Remain in Light – Brigid Baker’s Dance is a Natural Wonder

Choreographer Brigid Baker is fascinated by the miraculous strangeness of the natural world, by its beauty and non-human weirdness. In her newest piece, Remain in Light (set to and inspired by the visionary 1980 David Byrne/Brian Eno album), she celebrates the “otherness” of the natural world and attempts to meet and engage it through movement….

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Fantastic Children – Giancarlo Rodaz and Area Stage’s Magical Matilda

Matilda the Musical, the show about an uncannily – perhaps magically – brilliant child currently running at Area Stage Company in South Miami, is an ideal show for Giancarlo Rodaz, its director and designer. Rodaz, at 24 the youngest son of Area Stage’s founders John Rodaz and Maria Banda-Rodaz, has grown up telling stories onstage,…

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As Good As it Gets – Seeing Theatre in London for the First Time

This is not Miami. But I can’t resist sharing impressions from my first experience of seeing theatre in London. Particularly The Hunt, a riveting new play at The Almeida, a small, highly regarded venue that’s roughly the equivalent of an Off Broadway theater. I’ve never seen acting of such intensity, depth and nuance, nor a…

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Like Life and Love. A review of Rosie Herrera’s “Carne Viva.”

Rosie Herrera’s Carne Viva at Miami Light Project last Thursday started with a deceptively static pose: dancer Simon Thomas-Train holding Ivonne Batanero overhead. But this is not a traditionally triumphant dance lift. His arms extend straight up, his hands gripping her armpits, while her arms reach directly out to the side, so that she becomes…

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Body Power – Rosie Herrera’s “Carne Viva” Bares Body and Soul in Wynwood

For a dancer, flesh is power: content, identity, expression, being. In Catholicism – and romantic love – flesh is weak: temptation, vulnerability. Choreographer Rosie Herrera digs into those contradictions in Carne Viva, the first group piece her company has performed in Miami in years, showing at the Miami Light Project’s space in Wynwood Thursday through…

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Talking about Dougla and Dance Theatre of Harlem

The next Dance Talk in the series I’ve been hosting for the South Miami-Dade Cultural Arts Center is for the much anticipated return of Dance Theatre of Harlem, which made a big stir last year when the Center hosted the company’s return to Miami after almost two decades. We’ll explore the inspiration and background of…

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Poetry in Motion – The Return of Brigid Baker’s Big Beautiful and Wonderlawn

The choreographer and avant-garde godmother Brigid Baker stages a rare performance outside her Little Havana creative home, the 6th Street Dance Studio, this Thursday and Friday. Baker, a key (though not always sufficiently acknowledged as such) master dance teacher and artistic mentor in Miami, will present her pieces Wonderlawn, a reflection on the early AIDS…

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