Piano Slam 12 highlights socially conscious young poets

The evening’s poetry touched on powerful topics, including the environment. (Photo courtesy of Cristian Lazzari)

Young poets had the chance to shine as they reflected on socially charged themes at the Dranoff International 2 Piano Foundation’s Piano Slam 12.

The event, which blends classical music performance, poetry and spoken word competition, took place Feb. 28 at the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts and featured 17 poets, selected from more than 4,000 Miami-Dade County public middle- and high-school students.

Speaking before a packed house at the Knight Concert Hall, Miami-Dade schools superintendent Alberto Carvalho emphasized the value the district places on the arts as well as the success of Piano Slam, which is now in its 12th year. About 83,000 county students have participated in the program’s outreach activities since 2009, he said.

The performance began with Daniel Strange, director of contemporary keyboard studies at the University of Miami’s Frost School of Music, and Rachel Ohnsman, a post-graduate student and teaching assistant for the Frost’s Creative American Music Program at Frost, taking their places at the pianos, accompanied by Argentine vocalist/songwriter Roxana Amed. Strange and Ohnsman played throughout the program, mainly as accompaniment to a deejay.

In the first of several numbers choreographed by Miami dancer Rosie Herrera, 20 students carrying flashlights circled four young soloists who freestyle-danced at the front of the stage. As the number came to a close, Miami Norland Senior High 12th-grader Anaisa Tate stood at the center, gently swaying as she laid down the lines of her poem, “Crossroads.”

Tate spoke of Miami as a city of “new tempos/flowing in with the movement of people/the hymns of runaway slaves,” then shifted focus to Coral Gables, a city “built on the base of thick coral/and the broad backs of Bahamian accents.”

As Tate wrapped up, four young women joined her on-stage and, as a group, they swayed, sweeping arms into pivots in a second Herrera-inspired choreography.

Student poems touched on powerful themes: the potential effect of a climate crisis on Miami and their personal futures, the effects of gender and racism on self-esteem and a sense of belonging.

Brenis Bostick, a junior from Miami Norland Senior High, presented, “Mother Miami,” invoking concerns with resource depletion, air and water pollution and the changing climate.

“Mother Miami cries to me/hear her sad harmony/’help me to be what I once was.’”

As he spoke, students backlit in scarlet littered the stage with sheets of paper.

Eighth-grader Vivian Diep from Southwood Middle School carried the climate theme forward with her poem, “Strong Winds.” She expressed her struggle with Miami’s deepening urbanization.

Other students criss-crossed the stage, fanning scattered papers into the air, as she delivered lines like, “This city is getting grayer and grayer/with its advanced machinery/my green leaves try to keep the atmosphere healthy/aiming to keep the air clean and fresh.”

Then one student executed a series of backbends that closed with her facedown in the middle of the mess.

Ponce De Leon Middle’s Shemar Canty celebrated his same-sex orientation in “My Truth.” Carefully pacing his delivery, the eighth-grader pronounced a string of ringing self-affirmations: “With my sassiness and jigs/with my over-the-top personality/I am a vivacious, infectious song.”

As he finished, the hall exploded with applause, and the stage transformed into an all-out dance party.

At the close of the performance, Carlene Sawyer, creator and producer of Piano Slam and executive director of the Dranoff foundation, announced the evening’s winners.

These included:
Alisha Gay, SLAM North, Middle School English
Azul Girola, South Miami Middle, STEM
Ariyelle Dickson, Everglades Preparatory Academy, High School English
Brenis Bostick, Miami Norland High, STEM

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brigid baker wholeproject goes ‘All the Way’ in March program

Amy Trieger and Isaiah Gonzalez in brigid baker wholeproject’s “All the Way.” (Photo courtesy of Oui Collective)

Eight-foot, fluorescent tentacles stretch from the floor. A gold-lacquered ballgown hovers in the corner among gold chainlinks the size of an arm. Every corner of brigid baker wholeproject’s Little Havana studio suggests an alternate reality seeping through.

On the dance floor, the company hones “Persian Love,” the final number of its March program, “All the Way,” which runs March 5 to 8 at the Miami Dade County Auditorium’s On.Stage Black Box Theater.

As they rehearse, the dancers form a line then sashay back, right legs kicking, fingers snapping.  They skip sideways and pop into a lunge before spinning forward on the diagonal, arms punching forward.

They alternate between quick walks and sprints, complicated group rhythmics giving way to a solo as dancer Liony Garcia flails his arms over back-snapping backbends. The sequence wraps up with the dancers coupling up in a merengue grind to a recording of Holger Czukay’s 1979 “Persian Love” – a wild adventure in sampling that mashes a calypso beat with steel drums and the chant/lament of Farsi lyrics the composer captured on short-wave radio.

The dancers collapse, gulping air, and Miami choreographer Brigid Baker exclaims, “It’s great! It’s like a washing machine.”

“The whole thing is about hope in the darkness and what it is that permits connection,” Baker tells the reporter. “I’m not interested in the problems that are out there, but I am interested in the solutions.

“As Mr. Rogers used to say, ‘Look for the helpers!’”

She explains the new program’s main prop: an ottoman-sized, anatomic heart, the arteries and veins constructed from purple, yellow and scarlet velvet.

“In the middle of ‘Persian Love,’ the heart floats to the middle then hangs over the floor,” she says.

The program opens with one of Baker’s signature home-made film clips, set to Frankie Knuckles’ uptempo, “Take Me Higher.” The clips show sequences of people climbing a steep staircase or rocketing past the Statue of Liberty with jetpacks before ending with a full-sized killer whale kite-sailing above the beach.

Acting as counterpoint to Baker’s self-described “hack job” videos are slick, highly engineered media clips by Justin Trieger, New World Symphony’s director of new media.

In one Trieger-engineered segment – “All Night Long” – a black orb floats in a starry sky. During the Czukay-contrived soundtrack a voice scats/talks, “Got to keep moving ‘til the break of day,” and a sharp-heeled walk marks time. The orb gradually brightens on one edge to reveal the bright side of a gorgeous moon.

Baker’s choreography accompanies the segment. The dancers walk stiffly, straight legs on demi-pointe, then suddenly melt, bodies jazzy, arms swaying to each side accenting hip rolls, arms circling. Baker scats out the rhythms as the recording closes with poet Charles Bukowski reciting his poem, “All the Way.” As the poet repeats, “If you’re going to try, go all the way,” the dancers’ movements pick up the pace, the sequence half-walked, half-pantomimed to Bukowski’s intonations.

At the end of the segment, a gorgeous choir erupts with composer Thomas Ades’ Arcadiana 6: “O Albion” for string quartet. Forming two lines, the dancers reach, spin and drop, arms sweeping out. They couple up and briefly melt in an embrace. As a group, their weight shifts to the side and they float to the back of the room. Here, a video will show everyone, “getting it together,” Baker explains.

When asked where “All the Way” fits in with the company’s other recent programs – such as  2017’s “Big Beautiful” and 2019’s “Remain in Light” –  dancer Garcia emphasizes the similarities: “I think there are different fields she likes to move in.”

Dancer Amy Trieger continues, “In this program, we are being asked to move between the fields and to take the audience with us each time.”

“That’s right,” Baker interjects. “Once the field has arisen, it’s my responsibility to practicalize it.”

Dancer Isaiah Gonzalez points out that 8-foot tentacles were a main prop of “Remain in Light,” while the centerpiece of “All the Way” is the velvet heart.

“In ‘Remain in Light,’ it was about the extremities, while in ‘All the Way,’ it’s about the actual organs and going to the core.”

What: brigid baker wholeproject presents “All the Way”

When: 8 p.m. March 5-8

Where: On.Stage Black Box Theatre at Miami Dade County Auditorium, 2901 W. Flagler St., Miami

Cost: $25

More information: 305-547-5414; miamidadecountyauditorium.org

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Prepare to be surprised with Jérôme Bel’s ‘Company, company’ at ICA Miami

Jérôme Bel’s “Company, Company,” in 2015 at Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires, Argentina. (Photo courtesy of Josefina Tommasi)

If you’ve ever sat in a theater watching a dance performance and thought, “I’ve seen this before,” a production by Jérôme Bel might cure your artistic ennui.

The renowned French dancer and choreographer – whose works have been performed in collaboration with esteemed institutions such as the Opera National de Paris, the Theatro Municipal do Rio de Janeiro, and New York’s Museum of Modern Art – aspires to challenge both his dancers and viewers with a fresh, ever-changing approach to the art form.

“I want to offer new ways,” Bel says. “I hate tradition when they alienate bodies and mind. My aim is to use dance in order to emancipate the dancers, but also the audience.”

Bel makes his South Florida debut from Feb. 27-29 at the Institute of Contemporary Art Miami (ICA Miami) with his new work, “Company, Company,” which imagines choreography as a “flexible framework.” In other words, if you think you know what will unfold onstage, prepare to be surprised.

“In the contemporary arts field, the audience shouldn’t expect anything,” Bel says. “That’s the ‘contract’ it requires. As a spectator myself, I like contemporary arts because I don’t know what I will watch, experience. As a choreographer, I try to produce a performance that the audience has never experienced. ‘Company, Company’ doesn’t look like anything you have seen already.”

The work features a cast of locals, both professional and amateur, with vastly different backgrounds, body types and skill levels, and it aims to celebrate the joy of expression while downplaying judgment.

“I realized that professional dancers are very standardized, their bodies, their way to dance,” Bel says. “I thought that I could think about different bodies. And I found many different ones who were dancing in so many different ways that I have decided to show the diversities of dancing. That is why this performance gathers very different bodies, cultures, ages, ethnicities.”

It’s a bold statement, and a refreshing break from tradition.

“I think it articulates the complex balance between community and diversity, group and singularity – how to be together, keeping the singularity of each individual,” he says. “Usually, dance produces community and ensemble through the uniformization of the dancers. I think this policy is not relevant anymore. Some dance companies sometimes make things [seem] like an army.”

“Company, Company” has been performed all over the world, and while it remains constant conceptually, its players change from city to city.

“The cast is local for ecological reasons,” says Bel, who answers, “to save the world,” when asked to sum up his artistic mission. “I didn’t want to put performers on planes anymore. I was thinking local to reduce the carbon footprint of the performance.

“People are hired in every city and, of course, they produce a totally different show from one cast to another, from one city to another. And each cast is closer, then, to the culture of the audience. The cast represents the audience, more or less.”

Bel is one of a handful of choreographers, mostly French, who have been linked to the “non-dance” movement of the early ’90s, which has been described as approaching performance art. He vehemently rejects this affiliation, however.

“I don’t use this term,” he says. “[A reporter] from ‘Le Monde’ wrote this once, and then I [was] stamped with this term, which is ridiculous. I push forward the dance, but I am not against dance. And especially not with this production, ‘Company, Company.’ It is a total misunderstanding of my work.”

Perhaps to emphasize his love of dance, Bel lists an incredibly diverse group of his idols, names that include Vaslav Nijinsky, Isadora Duncan, Josephine Baker, Trisha Brown, Tatsumi Hijikata, Lucinda Childs, Merce Cunningham, Anna Halprin, Pichet Klunchun and Bob Fosse.

Bel’s unique style is a perfect fit with ICA Miami, which strives to be “a platform for the exchange of art and ideas in the broadest possible sense,” according to its associate curator, Stephanie Seidel.

“I think Jérôme Bel is an extremely important example of a choreographer who bridges the world of dance with the world of visual artists,” she says. “We really feel that his interdisciplinary approach to dance is something that is really relevant and also is something that we really value. I had seen his work personally in dOCUMENTA (13) in 2012 [in Kassel, Germany], which is one of the most important art exhibitions, so it’s a real honor to be able to bring him here to Miami.”

What: “Company, Company,” by Jérôme Bel

When: 7 p.m. Feb. 27 and 28; 1 p.m. Feb. 29

Where: Institute of Contemporary Art Miami, 61 NE 41st St.

Cost: $15 general admission; $10 for members

More information: icamiami.org/program/jerome-bel

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Review: Street dance confronts realities of structural racism in ‘Love Heals All Wounds’

“Love Heals All Wounds” used street dance, poetry, film and live music to discuss subjects such as social injustice, racism and environmental destruction. (Photo courtesy of Amanda Smith Photography)

“Love Heals All Wounds” – the latest collaboration from South Florida’s Jon Boogz and Memphis-based Lil Buck – combined theater and poetry, dance and film to address issues of racism, police violence, mass incarceration and gender oppression in its Feb. 8 presentation at the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts.

The program, at the Arsht’s intimate Carnival Studio Theater, offered an exciting and smart mix of street dance, spoken word and visual projections and extended the vocabulary of street dance to embrace activist narratives and social commentary.

It opened to a backdrop of pulsing stars, and Jon Boogz and Lil Buck stretched side by side on the floor as violinist Jason Yang spun out a mournful, adagio melody.

Boogz and Buck slowly stood while, at center stage, poet Robin Sanders – in a full-length, white-and-gold dress – chanted verses to the sound of flowing water.

“Hydrants spray water as brown as their skin,” Sanders chanted, introducing the theme of environmental racism.

In silky blue shirts, the two dancers sent waves rippling from shoulders to fingertips and back, while scenes flashed behind them showing hurricanes flooding city streets and citizens from low-income neighborhoods struggling to rebuild.

Five other dancers formed a pyramid around Boogz and Buck. The group cycled through patterns of snap pivots and re-directions, torsos rippling, arms and hands fluttering. Projected behind them, a man held high the sign, “Flint Lives Matter.”

Then Sanders returned, and the group formed a tight line behind her. As they swayed gently, she asked the audience to “breathe deeply” and “inhale the stench of inequality,” marking the shift from water to the element of air.

Of the four opening vignettes featuring elements, “Fire” was especially effective.  As four dancers in red formed a cross on the floor, Sanders’ verses played with associations of fire to anger, with phrases such as “ashes of destruction,” before centering on a message of renewal, “I can tame them. I can restore them.”

With that, the four dancers stood and began a complicated sequence of moon walks, floating forward and to the sides as images of fires raging through Baltimore minority neighborhoods appeared on the screen behind them. The scene ended with the dancers huddling around the poet.

“Love Heals All Wounds” consistently resisted the temptation to soften the harsh social realities it framed. From vignette to vignette, talk of the power of unconditional love or faith in social progress consistently shifted to show the violent realities of structural racism for many African-Americans in the United States.

In one instance, Sanders introduced the next piece with the half-sung, half-chanted refrain, “Black boy, you bring so much joy,” as dancers in street clothes circled the floor, clapping and stomping. Forming a tight group at the front of the stage, they took turns rapping lines and snapping out athletic dance sequences.

As the audience joined in a call-and-response, the theater morphed into a neighborhood street corner. One dancer explained to the audience how he managed to add a twist to his flip.  Another riffed on Sanders’ opening lines, strutting to the center with, “Black boy, black joy, I’m talking about me.” The audience burst into applause.

The warmth and camaraderie of the scene vanished with the wail of police sirens. The dancers scattered as the vibe shifted instantly from joyful to dark.

This performance was followed by a brilliant examination of the contemporary crisis of mass incarceration and its roots in the history of American slavery.

“What’s going on?” questioned Sanders, as she opened the segment spinning out lyrics that forged potent links with the visuals.

As she spoke of “power as the new narcotic,” and being guilty “by simply breathing while being brown or black,” black-and-white images of chain gains and prison yards full of African-American men flashed on the screen.

Four dancers in prison suits stood at the center of blocks of light on the floor, crisscrossed with shadows reminiscent of prison bars. The men shed their shirts, framing startling choreographies that ran the gamut of the penal experience from the hammer strikes of forced labor to impacts received from beatings.

One dancer in street clothes bobbed and feinted like someone locked in argument, half pantomiming, half dancing. Exasperated, he raised arms in surrender, then kneeled and placed his hands behind his head as a voiceover described the meteoric rise of U.S. incarceration rates during the past 50 years.

It was the evening’s most powerful piece.

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Miami Sunshine Tango Festival to meld Buenos Aires with the beach

Alejandra Hobert and Adrian Veredice will be featured in the Miami Sunshine Tango Festival. (Photo courtesy of Michele Maccarrone)

Some of the world’s best Argentine tango dancers and musicians will converge on Sunny Isles Beach over three nights to recreate the flavor of an authentic Buenos Aires “milonga” (dance gathering) – but with a Miami twist.

“If we were doing this in Buenos Aires, we would hold the festival in the middle of the city,” says Mariano Bejarano, organizer of the Miami Sunshine Tango Festival. “To bring tango to Miami has to be done in the Miami way. We want to mix in the beaches and Miami’s Caribbean vibe.”

The festival, from Feb. 21-23 at the Ramada Plaza By Wyndham Marco Polo Beach Resort, will feature tango classes, poolside practices and beachside milongas.

While growing up in Argentina, Bejaraon hated tango, he says, but was immersed in its culture.

“Tango in Argentina is something which, since you’re a kid , you listen to it whether you like it or not,” he says. “Subliminally, whether you like it or not, you hear it everywhere. I never liked tango, but my blind grandfather would sing the lyrics, so when I started to get into tango, I asked myself, ‘How come do I know these lyrics?’”

He caught the tango bug after moving to Miami where he started to dance, teach and organize events promoting the art form. With the large number of Argentines that call South Florida home, Bejarano holds high hopes that tango could really take off here.

“Because of the Latin culture here in Miami, Miami could be one of the main cities outside Argentina where tango is danced and performed,” he says.

But first, he has to attract new audiences and young people to an art form that presents itself as foreign, stiff with tradition and out of touch. For that reason, Bejarano has invited performers with a proven track record for connecting with young people and international audiences.

Among them is La Juan D’arienzo orchestra, whose name recalls one of the most famous Argentine tango composers. As a band leader, D’arienzo’s music energized night halls from the 1930s until his death in 1976.

As the orchestra’s band leader and principal bandoneonista (bandoneon player), Facundo Lazzari learned the accordion-style instrument from his grandfather, Carlos Lazzari, who originally performed with the famous D’arienzo.

Lazzari took up the instrument, “because I fell in love with this style of tango.” He had the chance to play with his grandfather for a year, and their time together was enough for him to forge a link with tango’s authentic tradition.

“It is a big responsibility to take care of our music and our legacy,” Lazzari says. “The name of Juan D’arienzo itself acts as bridge with the past and makes our sound unique.”

While dedicated to keeping this past alive, Lazzari also recognizes the need for tango to grow by connecting with new audiences, many of whom don’t speak Spanish.

“Our audience is not only Argentinian now, but from everywhere in the world, so this time we are going to play one tango in English for the very first time in Miami during our U.S.-Canada tour,” he says.

Of course, the immersive Buenos Aires experience also requires the world’s most prominent practitioners of the dance. Among those showcased in the festival will be Gustavo Naveira and Giselle Anne; Virginia Gomez and Christian Marquez; Manuela Rossi and Juan Malizia; and Alejandra Hobert and Adrian Veredice.

Hobert and Veredice call Miami home. When they are not traveling internationally to teach and perform, the couple live in Weston, where they raise their two young daughters and offer a tango class. They have been dancing together for 23 years, having first met in Buenos Aires.

“My [guitarist] brother plays in San Telmo, the neighborhood where we lived in Buenos Aires which is rich in tango tradition,” she says. “Though he’s two years older than I am, we both started playing and dancing at the same time.”

Meanwhile, Veredice started dancing tango while studying architecture – but it was not his first dance.

“I did folk-dancing before tango. But while I was at the university, I began listening to tango all the time,” he says. “Once I started to learn the dance, I transitioned to only tango pretty quickly.”

What: Miami Sunshine Tango Festival

When: Feb. 21-23 

Where: Ramada Plaza By Wyndham Marco Polo Beach Resort, 19201 Collins Ave., Sunny Isles Beach

Cost: Milongas, performances and classes range from $10-$385

More information: miamisunshinetangofestival.com

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Review: New World Symphony and Miami City Ballet do honor to Stravinsky and Balanchine 

“Stravinsky and Balanchine: A Monumental Collaboration” at the New World Center paid tribute to two giants of music and dance. (Photo courtesy of Alexander Iziliaev)

There was palpable excitement in the air as two giants – Miami City Ballet and New World Symphony – came together Jan. 31 for “A Monumental Collaboration.”

The program at Miami Beach’s New World Center was a fitting tribute to the artistic union of two other giants: composer Igor Stravinsky and choreographer George Balanchine.

“Stravinsky and Balanchine: A Monumental Collaboration” opened  with a video introduction by New World Symphony artistic director and conductor Michael Tilson Thomas and Miami City Ballet artistic director Lourdes Lopez. It drew parallels with Stravinsky and Balanchine’s collaboration and explained the personal connections that Thomas and Lopez had to the composer and choreographer.

The evening began with the ballet, “Apollo.” Stravinsky’s work first debuted in Washington, D.C., in 1928 with choreography by Adolph Bolm. When Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes dance company performed “Apollo” a few months later in Paris, it was paired with choreography by an emerging talent, the 24-year old George Balanchine. It became the first collaboration between Stravinsky and Balanchine.

For this latest performance, Thomas carefully unfolded the opening motif of “Apollo,” pacing the all-wind orchestration through the prologue’s nuanced variations on the opening motif of dotted rhythms.

As the theme expanded, it connected gorgeously with the violin solo rendered by New World Symphony fellow Kevin Chen. With the start of Chen’s solo, MCB’s Renan Cerdeiro entered in white tights and a draped tunic. At first tentative in his attack, Cerdeiro settled into the space and shaped a terrific “Apollo” who stretched and lunged, alternating between strict dance and miming the performance of the thaboura.

The prologue closed with the appearance of the muses: Emily Bromberg as Calliope (poetry), Jennifer Lauren as Polyhymnia (mime), and Katia Carranza as Terpsichore (dance and song). All three sparkled, both in their solo variations and together with Cerdeiro, whether performing a weave at the center or miming the horses of Apollo’s chariot. Carranza was especially memorable in the way she communicated the nuances of the orchestra’s phrasing with her upper body and the timing of her footwork.

Next up was “Circus Polka” (1942), which Balanchine originally choreographed as a dance for 50 elephants, commissioned by circus man P.T. Barnum.

Miami City Ballet performed this back in 2018, with 48 students acting as the elephants and Lopez assuming the role of ringmaster.

For “A Monumental Collaboration,” both the elephants and the students were replaced with sumptuous, thought-provoking visuals projected on the hall’s massive sails by Emily Eckstein.

“Circus Polka” opened with a chaotic tumbling of strings and, from there, the melody vaulted forward. Especially notable were the gorgeous, controlled bass tones in the baritone and trombone that alternated with the winds. The music remained tongue in cheek and danceable from start to finish, barreling through to a final thud.

Eckstein’s Monty Python-style visuals meshed humans and circus animals with machines, suggesting how mass entertainment connects performers and audiences in a kind of assembly line.

The evening closed with Stravinsky’s “Violin Concerto in D Major” (1931). Stravinsky’s score stems from a collaboration in Paris between Stravinsky and violin virtuoso Samuel Dushkin. Balanchine had a choreography premiere at the 1972 Stravinsky Festival organized to recognize the composer’s death.

“Violin Concerto” starts with a toccata followed by two arias composed of a pas de deux danced by two couples; it ends with a capriccio for the entire cast.

Each movement opens with a chord Stravinsky devised with Dushkin, which stretches from D to E to A₆ and serves as an emotional thermometer for each of four movements. Violinist James Ehnes was brilliant in the opening toccata, cutting sharply through the opening repetitions of sixteenths and eighths that shuffled first between solo strings, winds and double reeds before being asserted again in increasingly dramatic combinations of voices.

In the first aria, soloists Kleber Rebello and Nathalia Arja powerfully channeled the shrill and otherworldly quality Ehnes laid down, as Rebello pilloried Arja at the center of the stage or pivoted her attitude from behind with the foot of her stretched leg on his throat.

The refrains of the chord in the second aria – danced by soloists Cameron Catazaro and Ashley Knox – shifted from shrill and threatening interruptions to a signal of the complicated emotions powering their pas de deux, as Ehnes developed an increasingly conversational quality with the orchestra.

While both soloists danced notably here, this was a breakout performance for Catazaro as he ate space and radiated theatricality in support of a distraught Knox, sweeping his arm over her shoulders, his hands over her eyes and, with the soloist’s final note, pulling her into a deep backbend.

In the final capriccio, Ehnes decorated the pulse of the orchestra with accents as the dancers skipped forward bent low, elbows covering their eyes. At the center, the two pairs of soloists circled each other in a Russian folk dance that closed the evening on a joyous note.

Most took to their feet as Thomas, Lopez and Ehnes joined the dancers onstage to receive the applause of an enthusiastic audience.

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Review: Flamenco Sephardit presents a tour de force at Temple Emanu-El

From left: Jeffrey Eckstein, Rabbi Marc Philippe, Jorge Robledo, Audrey Babcock, Celia Fonta, Jose Moreno, Paco Fonta, Michel Gonzalez, Katherine Kobylarz and Chava Appiah. (Photo courtesy of Jeffrey Eckstein)

Miami increasingly figures as an international center for flamenco, second to Madrid, of course. Yet amid this sea of offerings, Flamenco Sephardit’s latest program in Miami Beach shone bright.

The Jan. 26 performance, “Flamenco Sephardit VII,” presented a fusion of Andalusian and Jewish traditions – blending Spanish flamenco with Ladino music and dance. It took place in a packed Temple Emanu-El and featured the well-known, husband-and-wife team of Celia and Paco Fonta. (The couple belongs to the Miami-based flamenco group, Siempre Flamenco, which is known for the  annual Festival de Cante Flamenco shows in September that have delighted audiences for more than a decade.)

After a quick introduction, Rabbi Marc Philippe – one of the evening’s singers – spoke about Ladino and flamenco’s connection to North African Muslim art forms and told the audience to think of the performance as an act of light and love.

Though flamenco dance and music are well-known, Ladino music is not as recognizable. Once spoken by Sephardic Jews from the Iberian Peninsula to the Ottoman Empire, Ladino is a dialect of 15th-century Spanish mixed with French, Italian, Portuguese, Greek, Turkish, Arabic and Hebrew.

Nowhere was this more evident than in the evening’s second piece, “Fel Sharah Canet Betet Masha” (“Walking down the street”), whose lyrics read as a mash-up of languages.

New World Symphony fellows Katherine Kobylarz on violin and Chava Appiah on cello laid down a slow, off-beat melody that spun into a gorgeous ballad with Philippe on vocals. This set up the entrance of dancer Jorge Robledo, who sprang to the center of the stage, striking in a blue velvet jacket and black vest.

With the bimah right at eye level, the synagogue proved a spectacular place to view the dancer’s quick footwork. Robledo caused the edges of the makeshift dance surface to pop off the floor with the strength of his rapid heel strikes. He snapped out an opening sequence before Celia Fonta – striking in a full-length turquoise dress ringed with ruffles from the waist down – joined him.

The two circled, mirroring each other’s sudden shifts of posture, pulses in shoulders, and quick snaps of the head. The audience burst into appreciative applause.

Celia Fonta returned with “Como la Rosa” (“Like the Rose”), and she was marvelous.

Mezzo-soprano Audrey Babcock, whose gorgeous operatic vocals were a highlight of the evening, spun a slow and mournful melody, accompanied by Appiah’s cello and Paco Fonta and Michel Gonzalez on guitar.

Celia Fonta theatrically arched her back and worked her arms sinuously while tapping out tight percussive sequences, her feet pacing the rhythms of her husband’s guitar. She floated forward on a wave of eye-popping footwork, pulling out all the stops as she high-stepped across the stage. Her solo ended and the audience went wild.

Another highlight was a “seguiriya,” which is a type of flamenco music in the “cante jondo” vocal style (“deep music”). It opened dramatically with Robledo slow-walking to the center, his eyes locked on Babcock. Without relaxing his gaze, he crouched and pivoted in place, finding the singer’s eyes repeatedly as he raised arms overhead. When Babcock’s solo ended, Robledo’s fireworks began.

As Paco Fonta spun an insanely rapid guitar solo, both dancer and guitarist riffed off the other’s rhythms, the dancer’s arms circling, fingers snapping, left hand holding open his jacket. Then with a snap of his head, he froze.

With the sanctuary silent, the audience first applauded but stopped as the violin and cello drove the melody forward. Robledo responded with intricate, infectious footwork that sent the hall vibrating. Many in the sanctuary swayed, and some at the front raised their hands. When the number ended, audience members got to their feet.

But the evening contained one more surprise, “A La Una,” which closed the performance spectacularly. Percussionist Jose Moreno started with a drum solo then suddenly sprang to the center of the stage and belted out a song before unmasking his skills as a dancer with a sequence of whip-like turns and lightning rhythms. Moreno’s theatrics ended the evening with the audience again on its feet.

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Jon Boogz and Lil Buck bring ‘Love Heals All Wounds’ to the Arsht

Jon Boogz, left, and Lil Buck in “Love Heals All Wounds.” (Photo courtesy of artist management)

South Florida-raised dancer/choreographer Jon Boogz has always wanted to use dance to tell stories that matter.

Growing up, the only things he loved as much as dancing were issue-driven films such as “Schindler’s List” and “The Color Purple.” As a street dancer in the style called popping, however, Boogz was in a world where success typically means getting on TV shows, touring with pop stars, winning competitions, and constantly upping your virtuosity. Not breaking hearts, opening minds, or changing worlds. He wanted more.

“People like to put boundaries on the art form,” Boogz says. “I always wanted to create powerful stories with it.”

Boogz has done just that with “Love Heals All Wounds,” an acclaimed multimedia theater work he created with Lil Buck, a dance star who made famous the Memphis jookin style. The show, which has been touring for two years, comes to the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts on Feb. 8 and 9.

“We’ve been getting immense feedback,” he says. “During [question-and-answer sessions], people are crying, saying their lives are changed.”

“Love Heals All Wounds” uses street dance, poetry, film and live music to express the two men’s feelings on subjects such as social injustice, racism and environmental destruction. The show has received a passionate response, giving Boogz faith that they’re having an impact.

He also hopes it shows other dancers from the B-boy and street dance worlds that they, too, can find creative fulfillment and success outside pop videos and commercials.

“We want to empower people like us, give kids who come from neighborhoods like we come from something else to aspire to,” Boogz says. “There’s always been people thinking more uniquely and artistically about the [street dance] genre, but there wasn’t a lane for it. We’re opening up a new highway.”

Boogz, 32, grew up in Hollywood and North Miami, and began dancing as a young boy in Miami’s underground B-boy scene. He competed in the Bboy Masters Pro-Am, a major event on an international circuit of B-boy conventions and contests. In 2009, feeling like he’d done everything he could in Miami, Boogz and a girlfriend moved to Los Angeles.

But things quickly went sour. He split with the girlfriend, struggled in the intensely competitive commercial scene, and found himself sharing a tiny apartment with four other guys.

“You see all these dancers on shows like ‘So You Think You Can Dance.’ I was like, ‘How do I separate myself? Should I be doing what they’re doing?’” he says. “I realized I had to combine the things I’m passionate about: storytelling in film and storytelling through dance.”

Depressed, broke and ready to return to Miami, Boogz went to a street dance jam at an L.A. studio, where he encountered Lil Buck.

“I’m letting out all my frustrations and this guy comes up to me and says, ‘Where are you from, dude? I’ve never seen anyone pop like that. Your style is amazing,’” Boogz recalls.

Buck invited him to join his crew, which performed on the sidewalks of Venice Beach for tips, a lifeline that enabled the Miami dancer to pay his bills and pursue his career. Boogz began making short films on subjects including domestic violence and suicide. In the next two years, the pair bonded over their dreams to take street dance beyond the street.

“He had a similar passion to take street dance to the next level,” Boogz says. “We were looking at the era of Gene Kelly, Fred Astaire, the Nicholas Brothers, when dancers were superstars. We said, that’s where street dance needs to be.”

Buck’s career took off around 2012, after a video of him improvising with world-famous cellist Yo-Yo Ma to “The Dying Swan” went viral. He went on to tour with Madonna, earn raves in the mainstream cultural press, and do commercials for Versace and Apple.

The two friends reconnected in Las Vegas in 2014, when Boogz got his own break performing with Cirque du Soleil there, just as Buck was leaving the show. The duo realized they finally had the resources and visibility to bring their artistic dreams to life.

They formed a nonprofit, Movement Art Is, and their first effort was “Color of Reality,” a 2016 short film they created in reaction to the wave of police shootings of young black men.

In the film, covered in a collage of paint by artist Alexa Meade, they flow from pain at television news to rejection on the street. “Color of Reality” went viral, pulling almost 400,000 views on YouTube.com. Other issue-driven dance films followed: “Am I A Man,” on the mass incarceration of black men; “Funeral for America,” where they bury racism; and a Ted Talk performance, “Honor Thy Mother,” on environmental threat, for the 2017 Vancouver edition of the famous conference.

“Love Heals All Wounds,” which they launched in 2018, is their most ambitious project yet. Boogz says it’s inspired by the often-overwhelming news of racism, intolerance, violence and environmental threats that have surged during the current administration – and by their own experiences.

“A lot of this comes from our lives,” he says. “I’ve been pulled over by cops and had illegal [things] happen to me. And, of course, everything going on in our country now inspired the work.

“You can’t be an artist and not be inspired by the times. We’re the newscasters, and we’re reporting live from the authentic stage of the people. It’s my duty to do that through my work. Hopefully, we won’t always have to do that. But until then, it has to be part of my life mission and art’s mission.”

This will be the first Miami performance of “Love Heals All Wounds,” and Boogz is thrilled. Along with Buck, he will join eight other dancers, spoken word poet Robin Sanders and violinist Jason Yang onstage.

“I’m so excited to bring it home,” he says. “Words can’t describe how I feel. For me to do this show in Miami means so much to me.”

He and Buck think art is more effective at inspiring people to take action and come together than political speeches and venting on social media.

“If I preach what I think, people might turn off. ‘Oh, here’s another rant.’ But when you allow people to take it in through movement, music, poetry, storytelling, they absorb it in a different way,” he says. “I’ve had people come up and say, ‘Your show has changed my whole outlook on life.’ You can’t put a value on that.”

What: Jon Boogz and Lil Buck’s “Love Heals All Wounds”

When: 7:30 p.m. Feb. 8 and 3 p.m. Feb. 9

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

Cost: $40

More information: 305-949-6722; arshtcenter.org

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Miami City Ballet, New World Symphony unite for ‘A Monumental Collaboration’

Tricia Albertson and Renan Cerdeiro in “Apollo.” (Photo courtesy of Alexander Iziliaev)

If only one titan, Atlas, could support the Earth on his shoulders, for two together would even the sky be the limit?

The 20th century experienced just that when choreographer George Balanchine and composer and pianist Igor Stravinsky collaborated in Paris and Washington, D.C., in 1928 on their ground-shifting ballet, “Apollo.” Their artistic partnership shifted the tectonics of both classical dance and music.

In a tribute to the composer and choreographer’s artistic union, New World Symphony musicians have teamed up with Miami City Ballet dancers for “Stravinsky and Balanchine: A Monumental Collaboration,” to be presented at Miami Beach’s New World Center at 7:30 p.m. Jan. 31 and Feb. 1. The program features “Apollo” with two other Balanchine ballets: “Circus Polka: For a Young Elephant” and “Stravinsky Violin Concerto.”

For New World Symphony’s artistic director and co-founder, Michael Tilson Thomas (who will conduct the performances), the seeds of the event were sown decades back.

“It was in the late 1980s that I first wandered over from the Lincoln Theatre, which was then the home of the New World Symphony, to the storefront on Lincoln Road that was then the home of the Miami City Ballet. Since then, I dreamed of uniting the brilliant young musicians of the New World Symphony with the extraordinary dancers in the Miami City Ballet,” he said in a statement.

The organizations have worked together before, but the opportunity to produce a full-length  Balanchine/Stravinsky program together was the result of both good timing and the personal connections that Thomas and Miami City Ballet’s artistic director, Lourdes Lopez, had to Stravinsky and Balanchine, respectively.   

“Lourdes Lopez was a student of Balanchine, [Michael Tilson Thomas] worked and studied with Stravinsky – we could think of no better collaboration for our 21st century institutions and audiences,” said the New World Symphony’s president and CEO, Howard Herring, in an email.

New World Symphony already had a Stravinsky festival programmed for its 2020 lineup, so when Thomas approach Lopez with the idea of doing a full-length program, she found it an attractive fit with the company’s recent programming.

“They were hoping for ‘Symphony in 3 Movements,’ but it would not have fit in the NWS space. However, ‘Apollo’ we had just done last season and ‘Violin Concerto,’ this season,” she said by email.

The joint venture presented practical challenges, and its own set of firsts, said Lopez.

“They are removing the seats where the audience usually is and placing the musicians there,” Lopez said. “The dancers will be where the musicians usually are. The audience will be only in the mezzanine and in the round.”

In another first, New World Symphony’s Wallcast will project both the music and dance to the audience out in nearby SoundScape Park, 400 17th St. Wallcast seating is free.

The symphony’s simulcasts of concerts have become a preferred way to pass an evening for many South Florida music lovers. However, ballet simulcasts are something new to the area.

For Lopez, meeting the challenges of live-streaming ballet was “about bringing the level of dance and music that both these institutions are noted for to our communities and showing them what Miami is capable of.”

The Wallcasts allow park audiences an intimacy with the performers that competes with even theater in the round for full immersion, Herring added.

“For an audience member, the traditional perspective is one-directional. Each New World Symphony Wallcast features more than 700 individual shot changes allowing audiences closeup views of soloists and artists, sweeping views of the stage, and unique human perspectives of the performances,” Herring said.

The event also will bring the South Florida performing arts scene to the world. Medici TV will The Feb. 1 performance will air live on Medici.tv, a worldwide classical music streaming platform, where it will remain available for viewing.

When asked how projects like this one strengthen the profile of both classical dance and music in South Florida, Lopez replied, “The most interesting thing for me is that Miami has two artistic directors who head leading dance and music institutions in the U.S., and who both were mentored by the greatest creative geniuses of 20^th century dance and music. I can’t think of another city in which this could happen.”

What: “Stravinsky and Balanchine: A Monumental Collaboration”

When: 7:30 p.m. Jan. 31 and Feb. 1

Where: New World Center, 500 17th St., Miami Beach

Cost: $75-$195

More information: 305-673-3331; nws.edu (click on “Events & Tickets”)

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Bistoury Physical Theatre & Film explores the power of dreams  

The couple at the heart of “The Commune – Chapter 1: A commune of oranges” were played by Carla Forte and Osmany Tellez. (Photo courtesy of Giovanni Ambrosio)

Searching for the meaning of an especially vivid dream can become all-consuming.

The way dream states can challenge common-sense certainties was the subject of Bistoury Physical Theatre’s latest multimedia work, “The Commune – Chapter 1: A commune of oranges,” performed Jan. 9-12 at Miami-Dade County Auditorium’s intimate On.Stage Black Box Theatre.

In an intense, hourlong show, BPT deployed dance, theater and film to shake the settled approach to people and things that dominates waking consciousness. The piece was directed by Bistoury co-founder Alexey Taran and starred co-founder Carla Forte and dancer Osmany Tellez.

The performance on Jan. 12 began with a film showing Forte and Tellez eating dinner. In it, Forte described to Tellez a dream where she became an orange tree that was cut down. The dream continued with them both becoming dogs. The dream’s subjects ranged from pasta and sex to the pleasures of beer.

As the film ended, the lights came up on a stage scattered with oranges – on the floor, hanging from the ceiling and piled in a large steel tub. A scene of an orchard was projected against the back wall.

In a black skirt and red top, Forte began a slow, sinuous dance toward the audience, as Tellez crouched behind her, shuttling forward monkey-like to a soundtrack of a revving motorcycle and a noisy crowd. Tellez went to all fours, dog-like, as Forte continued to walk-dance accompanied at the front of the stage by keyboardist and sound designer Dee Bertoldi, who hummed along to the recording of a male singer.

A series of vignettes followed that developed the themes Forte described in her dream with striking images that re-enacted dream logic and associations.

Certain vignettes dislodged customary expectations of behavior. In one segment, Forte danced salsa, sometimes walking hand over eyes, neon lights forming a large triangle on the floor.  As she did so, Tellez repeatedly called out, “Bah,” his leg springing before him. The effect of the two became increasingly hypnotic as their bodies moved like suspended puppets – Tellez resting an elbow on Forte’s shoulder as they high-stepped toward the audience.

In another scene, Tellez laid down a beat by clicking his tongue as Forte scatted and shimmied at the center. He offered her an orange, and she held it in her mouth before he began to chase her. Finally Tellez also bit down on the orange, and they spun wildly across the floor in a sensual embrace, holding the orange gripped in their mouths.

For other vignettes, the images were the key. In one, a black scrim lowered across the stage and both performers took a seat behind it, facing the audience and wearing black masks. On the scrim, a video image of Tellez’s face appeared over Forte’s body and her face appeared over his. A film of Forte’s face described her passion for pasta, and Tellez moved his arms and hands to emphasize her speech.

Later they reversed roles and Forte gestured as Tellez described his obsession with the carnality of sex. Here, the head-body reversals performed by the couple spoke to the compulsion couples experience to project onto their partner what they think makes the other tick.

“The Commune” closed with an arresting final image. Blue with fluorescent light, the stage had projections of phrases such as “en el fondo de su pecera” (at the bottom of your fish tank) and “dando lentas vueltas” (circling slowly) appearing on the back wall and on the performers’ bodies. Sheets of white powder fell like snow from the ceiling, cutting the stage in half.

Forte put on a long dress of black crepe, whole oranges sewn among its folds. She waved her arms to the sound of the wind as the harpsichord and viola da gamba laid down the opening measures of Handel’s aria, “In un folto bosco ombroso” (In a thick and shadowy wood). From time to time, Tellez picked an orange from Forte’s dress as she waded through the white powder, slowly waving her arms to the phrasing of the vocals. It was an extraordinary image, in which the potency of the performance picked up the logic of the dream Forte had described in the opening film.

Many of the images BPT created for “The Commune” were surprising and one of a kind. The strong applause on Jan. 12 from an appreciative audience pointed to Miami’s readiness for the recent sudden growth in South Florida’s experimental performative arts scene.

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Dance NOW! Miami presents socially charged 20th season opener

Dance NOW! Miami kicked off its 20th season on Dec. 21 at Lincoln Road’s Colony Theatre, showcasing works exciting for their creativity and for their relevance to pressing social issues.

“Program I” included three Miami premieres – Daniel Lewis’ “Women II,” Angela Gallo’s “Those Things … ” and Diego Salterini’s “Elemental” – as well as the revival of Hannah Baumgarten’s 2011 “Visions of Unrest.” Baumgarten is DNM’s co-artistic director, along with Salterini.

First up was “Women II” — the evening’s strongest work, distinguished by its imaginative choreography and political relevance. Dancers Allyn Ginns Ayers, Benicka Grant, Isabelle Haas and Renee Roberts led five girls, ages 12 to 14, from Miami’s Conchita Espinosa Academy. To a recording of the 1941 Ink Spot’s anti-war hit, “I Don’t Want to Set the World on Fire,” the nine dancers covered their eyes or spread arms wide, hands shimmering. One sequence saw the four “elders” striking robotic poses, while the “young’uns” shuffled along the diagonal, snapping their hands out as if catching butterflies between their fingers.

The 12-minute work remained surprising throughout, as when Roberts, Haas, Ayers and Grant cartwheeled seventh-grader Catalina Vigil through a lift.  Sequences connected consistently to the spirit of the #MeToo movement and the student-led protests that followed the 2018 Parkland school shootings. When the girls, hands on hips, pumped arms as if in victory, the rapid tap-tap-tap of the snare recalled gunshots.

Next up was the company premiere of “Those Things … ” – performed by Matthew Huefner, Anthony Velazquez, David Harris and Joshua Rosado. The men paired off and tested each other through pivots and exaggerated lunges, showcasing their strength.

Often, one dancer broke from the pair, twitching in a panic attack. At once, the other dancer dropped the athletics and comforted him in a moment that sparkled with intimacy. The episodes vividly recalled headlines describing recent spikes in mental illness among young adults.

The four men performed powerfully during both the polished dance sequences and the sudden theatrical shifts, but the choreography ended unconvincingly with troubled dancers simply returning to the contest. If the suggestion here was that those experiencing chronic anxiety just needed a warm rub on the back to get back to things, that message fell flat.

An excerpt from “Visions of Unrest” opened with “Insomnia” and DNM newcomer Julia Faris hugging a futon-sized pillow. To a sharp techno beat, Faris thrashed through variations of fetal positions to off-pillow sequences that included spun attitudes or legs wind-milled wildly.

This was followed by the evening’s most touching segment: “Dreams.”  The piano soloed as Huefner spooned Roberts. Still coupling, they looked to the horizon, or disengaged in sequences on their own, before returning to the rehearsal of intimacy. “Dreams” presented a very sweet vignette of two people learning to form a life together.

In “Awakening,” Ayers – gorgeous here – often soloed, or served as the focal point for the others, initiating motions they then echoed. The movement closed memorably with the dancers lying on the floor and Faris walking toward the audience as the lights went black.

Act II saw the company premiere of Salterini’s four-part “Elemental.” The subject’s inevitable intersect with environmental themes made it the evening’s most risk-taking work.

“Gaea,” the most effective movement, presented Earth as both a stage for human cooperation and a limit to human activity. Huefner, Rosado and Harris took turns cycling Faris – lovely here in the role of Gaea – through lifts. She first performed as their focal point, the men often finishing at her feet. Increasingly, they excluded her from sequences until she lay on her back, motionless. Then they too lost steam.

Grant was striking in “The Fire of Faith,” soloing to a recording of gospel great Mahalia Jackson. Repeatedly, she lifted her leg overhead then lunged, accenting the vocals as she kicked back, hands clasped overhead in prayer.

However, the work’s spiritual treatment hit limits with “The Shifting Weight of Water” and “Heavenly Creatures.”

“Water” opened with Ayers, Haas, Roberts and Rosado in blue tops and loose-fitting slacks, forming a line of four. To the sound of running water, they gorgeously mimicked the back-and-forth of cresting waves. But where “Gaea” connected the material to the spiritual, “Water” and “Creatures” stayed with spirit. By not addressing the material complexities that sea level rise and the atmosphere’s changing chemistry now carry for South Florida life, the treatments of these elements lacked relevance. After starting strong, they grew repetitious.

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Top photo: The company’s “Women II” features, from left, Benicka Grant, Renee Roberts, Isabelle Luu Li Haas and Allyn Ginns Ayers. (Photo courtesy of Simon Soong)