They sing now more quietly in a lower tone, but with more flourishes,” Baker continues, as she pins a loop of fabric tight under the arm of wholeproject dancer Isaiah Gonzalez in the company’s 6th Street Dance Studio in Little Havana.

Gonzalez steps back and moves his arms in the altered costume. Half-dress, half-cape, the white fabric billows, sail-like, with patterns of bright yellow and mauve circles.

Nearby are two, 5-foot-tall blue papier-mâché robin eggs and against the wall is an enormous “nest” the size of a barn door. Baker refers to the nest as a mandala that will float across the stage at key moments of the performance, with brooms hanging beneath it.

During this recent rehearsal, Gonzalez then lines up on the opposite side of the studio along with two other dancers, Amy Trieger and Meredith Barton. After a narrator recites the names of birds, a brief recording of their specific song plays. With each new bird call, the dancers shift their movements. The screeches of the blue jay, for example, trigger quick steps, with the dancers tightly sandwiching one another, while the puffin’s call inspires long, sweeping leaps.

At the eagle’s scream, the three plié deeply, torsos bent toward their side, while for the seagull they stretch at an angle. As they shuffle through the sequences, they often snap out birdlike shifts of their head, quick ankle-height kicks, or fluttering twists of their wrists.

 Video also forms an essential component of “Operation Birdsong.” Baker affectionately terms her own videos as “slash-and-hack jobs.” But audiences who have seen her films know they feature poignant, tongue-in-cheek edited clips sourced from the web and often teeming with gorgeous natural images set to music.

Baker — dressed in an orange top and loose-fitting black slacks — starts up a black-and-white video featuring soprano Beverly Sills as Cleopatra in Handel’s opera, “Julius Caesar.” Sills packs her performance with runs, trills and virtuosic leaps of octave.

Sporting a crown of white feathers and a white cape hanging from her shoulders, Sills looks like a fantastic bird performing a mating dance.

“If I take clips of operas and put them alongside birds in song, we are similar, down to the plumage,” says Baker, as the video shifts to common songbirds warbling their tunes.

“Also, Justin has the sound wired in the theater to give a surround-sound effect to the bird calls,” she adds, referring to Justin Trieger, digital multimedia artist, recording engineer and manager of New World Symphony’s collaborative, internet-based projects. Trieger consistently contributes videos for wholeproject programs.

With so much emphasis on music, the program also includes Baker’s sister, Bertilla Baker, singing a cappella Irish folksongs.

The video ends. The dancers do a quick costume change, donning black robes and velvet black hats angled like a tuft of feather on the head of a bird. Each hat has a gold feather sewn into its side. The performers line up on the far side of the studio, facing away.

As a husky male voice recites the Wallace Stevens poem, “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird,” the dancers sweep the floor, beating their arms overhead and to their sides, then launch into tight pirouettes before falling out to sweep across the floor again. The choreography comes off as part-dance, part-ritual invocation.

 Baker sees the COVID-19 pandemic as an opportunity for people to recalibrate their priorities.

“We’ve lost 3 billion birds worldwide since the 1970s,” she says. “And the idea that we would let their songs disappear is insane.”

To read our Spanish-language preview for this event, click here. 

 

WHAT: brigid baker wholeproject’s “Operation Birdsong”

WHEN: 8 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 11^–14, 2021

WHERE: Miami-Dade County Auditorium’s On.Stage Black Box Theatre, 2901 W. Flagler St., Miami

COST: $25

SAFETY PROTOCOLS: The facility “strongly” encourages the continued use of face masks for indoor performances. Disposable face masks will be available. For more information, go to miamidadecountyauditorium.org/coronavirus-updates.

INFORMATION: miamidadecountyauditorium.org

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Cuban Classical Ballet of Miami seeks to expand its audience with works by young choreographers

Diana Figueroa in “De Toi” by Phillipe Obregon. (Photo courtesy of Simon Soong)

The Cuban Classical Ballet of Miami (CCBM) will present its “Choreographers Showcase” on Saturday, Oct. 30, at the Miami Theater Center in Miami Shores.

Choreography is more than “the writing of dance,” the closest definition to the history and origin of the term. And a choreographer is much more than the one who creates the steps and movements of the dance.

The choreographer is also the playwright and artistic director for the staging. The choreography is at the core of any piece of dance, academic or improvised in appearance. You could say that improvisation frees the performer from choreography. But the reality is that you would only be successful “improvising” if your efforts result in a proposal with steps and movements that communicate something. And that’s choreography.

But there is more. Without choreography, there is no work to interpret, and only with good choreography can a good repertoire be achieved. Without repertoire, there is no way to identify the style of a ballet company. And a repertory is also needed to illustrate the style of the dancers at any national ballet school.

Choreography is a fundamental resource for all dance companies. Its diversification is a problem that Eriberto Jimenez, artistic director of CCBM, is proactively trying to solve.

“For the Cuban Classical Ballet of Miami, it is imperative to start creating new programs for a different audience,” he tells us. “Our regular audiences will continue to enjoy classical ballet performances twice a year. We will include programs combining classical and contemporary styles. But I think it is essential to allow new generations to develop their choreographic skills creating new ballets for the company.” 

Q: Is this the first time CCBM is presenting “Choreographers Showcase”?

Jimenez: “Not really. We presented our first ‘Choreographers Showcase’ on Feb. 27, 2021. In 2020, something similar was created during the months of confinement. Eight dancers participated, and pianist Isaac Rodriguez created the original music for the project. We called the program, ‘Rebuilding Together.’ We taped each dancer individually, and then the whole thing was edited as one piece. The idea of bringing together different choreographers and dancers came about as a way to create programs we could present in unconventional places — different from the theaters where we regularly perform.”

On this occasion, the program will include new creations as well as works that are already part of the company’s repertoire, such as “Lecuona Suite” (2018, with choreography by Jimenez), which is a tribute to renowned Cuban composer Ernesto Lecuona and has live music by Rodriguez.

Choreographers presenting new contemporary pieces include Enrique Villacreses and Rafael Ruiz del Vizo, two young dancers who graduated from Miami’s New World School of the Arts.

Villacreses’ work, titled “My Universe,” deals with the barriers that human beings create within themselves and includes a tetrahedral artwork by artist Don Lambert. Ruiz del Vizo will present two pieces: “Geminis,” which portrays duality, the inner development of the antagonism between body and soul; and “Orbits,” a search for constant movement around each human being and his or her environment.

Q: How are choreographers invited to participate? 

Jimenez: “For these first two programs, the choreographers have been selected from a group of talented young people who participate in a daily class offered by the company. Some are members of the company, and others attend classes with us to stay trained. I have seen their work, and I think it is essential to support them in their vision as creators. In addition, each brings a different kind of body language to the members of the company. And everyone is enjoying the creation process, which for some also represents a challenge … 

“Along with Villacreses and Ruiz del Vizo, Phillipe Obregon will be presenting ‘De Toi.’ He is a contemporary and jazz dancer from Colombia. The Cuban-born Fernando Garcia will participate with ‘The Sentence,’ and I will premiere a piece, still without a title. The program will also include two choreographic works by the St. Lucie Ballet. Under the artistic direction of Rogelio Corrales and Lydia Oquendo, this group frequently collaborate with us, and Miami audiences are familiar with their work.”

WHAT: Cuban Classical Ballet of Miami presents “Choreographers Showcase”

WHEN: 7 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 30, 2021

WHERE: Miami Theater Center, 9806 NE Second Ave., Miami Shores

COST: $30

INFORMATION: 786-747-1877; cubanclassicalballetofmiami.org

 

*This is a translation of our Spanish-language preview for this event. 

 

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South Florida’s rich dance culture to be fully on display at Daniel Lewis Dance Sampler

Arts Ballet Theatre of Florida will present an excerpt from “Viva España,” choreographed by artistic director Vladimir Issaev. (Photo courtesy of Patricia Laine)

There truly is something for everyone in South Florida’s eclectic and varied dance scene.  Offering a wealth of multiple genres that span the gamut from sultry tango and flamenco to edgy contemporary and classic ballet to performance art and site-specific works, the dance culture here is rich.

Audiences will have the opportunity to experience the artistry of myriad professional dance organizations all on one stage when the Daniel Lewis Dance Sampler presents its inaugural post-COVID live performance on Oct. 29-31, 2021.

The Sampler’s three artistic directors — Daniel Lewis, Hannah Baumgarten and Diego Salterini — agree that the unity of organizations and audience is a vital component for the dance culture in this community and a unique occasion for dance artists to work together.

Initially created in the early ’90s as the Modern Dance Sampler by Lewis, founding dean of Miami’s prestigious New World School of the Arts, the yearly performance was meant to cross-pollinate audiences, give exposure and visibility for modern dance organizations, and provide a performance opportunity on a larger scale.

(Video courtesy of Daniel Lewis Dance Sampler)

“I was offering a showcase where different audiences could come together and see something new, and they might start going to other concerts,” Lewis says. “I watched the audience grow over the years.”

Both Baumgarten and Salterini were early Modern Dance Sampler participants.

“As young dancers in the community, we felt the profound effect of being in a show with other dancers in the community,” Baumgarten says. “Of being exposed to the other choreographers in the community and, of course, to the audiences.”

The Sampler continued through 1999, until — as Lewis says, laughingly — “I eventually retired the Miami Dance Sampler, and it ceased to exist for about 10 years.”

The Sampler idea was reborn after Baumgarten and Salterini were granted the possibility of working at the Little Haiti Cultural Center with their company, Dance NOW! Miami, in 2009. For them, it was a blessing to have both rehearsal space and a theater and, in return, they wanted to give back to the community.

Even without a large initial funding source, Baumgarten and Salterini felt that unifying professional dance in a performance like the Sampler was such an important part of the dance culture that they trudged ahead relentlessly, restarting the program under the name, the Daniel Lewis Dance Sampler (DLDS), honoring Lewis as the initial founder and garnering his blessing.

“I was pleased that they wanted me as one of the artistic directors,” Lewis says.  “That I had a voice within their vision.”

More than a decade later, it has grown to be produced by Lewis’s organization, Miami Dance Futures, in collaboration with Dance NOW! Miami, New World School of the Arts, Florida Dance Education Organization, and Palm Beach State College’s Duncan Theatre.

Today, the Sampler invites not only participants from Miami, but from throughout the state.

“Last year, because of COVID, we were virtual. This year, we can present the Sampler in its full capacity and expand finally into two counties,” Salterini says.

The performance will be at the Duncan Theatre in Lake Worth on Oct. 29 and at the New World School of the Arts Dance Theater in Miami from Oct. 30-31.

“In a city like Miami, where we are so spread out, this is a great opportunity to create community,” Salterini says. “One of the most important moments is when all the dancers are together taking class on the stage before the show starts. We’re all together, all abilities, all ages.  It’s so important for the young dancers to see that there is a dance community here.”

A first-time participant in the Sampler, Ballet Vero Beach (BVB) will present an excerpt from “Caprice” by Matthew Lovegood, with music by Antonio Vivaldi. The enigmatic male duet questions the relationship and intentions of the two men. Originally danced by BVB director Adam Schnell and choreographer Lovegood, the roles this time will be performed by Anders Southerland and Daniel White.

New World dance students plan to perform an excerpt from “Dancing Spirit” by choreographer Ronald K. Brown, with music by Duke Ellington, Wynton Marsalis and War. Paying tribute to Alvin Ailey’s former artistic director, Judith Jamison, Brown uses movements from Cuba, Brazil and the United States “to conjure dancing spirits who embody Jamison’s elegance, vision, dignity and generosity,” according to the Alvin Ailey website.

Mary Lisa Burns, current dean of dance at New World, says: “The DLDS showcases so many different styles of dance and such a range of approaches to choreography. It is an annual event unlike any other, and one which we look forward to hosting each year at our Dance Theater.”

Having recently presented her work, “CIRCA/MIA,” through Miami Dade College’s Live Arts Miami LALA (Live Arts Lab Alliance) Performance Series and in partnership with the Perez Art Museum, Miami, Sandra Portal-Andreu will now bring a condensed version — called simply “MIA” — to the Sampler. Featuring music by Miami duo Afrobeta, “MIA” plays as a response to the hopes and fears that children have about climate change and the future of Miami.

“This will be the first time in three years that I present a work on stage,” Portal-Andreu says. “In recent years, most of my work has been site-specific, which is where I have this newfound comfort.”

Bringing “MIA” into the theater, the audience will be engulfed with audio and visuals that drive home the message of what climate change looks like through the eyes of children. Portal-Andreu says she hopes this work will engage the adults in the room to take action for the next generation.

Flamenco dance is very much a part of the South Florida dance community. Rather unique to Miami in its narrative ballet presentations is Ballet Flamenco La Rosa (BFLR). The company is joining the Sampler to present “Verano y Humo,” an original Flamenco Ballet choreographed by BFLR artistic director Ilisa Rosal and inspired by Tennessee Williams’ play, “Summer and Smoke.” The characters in Williams’ play are represented fittingly in flamenco movement and will be performed by Jose Junco, Mayelu Perez and Paloma de Vega. Live music composed by guitarist Jose Luis de la Paz and vocal artist Jose Cortes will accompany the artists.

“Flamenco is coming from a tradition in Europe where men’s and women’s roles, and how they’re looked at by society, are very prevalent issues,” Rosal says. “Williams’ play has these amazing characters, and flamenco is a perfect language to express all of it.”

A serendipitous connection allowed Rosal to cast De Vega in the role of Nellie, one of the lead characters in the play. De Vega, a singer, actress and dancer, happens to be visiting Miami from Spain. She auditioned and was considered perfect for the role.

Meanwhile, Arts Ballet Theatre of Florida will celebrate being back in the theater with “Viva España,” a vibrant and romantic piece choreographed by artistic director Vladimir Issaev to music by Jules Massenet, based on “El Cid.”

“We will be showcasing our new dancers, and the Sampler will be the first opportunity they will get to perform before we officially open our 2021-2022 season in early November,” says Ruby Romero-Issaev, executive director and wife of Vladimir Issaev.

Another new participant in the Sampler this year is choreographer, director and dancer Maya Billig, who will show an excerpt from “Brink,” a contemporary dance theater piece inspired by the 1938 Orson Welles radio adaptation of “War of the Worlds.” Performed by Billig, Danielle Davis and Isaiah Gonzalez, “Brink” uses the “heightened theatricality of a dreamscape to offer poignancy juxtaposed by moments of relief and humor,” Billig says.

“‘Brink’ was created during the pandemic and has only been viewed virtually,” she adds. “Performing on the Sampler is an opportunity for the work to be experienced with a live audience, as it was designed to.”

Having just completed the Forward Motion Festival in September, Karen Peterson and Dancers will bring a duet to the Sampler from her full-length work, “Lost and Found.” The piece, to be performed by Penelope Huerta and Jesus Vidal, speaks to the people lost during the pandemic and the empathy and hope experienced after a year of confinement and isolation.

Culminating the performance, the full Dance NOW! Miami company will present “Solstice,” created by Jon Lehrer in 2019 for his Jon Lehrer Dance Co.

In summary, Salterini says: “We do believe that audiences are eager to get back to live theater.”

He takes an emotional breath and continues: “While video has been very helpful to keep us entertained during the quarantine, there is nothing like a live performance. We hope audiences come back with courage and enthusiasm to rekindle the love and passion for sharing a physical space.”

THE DLDS 2021 VIDEO SHOWCASE

Paying tribute to last year’s totally virtual Sampler and to the wonderful creations in video dance, and recognizing that everyone is not fully “up and running” again, the DLDS is offering a free video component this year. Through Oct. 31, view four videos created during the pandemica, plus a special addition of Lewis performing in a site-specific video from the late ’70s created by dance icon Anna Sokolow. Each piece will be introduced by Baumgarten, Salterini and Lewis. To view the showcase, visit vimeo.com/625041185.

 

WHAT: 11th annual Daniel Lewis Dance Sampler

WHEN/WHERE:

8 p.m. Friday, Oct. 29, 2021, at Duncan Theatre, 4200 S. Congress Ave., Lake Worth

8 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 30, and 4 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 31, at New World School of the Arts, 25 NE Second St., eighth floor, Miami

COST: $25 for general admission, $15 students; tickets may be purchased online for both venues at dancenowmiami.org/events/dlds or in person at the performances

SAFETY PROTOCOLS: Both venues will follow federal, state and local public health regulations and guidance in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Face coverings are “strongly encouraged” at Duncan, according to the Dance NOW! website, and masks are required at New World.

INFORMATION: Call 305-975-8489, email info@dancenowmiami.org or visit dancenowmiami.org

 

Click here to read our Spanish-language preview for this event.

 

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Review: Bistoury Physical Theatre’s ‘The Commune – Chapter 2’ has a lot to say

Carla Forte was one of four dancers in “The Commune — Chapter 2: The Anarchist,” which was presented Oct. 7-8, 2021, at the Miami-Dade County Auditorium. (Photo courtesy of Alexey Taran)

When Bistoury Physical Theatre performed “The Commune — Chapter 1: A commune of oranges,” back in January 2020, the show questioned the threshold between dream and reality in the search for alternative ways of being in the world.

In its second installment, “The Commune — Chapter 2: The Anarchist,” performed Oct. 7-8, 2021, at the Miami-Dade County Auditorium, BPT had a different message. In show notes, the group said “The Anarchist” presented a practice of freedom based on principles of equality and nondiscrimination.

It opened with dancers Heather Maloney, Carla Forte, Carlos Fabián and Gabriela Burdsall seated in a line, to the left of the stage. Alexey Taran stood behind them working soundboard and videos. Behind the stage, a film screen draped the back wall.  On the floor, the tight loops of a spiral were drawn in white chalk.

Beside each of the performers were props. At Maloney’s feet sat a suitcase carrying children’s drawings and a mask, in front of Forte were oranges and an open book. Fabián occasionally leaned forward to write sentences on the floor in chalk, and Burdsall, in a black robe tied with a red sash, looked like Medusa with long twisted curlers wrapped snake-like in her hair.

As with BPT’s 2020 work, “The Anarchist” depended heavily on film. Early in the performance, a black-and-white video showed the dancers sitting around a table drinking, laughing and eating. In English and Spanish, they posed topics such as the persistence of life after death (a la Facebook algorithms messaging a deceased person’s birthday), the connection to one’s surroundings through feeling, or speculations over past lives. Fabián insisted he had once lived life as an animal, while Maloney believes she had once been a temple girl.

The conversation cuts to a cello solo and closeups of a tree canopy.  Maloney, in a floor-length white dress went backward to the center of the stage then bent over, walking her fists forward then palming her legs. She repeated the sequence then cradled her belly, arms sweeping overhead. Her movements throughout were stiff and fatigued.

Maloney’s dance was the first of four signature pieces from each of the performers.  Each dance expressed a feeling and movement motif that recurred and transformed as the show progressed.

As violins fired up, Forte paced the stage in a black polka-dot dress. Projected on the backdrop were two images of a seated woman’s back, one in color, the other in black and white. Water ran up her shoulders, defying gravity.

On the floor, Forte laughed and sobbed like someone losing touch, walking with legs turned inward then akimbo, arms making sharp angles at the elbows or swinging wildly at her sides.  She squealed as she punched the air, her fists and feet catching the music’s accents.

When a piano began to play, Burdsall crossed the stage, her arms and legs smoothly circling her body. From time to time, she partnered with her silhouette cast against the wall by a bright spotlight. On the screen, fingers created a pattern of small mirrors against a slab of cement. She closed at the center, pointing intently at something above her.

As the music grew ominous, a combative Fabián strode across the stage, at times assuming a fighter’s stance, fists up, at others standing at the center, hands palming nervously up his body. He finished his sequence staring fixedly into the audience, repeating: “I just wanted to say … um … uh … I just wanted to say … ”

The next segment unfolded in two gorgeous duets and suggested as it did so how the principle of association could intervene in the emotional struggles the opening performances presented.

In each duet, the signature movements of the dancers gradually took on aspects of the movement style established by their partner. For instance, as Maloney and Forte danced, Maloney’s stiff, fatigued movements grew more casual, less effortful, and Forte’s agitated jerks and twists smoothed and grew calmer.

Similarly, Burdsall and Fabián riffed off each other’s opening patterns. From punches, his arms shaped wide circles, as Burdsall sprouted kicks and snapped an occasional fist. Their duet ended when Taran, dressed in black, abandoned his place behind audioboards and computer screens and began to stalk Burdsall with his camera, inches from her face, her closeup projected on the backdrop in black and white.

In the sequence that unfolded, the play of reflected and filmed images concretely separated the performer from their performance.    

Burdsall first soliloquized into the camera, repeating, “I woke up, looking at myself … I woke up a bright light in my hand …”

As she spoke, Taran circled her, camera glued to his face. Her speech shifted into a chant in English and Spanish — “Crystal, crystal, crystal, machine, machine, machine, water” — and she crossed the floor on footlong mirror tiles she laid ahead of herself.

The scene ended with Burdsall reflecting Maloney in a tile filmed by Taran. Maloney then began her sequence with Taran obsessively focused on her hands.

Each of the four vignettes appeared to display the emotional messaging behind the performers’ opening signature sequences. However, this time, Taran’s filmic intervention created distance between performer and message, objectifying that emotional core onto the screen.

This sequence behaved as a pivot point for the work. Where struggle, trauma and grief opened the evening, subsequent segments increasingly suggested how silliness and friendship, intimacy and community can heal traumatic pain.

(THE ANARCHIST from Bistoury Physical Theatre & Film on Vimeo)

For instance, in the next sequence, the dancers placed their chairs at the center then began to loudly and frantically talk at one another, aggressively gesturing for attention. Their communication gradually slowed, and their eye contact increased. They ended responding casually to one another, recalling the show’s friendly opening discussion around the table.

Another sequence laid out a dance of connection as Maloney offered one end of a rope to Fabián. He took it and lunged across the floor as if to escape the stage but came up short against the rope’s limit. The two exchanged positions and Forte then Burdsall seized the rope as well. The four criss-crossed randomly, laughing at entanglements but increasingly coordinating until they came together at the center, silent and motionless, foreheads touching.

With the first strains of a cumbia, they dissolved into a spontaneous dance of community, extemporizing on the rhythms — first in laughing, intimate couples but increasingly as a happy group, the four dancers facing the audience in a line as they pressed out the music in legs and hips.

The message of “The Anarchist” is that principles of association, connection, intimacy, community and friendship can intervene in the emotional messaging at the root of interpersonal conflict and traumatic experience.  The Thursday and Friday performances convincingly delivered on this message.

However, “The Anarchist” also poses the question of whether “the practice of freedom,” approached in this way, can intervene effectively in today’s political struggles around color, sexual identity and gender, themes (and struggles) noticeably absent from this treatment.    Perhaps BPT’s response to that question will form “The Commune — Chapter 3”?

Bistoury Physical Theatre & Film provides an avant-garde creative platform for dance, theater and film. For more information on BPT, visit bistoury.org.

Review: ‘Birds of Paradise’ is ambitious, spectacular … and unsettlingly personal

Gabriela Cruz in “Birds of Paradise.” (Photo courtesy of WorldRedEye.com)

Visually spectacular. Intensely, even unsettlingly personal. Revealing yet opaque.

After a twisting two-year journey sent into unexpected directions, like everything else, by the pandemic, choreographer Pioneer Winter’s dance/multimedia work, “Birds of Paradise,” premiered at the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts on Thursday, Sept. 16, 2021 — and it turns out to be powerful but mysterious, even indeterminate. Very much like what the pandemic has been to all of us.

By digging deep to explore the vulnerable psyches of his eight performer/collaborators across giant screens and in front of us, Winter has made something revealing about an uncertain time, and the power inside us, whether separate or apart. Commissioned by the Arsht Center when it made Winter its first resident-artist in more than a decade, “Birds of Paradise” plays at the Arsht through this Sunday only.

“Birds of Paradise” is certainly the most ambitious piece that Winter, who has become one of Miami’s most influential artists, has ever made. His influence is not only as a dancemaker who champions individuality and queer identity outside all kinds of conventional margins (he works with performers who are disabled, transgender, physically large, or not traditionally trained, among other things), but as a producer of site-specific work and the director of Miami Light Project’s ScreenDance Miami festival.

Winter has explained the piece many times (for insight, check out the study guide on the Pioneer Winter Collective website), and he did so again for the audience that filled the socially distanced seats in the Arsht’s Carnival Studio Theater on Thursday evening: “In the queer community, isolation is felt often,” he said. “This is the first time everyone felt that isolation. But it’s also beautiful to see what can be made in that void. Tonight, we celebrate eight solo artists, then see them come together. We celebrate the power of transformation. Especially the transformation that nobody sees.”

That sounds pretty comprehensive. But it doesn’t get to the visual gorgeousness, intensity, and the interwoven film, sound, costume, design and performance elements of “Birds of Paradise” — it’s a true creative collaboration. The piece opens with performer Barbara Meulener’s hands blooming against a blue sky on a wall-spanning screen, as part of a film, the first of eight. The films are by Ronald Baez’s White Elephant Group. Baez is credited as co-director, with Kevin Berriz as cinematographer, colorist and editor. The stunningly shot, emotionally detailed and unnervingly intimate films are the most vivid aspect of “Birds of Paradise.”

Also integral is Juraj Kojš’ sound design, which brings us the dancers’ voices, their breathing, their inchoate noises, almost as if we were inside their heads. Chaplin Tyler’s fantastical, intricate costumes, in brilliant red or pale flesh tones, incorporate billowing clouds of fabric, body-hugging lace rosettes or filmy sheaths, wisps of feather. Mai Lan Lau also gets credit for styling. Hair and makeup designer Angel Torres splashes their faces and bodies with iridescent gold and red. The effect is to turn the dancers into hallucinatory, very faintly birdlike creatures.

The piece starts with films in the studio theater, each on their own screen, then moves down a hallway into another large space, with the films continuing on multiple screens. (Also impressive are David Hans Lau’s production design and Quanikqua Bryant’s lighting.) Although projected text invites us to move around, the audience stayed seated in each room.

Each film is an expressionistic portrait that includes the dancers speaking about their state of mind during isolation. Meulener arches and spins in a velvety black void, images of blue sky and her lying on a lush green lawn flash, as if she’s imagining the outdoors – a shot of grass springing back evokes her absence. Frank Campisano, a sinewy, elderly, classically trained dancer struts with sensual disco-ish moves across three split screens. Niurca Marquez, face haggard with black eye shadow, crouches atop a wood box like an abandoned goddess who’s partied too hard, hands clawing and arms winding in a jagged twist on flamenco.

“Exploration of the thing deep inside,” she says. “It also shows you are alive.”

We see Josue Garcia, imperiously large, swelling pectoral breasts outlined by feathers, belly curving over a bikini, and hear him curse his mother for abandoning him. “Why did you leave me?! Why didn’t you love me?” In the past, or just now?

Garcia leads us to the next space and to powerful, statuesque Katrina Petrarca, panting, writhing, reaching toward a camera that zooms into her face.

“I’m reaching that crescendo,” she says, “that point of letting it all out.”

Enigmatic Gabriela Cruz seems to float in a cloud of a dress, her hooked and elongated hands flinging wide, while Lize-Lotte Pitlo lunges, arches and spins.

“It’s like I’m putting my skin under a microscope,” Pitlo says. “I almost feel you can read my thoughts.”

Last and most powerful is Shamar Watt, not only because he’s a such an intense, formidable presence, but because he is the only performer who interacts live with his film, projected on three screens. A wide, bell-shaped tunic swinging around his muscular frame, Watt stamps atop an amplified platform, the sound thundering ominously. He howls, head thrown back, an agonized king bird, while the film shows him silhouetted in a vast orange-red background, as if in a lonely nightmare from inside his head. It’s immensely affecting and unsettling, and it makes you wish “Birds of Paradise” had more of this kind of exchange between film and live performer.

The finale sees the other seven performers together onstage, no film. They sway, circle, reach, arch, clump together and spin apart, crouch on the three amplified platforms to scratch up sounds (another of Kojš’ inspirations). The section seems like a structured improvisation, and while the dancers’ fierce commitment carries the dance, the moment also feels meandering. And yet, it also fits. As if they’ve ventured out of their isolated pandemic film cells into the world: uncertain, chaotic, and anxious – but filled with the energy of coming together.

 

WHAT: Pioneer Winter Collective: “Birds of Paradise”

WHEN: 7:30 p.m. Sept. 16-18 and 2 p.m. Sept. 19

WHERE: Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts of Miami-Dade County, Carnival Studio Theater, 1300 Biscayne Blvd., Miami

COST: $40 admission, plus $15 tickets available as part of the Arsht’s “Sweet 15” celebration (arshtcenter.org/Tickets/Sweet-15)

SAFETY INFORMATION: Based on guidance from national and local health officials, the performance will be seated at limited capacity and require face coverings.

INFORMATION: 305-949-6722; arshtcenter.org

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Miami’s 3rd Forward Motion Festival returns with a message of inclusivity

Penelope Huerta and Jesus Vidal de Leon performing Karen Peterson and Dancers’ “Lost and Found,” which will be featured at the Forward Motion Festival. (Photo courtesy of Giorgio Vera)

There’s a renewed interest in physically integrated dance, according to Karen Peterson.

The artistic director of Karen Peterson and Dancers sees it as a consequence of recent social movements: “After the social upheaval of this past year, and with diversity, equity and inclusion on the minds of most everyone today, there is more focus on PI (physically integrated) dance than before.”

Good thing, then, that the event she founded – the Forward Motion Dance Festival – is able to return this year after being canceled in 2020.

From Sept. 22-25, the third edition of the festival will showcase the nation’s top PI dance companies, including Peterson’s company, KPD, as well as Oakland-based AXIS Dance Co., Cleveland’s Dancing Wheels Co. and Tampa’s REVolutions Dance. Performances, workshops and lectures on PI dance techniques will take place at Miami Dade College’s Koubek Center and the Miami-Dade County Auditorium.

Uniting disabled and non-disabled performers onstage, the festival is meant to challenge conventional notions of dance.

“What is KPD’s value to the community? Everyone loves our work, but still many do not enjoy wheelchairs moving onstage. Does KPD have artistic integrity? How do we measure pointe work to wheelchair balances? How does one look at a trained ballerina and compare the individual to a wheelchair dancer? Are they apples and oranges?” Peterson says. “Many of these questions have different answers, but PI dance certainly pushes the envelope about who can and cannot dance.”

For Mary Verdi-Fletcher, artistic director of Dancing Wheels, the artform of PI dance goes hand in hand with advocacy work for expanding opportunities and safeguarding the rights of the disabled.

“Not all the performances are geared toward a social message, but by the inclusivity of the company the message is there, because the inclusivity speaks to it. The performance is in that way educational for the audience,” Verdi-Fletcher says. “I was born with my disability, and there weren’t opportunities for people to participate in the arts other than being a viewer or audience member. But then I started dancing, including social dancing. This was in the disco days, and what I was doing actually caught on like wildfire.  I was in a competition that was nationally televised and people wanted to see us perform.”

Her company, Dancing Wheels, employs 11 dancers and celebrated its 40th anniversary in June. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, the company had a robust national and international tour schedule and offered master classes, concerts and lectures.

At the Forward Motion Festival, Dancing Wheels will present the Miami premieres of two works: “Pallas Athena” and “Od:yssey.”

“Pallas Athena” includes nine dancers (two disabled and seven non-disabled). Featuring the music of David Bowie, the concert work was choreographed by the rehearsal director of Dancing Wheels, Catherine Meredith.

The second piece, “Od:yssey,” showcases eight dancers (two disabled and six non-disabled) and was created by choreographer Marc Brew, who is the artistic director of AXIS Dance Co.

“I had commissioned [Brew] along with two other disabled choreographers for  a show that featured disabled choreographers. There are not a lot of disabled choreographers,” noted Verdi-Fletcher.

Brew’s interest in choreography began when he was an 11-year-old dance student in Australia. He began his career as a professional ballet dancer, but a car accident in South Africa left him paralyzed from the chest down. Brew went on to work with New York dancer Kitty Lunn, a disability activist and founder of Infinity Dance Theater, to translate classical techniques into the upper body.

Brew frequently focuses on the concept of restriction in his choreographies: “When I first started using my chair, people would say I’m wheelchair-bound. However, this is not what I mean by this. By working with restriction, I mean exploring floorwork and partnering and contact improvisation by restricting space and setting up guidelines and structures that present an  opportunity for the dancers to solve a problem.”

In addition to contributing “Od:yssey,” he choreographed the KPD solo, “Remember When,” featuring wheelchair dancer Jesus Vidal de Leon, who once studied with Brew during an AXIS Dance Co. summer session. Brew will also conduct a workshop and lecture during the festival.

For Brew, the greatest obstacle to appreciating PI dance is often the preoccupation with the disability of the dancers.

“People need to get over looking out for the disability of a dancer during a performance and identifying who’s disabled and who’s not,” Brew says. “Look for the artistry of their performance, their awesomeness. Look for how they join together their diversity of shapes, sizes, genders. Take in and absorb being moved.

“I want audiences to be moved – not just emotionally, but with lots of questions and images in their minds, and have them take something away from that moment.”

 

WHAT: Forward Motion Festival 2021

WHEN: Sept. 22-25, 2021

WHERE: Miami Dade College’s Koubek Center, 2705 SW Third St., and Miami-Dade County Auditorium, 2901 W. Flagler St.

ADMISSION: There will be free events, as well as $10 workshops. Admission for the main performances are $25 for the general public and $18 for students and seniors age 65 and older.

SAFETY PROTOCOLS: The venues will follow federal, state and local public health regulations and guidance related to the COVID-19 pandemic. Face coverings are “strongly encouraged” at the Koubek Center and required at the Miami-Dade County Auditorium, according to the website.

INFORMATION: ForwardMotionMiami.com or 786-498-6756

This article originally incorrectly attributed choreographer Marc Brew’s involvement with one of the Dancing Wheels Co.’s dance pieces. Brew worked with the company on “Od:yssey.” Additionally, the number of performers changed for “Od:yssey,” which showcases eight dancers (two disabled and six non-disabled). The story now reflects these changes. 

Click here to read our Spanish-language preview for this event.

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Pioneer Winter Collective’s ‘Birds of Paradise’ finally getting off the ground

Barbara Meulener’s solo in “Birds of Paradise” is about a sense of becoming, beginnings and liberation, according to choreographer Pioneer Winter. (Photo courtesy of WorldRedEye.com)

The creation of the Adrienne Arsht Center’s first commissioned contemporary dance work – from its first artist-in-residency in a decade – had more than its share of ups and downs, as did just about anything that had its beginnings not long before the COVID-19 pandemic.

Now, a little less than a year after its originally scheduled date, choreographer-dancer Pioneer Winter’s “Birds of Paradise” is ready for its world premiere.

“The project itself was reborn. It had to be,” Winter says about the production, which was originally set for October 2020 and will now debut inside the Arsht Center’s Carnival Studio Theater on Thursday, Sept. 16, 2021.

The work envisioned about coalition, ensemble and a collective mindset became impossible in the midst of a pandemic, according to Winter.

“The piece was supposed to be about being en masse, being in group, being this collective mindset – collective in a way that is unity. Then it became taboo for us to be able to be together. So, it made the very thing that we were making a dance about impossible to do,” Winter says.

The original vision for the Pioneer Winter Collective began with an open audition for dancers in October 2019, followed by rehearsals with a full ensemble of 11.

“On March 13, 2020, we decided that it was no longer safe for us to work as a group, so we took a few weeks off,” Winter says.

They resumed rehearsals using Zoom for three months, but it wasn’t conducive to Winter’s vision – almost a year went by in which they weren’t able to work as a group at all. And when the piece could be revived, it no longer made sense to work as an ensemble because of safety precautions.

Not knowing where Miami, or the world for that matter, would be by the time “Birds of Paradise” premiered at the Arsht, Winter had to figure out a way to make the work “pandemic-proof.”

They returned to rehearsals in late January 2021, with eight dancers working on individual solos over four months. Then their performances were filmed individually inside the Carnival Studio for eight consecutive days in May.

When it premieres, “Birds of Paradise” will begin with the film installations shown throughout the Carnival Studio Theater and end with a 20-minute piece in which the dancers come together live as an ensemble in the center’s Peacock Foundation Studio. The dancers are: Barbara Meulener, Frank Campisano, Niurca Marquez, Josue Garcia, Katrina Petrarca, Gabriela Cruz, Lize-Lotte Pitlo and Shamar Watt.

“This was never meant to be a transmedia piece, so it will not be presented as a series of film screenings,” Winter says.

Each film has its own individuality, Winter stresses, with different camera work used and other techniques: “Some are projected on Plexiglas, some are on a wall. One of them is set up in a hallway to create the illusion that the performer is in that hallway with you.”

For Arsht CEO and president Johann Zietsman, the commissioning of “Birds of Paradise” represents an exciting chapter in the center’s history.

“The center has never commissioned a contemporary dance piece, so it is very special,” Zietsman says.

Bringing “Birds of Paradise” to fruition has been “a winding road of challenges and surprises, but all great,” says Jairo Ontiveros, vice president of Education and Community Engagement at the Arsht Center, the department charged with overseeing the residency.

The core of their commitment didn’t change, Ontiveros says, nor did their focus on what the residency represented.

“We wanted to make sure that we were supporting Pioneer as a developing choreographer,” Ontiveros says. “In supporting new work, one of our primary goals is to reflect and represent the Miami community, especially those marginalized voices, the pockets in our community that are under-represented. In this case, it is the LGBTQ+ community that the Pioneer Winter Collective represents.”

Ontiveros calls the artist-in-residency a “hand-in-hand process to bring other voices that have been historically excluded from our stages around the country and around the world, and that to us is really important.”

What audiences will see in the premiere of “Birds of Paradise” is only the beginning, Winter says. “It will keep evolving. It has to.”

Because the piece received funds from the New England Foundation for the Arts (NEFA) National Dance Project, it’s expected to tour for at least the next two years, Winter says. Commissioned by the Arsht Center, Winter also received funding from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, The MAP Fund, Our Fund Foundation, and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation as part of its 2019 Knight Arts Challenge.

As it continues, the dream for “Birds of Paradise” is that the individual solos will be created with performers from everywhere. Winter hopes that, post-pandemic, the work will become a hybrid of film and live solos.

Despite the difficulties, Winter says the delays helped to “inform” the piece further than he had imagined.

“All artwork right now is deeply affected by the pandemic, including the isolation and the need for closeness and community … Isolation was already pervasive in the queer community, but during the pandemic, it became a common thread,” Winter says. “Now, for maybe the first time in our history, everyone felt isolated.”

“Birds of Paradise” is meant to acknowledge that some of the greatest struggles and growth are experienced alone, and then the person can “emerge liberated, stronger, iridescent and beyond definition,” Winter says.

“It’s become about celebrating the individual. Everyone has experienced a time where they are in their own void and, oftentimes, you think that you are the only one experiencing that,” Winter continues. “This is about acknowledging that you’re not alone and there is a virtuosity, even in the small things we do in order to keep going.”

 

WHAT: Pioneer Winter Collective: “Birds of Paradise”

WHEN: 7:30 p.m. Sept. 16-18 and 2 p.m. Sept. 19

WHERE: Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts of Miami-Dade County, Carnival Studio Theater, 1300 Biscayne Blvd., Miami

COST: $40 admission, plus $15 tickets available as part of the Arsht’s “Sweet 15” celebration (arshtcenter.org/Tickets/Sweet-15)

SAFETY INFORMATION: Based on guidance from national and local health officials, the performance will be seated at limited capacity and require face coverings.

INFORMATION: 305-949-6722; arshtcenter.org

 

Click here to read our Spanish-language preview for this event.

Click here to read our review for this event. 

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IN CONVERSATION WITH LOURDES LÓPEZ, ‘A LIFE FOR DANCE’ AWARD RECIPIENT

 Lourdes López with Miami City Ballet dancers in a rehearsal for George Balanchine’s “Jewels.” (Photo courtesy of Alexander Iziliaev)

Lourdes López (Havana, 1958) this year received the Lifetime Achievement Award “A Life for Dance” (in Spanish, “Una Vida para la Danza”), which has been presented since 1998 by the International Ballet Festival of Miami (IBFM).

The artistic director of the Miami City Ballet (MCB) now becomes part of a select group of personalities from the world of dance, as the 25th honoree and the 11th woman. Also, as the fourth Cuban-born recipient – after Alberto Alonso in 2006, Carlos Gacio in 2016, and Pedro Pablo Peña, founder of the IBFM, posthumously in 2018.

How did the news of the “A Life for Dance” award make you feel?

“It was very moving. My mom always wrote to me saying, ‘Lourdita, put Cuba’s name up.’ So I grew up Cuban. And knowing that the award comes from a Festival that has so much history among Cubans here in Miami made me feel: “I’m a Cuban receiving an award!”. Add to that the fact that I’m entering my tenth year with the company and that this season we’re coming back from the pandemic, and you can say those three things made it much more special.”

Lourdes’ family emigrated to the United States in 1959, and she grew up in Miami, where she began taking ballet lessons at the age of six. When she was eleven, she received a full scholarship to the School of American Ballet (SAB) in New York.

Being an artist was always the only option for you?

“No. I started taking ballet classes because of some medical problems I had in my legs. When I was young, I loved being around children, and at some point, I thought I wanted to be a child psychologist. My dad wanted me to go to the University, but I have no regrets about the career I chose because I can say that from a very young age, I found something that really fills my soul.”

Do you remember the first time you saw a dance performance?

“Yes. It was at the Miami-Dade County Auditorium, where a dance festival was presented that visited Miami once or twice a year. Because we were migrants and poor, my mom would buy a ticket, hide it in the program, and we would enter like… three of us. I remember seeing Lydia Díaz Cruz in “The Dying Swan,” Carla Fracci and Lupe Serrano, [both are also recipients of the IBFM’s A Life for Dance Award] among many other great dancers.”

At the age of 16, Lourdes joined the ballet corps of the New York City Ballet, became Principal in June 1984, and played numerous roles in choreographies created by George Balanchine and Jerome Robbins. After retiring as a dancer, Lopez worked as a cultural reporter, administrator, teacher, and even executive director of the George Balanchine Foundation.

In 2007, she and the choreographer Christopher Wheeldon created a company called Morphoses, and in 2012 she replaced Edward Villella – also recognized by IBFM in 2004 – as MCB’s Artistic Director. Her management at the head of the company immediately exceeded expectations, and today his creative leadership is recognized by the public and critics. In 2018, she received the prestigious Dance Magazine Award.

What made you stop dancing?

“The respect I have for art. I’m a person who always tries to be realistic. I looked in the mirror, and my eyes saw me. I’ve never been blind. I looked at myself and recognized what I was missing, what I needed, and what wasn’t right. When I was about 38, I began to realize that there were pieces that I wasn’t dancing the way they should be danced, and I said to myself, ‘no more… I prefer to retire with dignity.’ So, I finished the season and didn’t come back.

But the truth is that I danced more than I ever thought. I danced in a company that I never thought of dancing in my life. I never thought I would be a Soloist, and I never thought I would become a Principal. For me, it was always getting up every day and working, but I didn’t have those goals in mind. It wasn’t an easy thing to make the decision to stop dancing, but maybe that’s why it was easier for me than it was for others.”

“Sesame Street” – Cooperate (Lourdes López and Jock Soto), Season 28, 1996-97. “The choreography is by a young Christopher Wheldon,” says Lourdes.

What personal characteristic has been of most help to you in your career?

“What has helped me in my career is something my parents taught me, and that’s a commitment to the job. ‘You have to put one foot in front of the other.’ ‘You can’t take it for granted that someone is going to give you something.’ All those things they tell you. And my parents were a great example because they worked for many years.”

What is your definition of success?

“Success is to be happy in what you do. It’s not the money. It’s not the material things. It’s being able to say, ‘I’m doing what I love, what I like, what I want,’ because only then the effort, time, and energy you invest in what you do will not shock you too much.”

What achievement has made you feel most proud?

“In my personal life, my two daughters, I swear. The first one was born while I was dancing, and she changed my way of thinking, even my way of dancing. Children make you see the world differently. In my career, that’s something I can’t answer because every single thing I’ve done has a different meaning. But there is something that is never mentioned and of which I am very proud. It is to have been the first and only Latina Principal Dancer -until today- of the New York City Ballet. Latina and Cuban”.

When two Cubans have a conversation like this one, the current situation in Cuba is a must, and for quite a while, we didn’t talk about anything else.

“The unprecedented wave of protests taking place in Cuba is something powerful. The Cuban people are speaking out against what has been a lack of human rights for a long time. And about a government that has not heard their cries for change. Everyone has the right to be heard, live their lives without fear of expressing themselves, and freely determine their own future. As a Cuban and an artist, I stand in solidarity with the Cuban people and support their struggle for change.”

Finally, what is your recommendation to a young artist interested in making a career in dance?

“My advice would be to take every day as it comes. And by that, I mean two things. One is that what happens today, good and bad, is likely not to be that important in five years. The second is that life is not going to be a straight shot. Life is up and down, next to and around. So, the important thing is to be present every day. The important thing is to stay present.”

For the Spanish-language version of this interview, click here: CONVERSANDO CON LOURDES LÓPEZ, PREMIO ‘UNA VIDA PARA LA DANZA’ DEL FESTIVAL INTERNACIONAL DE BALLET DE MIAMI

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Armour Dance Theatre renamed & reorganized to promote social equity mission – VIDEO

“Armour Dance Theatre teaches dancers to express the movement of their own body rather than someone else’s body,” says Stephanie Bell, forefront, an ADT student and high school junior at the New World School of the Arts. (Photo courtesy of Addyson Fonte)

When is a ballet academy more than a dance school?

When ballet instruction helps remove the economic, social and emotional hurdles that may prevent students from thriving.

That is the mission of Armour Dance Theatre (ADT): Miami’s Community Dance Conservatory, formerly Thomas Armour Youth Ballet — and this year has brought changes in name and leadership that are meant to further  move the school in that direction.

“Armour Dance Theatre is a social justice organization whose goal is to address accessibility and inequity in the community,” says Ruth Wiesen, artistic director and outgoing executive director of Armour Dance Theatre. “We have dance students who do go into professional companies, but that’s not our goal. All of our kids go to college or get into a company.”

As part of the evolution, Wiesen has passed the baton to Camila Gil, a former scholarship student who worked there during college handling data collection for ADT’s first grant from The Children’s Trust (whose mission is to help Miami-Dade County children and families). In the process, Gil became ADT’s director of community programs, rolling out services addressing a mix of academics, nutrition, parenting and social and emotional learning.

(Video courtesy of Florida International University’s Inspicio Arts e-magazine)

“Adding those components allowed for greater impact,” said Gil, who more recently served as ADT’s associate director before taking on the new role of executive director. “We started with a dream of providing quality dance training and quality academic support.  We hired certified teachers from the community, who were hired from the same neighborhoods where we taught the program.  This allowed for a lot more connections with the kids beyond programming hours.”

Asked about the challenges of using ballet — a historically elitist art form — to promote conditions of racial equity in the community, Gil replied: “We’ve always known at Armour Dance Theatre that ballet has been an elitist and racist art form, but we know the historical and technical value ballet has for informing a dancer.  We have to take the initiative to make it diverse and make it inclusive and to preserve its historical value.”

To further support students academically, Armour Dance Theatre through the years has developed community programs with a focus on reading, math, social-emotional learning and dance at four schools in Miami-Dade County: Morningside K-8 Academy, Robert Russa Moton Elementary, Miami Gardens Elementary and  Pine Villa Elementary.

“You can’t just offer dance classes,” said Wiesen. “You need also an obstacle removal program as well.  There are small things in kids’ lives we can fix, from eyeglasses and a metro card to homelessness, sexual identity and medical issues.  We’re very fortunate to have a diverse array of partners, both private and governmental, who support us so that we can offer this support …

“The community programs arose when we saw how much the challenge of transportation limited our ability to reach more children. We decided to bring the programming directly to neighborhoods. We have set up programming in many venues over 20 years, including South Miami-Dade Cultural Arts Center, a Homestead Housing Authority house, churches, recreational centers and public schools,” Wiesen added. “As the scope of programming expanded to daily dance, academics and social-emotional skills, the amount of space and time greatly increased. Miami Dade County Public Schools welcomed the programming and were able to accommodate the space and time issues.”

Wiesen, a former dancer who trained with world-renowned classical ballet dancer and ADT founder Thomas Armour, had been juggling the roles of artistic and executive director for quite a while. But as the organization expanded, she found herself swamped by the two positions: “I love teaching and I love to be with the kids, and the executive work kept me behind the desk, paying bills and paying vendors.”

Among her biggest accomplishments, she founded the Thomas Armour Youth Ballet Scholarship Program in 1989, providing opportunities for youths who perhaps couldn’t afford dance training and helping to set the course for ADT’s well-rounded approach.

“Our goal was to get our students into high-performing schools like New World School of the Arts. But we weren’t really dealing with their grades,” Wiesen said. “We’d help get a child into New World only to find out that they were years behind in reading and math.”

With the artistic and executive director roles now split, the idea is for ADT to continue growing and flourishing. The other big change: The academy dropped “Ballet” from its name to better reflect current student interests, with classes in hip-hop and musical theater/jazz added to the mix.

ADT student Stephanie Bell, a high school junior at the New World School of the Arts, values the influence the dance school has had on her life.

“In general, dance is an expensive art form and brutal. Many dancers go through it mentally, questioning whether they are doing the right things,” Bell said. “George Balanchine would teach tall, white dancers with long legs to dance a certain way. Armour Dance Theatre teaches dancers to express the movement of their own body rather than someone else’s body. They prepare dancers for the dance world from that perspective.”

Added Bell’s friend, Sophia Chang, also a junior at New World: “Since Armour Dance is right in the center of the city, I know so many people who get here through the train, the car, walking, bicycle. Armour Dance Theatre gives people a purpose … they give that to those who live in the worst areas and in the best areas. They help people with mental health, physical health … they’ve saved so many lives.”

ADT counts Robert Battle, the artistic director at Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater in New York, as an alumnus. At one point, 25 percent of the dancers at New York’s Martha Graham Dance Co. could trace their origins back to ADT, according to Wiesen.

Another alumnus, Chris Rudd, became the founder and artistic director of New York-based RudduR Dance in 2015 and a Guggenheim Choreography Fellow in 2019. In November 2020, the American Ballet Theatre premiered Rudd’s groundbreaking work, “Touché,” as part of a virtual gala.  It featured a pas de deux between two men, marking the first time the American Ballet Theatre presented a work with an explicitly homosexual theme.

The former ADT scholarship student credited Armour Dance Theatre with opening the door to ballet and providing a second family.

“I started dancing through the company’s scholarship program around 1990, when it was just taking off,” said Rudd. “Ruth [Wiesen] became our second mom. We were all welcome despite the fact that we had different needs. She then put this spirit into her institution, filling the gaps our parents couldn’t for whatever reason.”

For Rudd, Armour Dance Theatre is unique among ballet schools in its holistic approach toward its students.

“Only now is the rest of the ballet world having conversations about the importance of this approach,” Rudd said.  “It is evidence for what ballet companies could have become had they approached education this way.”

For more information on Armour Dance Theatre’s academy and community programs, go to Armourdance.org, call 305-667-5543, or visit its studios at 5818 SW 73rd St., Miami.

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