When Edward Villella first performed Tarantella, the rocket-powered pas de deux that George Balanchine made on him and Patricia McBride in 1964, he had to drop to his hands and knees to catch his breath every time he shot offstage. Today in Miami he watched, smiling, as Eric Pikieris and Claudia Lezcano, of Dimensions Dance…
Category: Dance
Voluptuous Rigor – Trisha Brown Dance Company at ICA Miami
Luscious and austere. Severely abstract and exuberantly physical. In her half-century long career, choreographer Trisha Brown traversed the limits of expression to create a unique and profoundly influential body of work. Which makes it an extremely big deal that the Trisha Brown Dance Company is performing at the ICA Miami this week, their first time…
Don’t Get Weary – Alvin Ailey’s leader on Dancing in Troubled Times
(Photo – AAADT in Robert Battle’s Mass. Photo by Paul Kolnik.) In what has become a beloved Miami tradition, the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater returns to the Adrienne Arsht Center today through Sunday, marking a full decade of regular seasons here. This year the highlight is work from the company’s two Miami-bred members, artistic…
Boyz, Boys, Boyeeeeee – Britain’s BalletBoyz debut in Miami
Yes, Balanchine famously once said “ballet is woman.” But this Saturday, it will be emphatically male – as Britain’s famed BalletBoyz make their Miami debut at the South Miami-Dade Cultural Arts Center. (Together with France’s Compagnie Herve Koubi at the Olympia Theater downtown, it makes for a feast of masculine dance sensation in South Florida….
Compagnie Hervé Koubi – dancing across borders
The French choreographer Hervé Koubi was searching for his roots when he first travelled to the former French colony of Algeria. But what he has found was not the country his parents left behind but something new: a thrilling realm of physical frontiers and cultural riches created by Koubi and his troupe of Algerian and…
Modern Masterpieces – Martha Graham Dance Company & South Florida Symphony
(Photo: Lloyd Knight in Martha Graham’s “Appalachian Spring” © Hibbard Nash Photography.) Tonight (Wednesday) is South Florida’s last chance to see a pair of choreographic and musical masterpieces performed live….
Miami-raised Alvin Ailey star Jamar Roberts stages story of love & gratitude.
Jamar Roberts, a magnificent Miami-raised dancer with Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre, has been keeping faith with his Miami teacher and mentor Angel Fraser Logan since the Ailey troupe scooped him up straight out of high school at the New World School of the Arts. I wrote about their moving story for the New York…
Dark and Dazzling – Dance, Theater, and Truth-telling in Bill T. Jones’s Analogy/Lance
Note: This performance was unfortunately canceled on Friday Jan. 5th, after the snowstorm in the Northeast sidelined the company’s flights, making it impossible for them to get to Miami. Ticketholders can receive a refund at point of purchase. For further questions, call the Arsht Center box office at 305-949-6722. Moving bodies are at the heart…
Passionately local and live – Dimensions Dance Theatre of Miami
The two shows Dimensions Dance Theatre of Miami present this month feature elements that are already starting to define the ardent year-old Miami troupe: partnerships with local dance artists, pas de deux, Latino character, and live music. Given that DDTM’s founders and directors are married couple and longtime partners Jennifer Kronenberg and Carlos Guerra, who’ve…
Miami’s Cultural Godmother is Leaving
(Photo – Mary Luft performing in 1979) Performance art? We got that. Contemporary dance? Check. Musical experiments? Yup. Shows in warehouses and other non-theater spaces? Absolutely. A spot on the U.S. cultural map? Sure. That we do owes much to Mary Luft, Miami’s cultural godmother. In 1979 she launched Tigertail Productions to present the radical,…
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