Dance NOW! Miami’s Partnership With Portuguese Co. Takes On Oppression, Resistance

Rehearsing for Dance NOW! Miami’s “Blue Pencil” Austin Duclos and Kirsten Velasco. The company brings “Blue Pencil” along with two other pieces to Miami Theater Center, Miami Shores on Friday, Feb. 28. (Photo by Sophia Pfitzenmaier, courtesy of DNM)

One action from an authoritarian government can suppress the truth and aim to silence society; another from an artist can defy power and embolden us to raise our voices for freedom. Putting this clash between oppression and resistance at the forefront, Dance NOW! Miami—in what stands out as the most relevant and consequential work of the company’s 25th anniversary season and perhaps any season, given current events—brings “Blue Pencil” to Miami Theater Center on Friday, Feb. 28.

This world premiere will be accompanied in the company’s second program of the season by repertory pieces by DNM artistic directors Hannah Baumgarten and Diego Salterini. Keeping the political theme, her “Court Dance,” from 2003, is based on the controversial United States presidential election of 2000, the outcome of which hung on Florida; his “Drawing Circles” clings to the geometry of dance and how, in fact, it can relate to architecture, here specifically with a local connection to the mid-century modern style.

Kirsten Velasco in rehearsal for Dance NOW! Miami’s “Blue Pencil.” (Photo by Sophia Pfitzenmaier/courtesy of DNM)

“Blue Pencil” extends DNM’s involvement in international collaborations, this time with Portugal’s Dança em Diálogos—under the artistic direction of Solange Melo—which previously joined in for 2021’s “Anusim, What is Hidden Is Never Lost.” A transatlantic success, it featured an acutely gestural representation of 15th-century Portuguese Jewish culture during the Inquisition.

The companies’ current creative venture—and in part a diplomatic effort in association with the Miami Beach/Cascais, Portugal, Sister Cities Project—is another instance where DNM, in alliance with artistically aligned partners, uses modern dance to convey rich content, laying the foundation for international understanding.

“Our collaborative practice,” emphasizes Salterini, “provides artists an opportunity to dance with others in a way rarely experienced. Building relationships with other arts organizations is a key value for DNM. This recurring model creates bonds among artists and organizations across borders that last a lifetime.”

The collaborations, Baumgarten says, are partially funded by a Miami Dade County Department of Cultural Affairs International Cultural Partnerships grant.

“We get involved in projects with similarly sized, like-minded companies and together create work thematically and artistically relevant to both groups and our respective countries. We perform this on our own and in a blended cast when we come together.”

Choreographers and artistic directors, Solange Melo (Dança em Diálogos), Diego Salterini and Hannah Baumgarten (Photo courtesy of Dance NOW! Miami).

“Blue Pencil” achieves those ends referencing Portuguese history and placing it in a world context—one which points to our current political climate. The title refers to the practice in Portugal, during the dictatorship of António de Oliveira Salazar, to censor publications of any kind from the start by striking out controversial material—i.e., threatening to the regime—with a lápis azul, the sharp blue point of that pencil attempting to deal a death blow to freedom of expression and any aspiration to democracy.

This started in the 1930s, with the rise of fascism in Europe, and did not end until 1974 with the so-called Carnation Revolution. A fairly peaceful coup against Salazar’s successor by the military led not to bloodshed but to another kind of red being splashed around Portugal as the populace inserted flowers into the muzzles of the liberators’ weapons.

“The subject of ‘Blue Pencil’ developed from conversations we had with Solange investigating themes we felt connected our countries and companies,” explains Baumgarten. “We originally approached this as a cautionary tale, drawing from the stories of Portugal. As we researched recurring forms of government repression, we realized our interpretation would draw on both historical and fictionalized accounts, using the past as prologue to our present-day turmoil.”

Dance NOW! Miami’s “Drawing Circles.” From left, Anthony Velazquez, Benicka J. Grant, Allyn Ginns Ayers and Luke Stockton. (Photo by Jenny Abreu/courtesy of DNM)

The DNM directors poured their souls into this project after the need to address current state of affairs including Florida’s book bans, arts funding cuts, and increasing marginalization of minorities across the country. Likewise enthused, Melo seized on the opportunity to showcase the collaboration during her country’s ongoing celebration of the Carnation Revolution’s 50th anniversary. As such, after the South Florida premiere, “Blue Pencil” will debut at Vila das Artes in Cascais, Portugal on Wednesday, March 12.

Just days prior to the performance, DNM will travel to the Portuguese destination for the Miami cast of three men and six women to meet their counterparts in preparation for the performance that adds two men and a woman from Dança em Diálogos.  Allyn Ginns Ayers, company associate director, will run rehearsals to ultimately determine how and where the dancers from each group will be inserted or combined, according to Baumgarten.

Of course, to turn such strong inspiration and noble intent into impactful stage action calls for energetic and concentrated effort, and that’s where DNM’s well-oiled mechanisms for this sort of dance-making come in.

Salterini sees how the process of coordination “may seem crazy from the outside,” but through repetition he and Baumgarten have found a formula, as he puts it, “down to a science,” with Zoom and WhatsApp facilitating frequent exchanges with their foreign partners.

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The DNM directors are relying on their well-established creative team—technical director Bruce F. Brown and costume designers Haydée and María Morales—to help evoke both the piece’s central time period and the timelessness, as Salterini puts it, of “suppression, censorship, and entanglement.” Similarly in the work’s music there’s both specificity—with Portuguese selections iconic in the 1970s, for instance—and universal relevance—supported by pop and classical strains from the United States, Argentina, and Cape Verde. The sound collage, as Baumgarten describes it, is an anthem to compassion.

The dancers of Dance NOW! Miami (DNM), from left, Austin Duclos, Alexander Campbell and Anni Browne in rehearsal for “Blue Pencil.” (Photo by Sophia Pfitzenmaier courtesy of DNM)

Last December, at a sneak peek of excerpts from this show at the Bass Museum of Art in Miami Beach, it was already clear that their creative process has yielded visually captivating and spiritually nourishing material. In one segment, Anneliese Browne struggled to keep her movement on course while being besieged by unrelenting manipulators (Austin Duclos and Alexander Campbell)—their grip thuggish, her tenacity heroic. Elsewhere David Harris—seemingly with his head in the clouds, a sort of beatific figure—found pure oxygen in his art to keep personal integrity above all the surrounding political toxicity.

“Our intention isn’t just to rail against the machine,” says Baumgarten, “but to deliver a message of resistance, highlighting the power and resilience of artists in their determination to emerge from authoritarianism with grace and courage.”

WHAT: Dance NOW! Miami’s Program II featuring “Blue Pencil”

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

WHEN: 8 p.m., Friday, Feb. 28

COST: $40 general admission in advance, $45 day of show, $25 for Miami Shores residents and $20 for students, with valid IDs. 

INFORMATION: (305) 975-8489 or https://www.dancenowmiami.org/

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