New Times: What is the idea behind the Daniel Lewis Sampler?
Hannah Baumgarten: The idea is that this is a season preview. All these groups, these choreographers, are presenting work throughout the year. If you’re an audience member that loves dance and you want to know what’s going on out there and what the companies
What types of companies are typically featured?
The sampler is a platform for established companies and choreographers. We’re talking about at least three years of creating work on themselves or other professional dancers. So it’s not an emerging choreographer’s forum. We’ve had in the course of the past four years, probably 25 or 30 different companies. We try to bring people who have not performed ever or did not perform in the last season. And considering that the entire first half of the show, the first act, is all people who have never participated in the sampler before, that is an indication that there is a growing group of established arts organizations.
Which newcomers will be presenting work?
Atma Yoga Dance is Colleen Farnum’s company. Three years ago she started her yoga dance company and this year they’re performing. We also have Brigette Cormier. Brigette is a graduate of New World, and her company is called BC Dance Company. She has been working steadily on a small troupe of dancers, and, in this case, she’s going to be presenting a solo. And Hattie Mae Williams, whose company is the Tattooed Ballerinas. She is presenting a solo to a historical spoken word text by a black feminist. It does have some adult material, adult themes, but I’m very much looking forward to seeing how that develops because she has some social context there.
Tell us about the origins of the sampler showcase.
This is the fourth year for the revival of the festival. Daniel Lewis had been doing something called the Modern Dance Sampler and he ran that for about 11 years. The irony is that Diego and I both were dancing many years ago with both [local contemporary companies] Karen Peterson and Momentum. And we got the company schedules, and we had a conflict of dates. We were very worried because we had commitments with both companies.
And then what we found out was that both companies
What is behind the name, the Daniel Lewis Sampler?
Daniel Lewis was the founding dean of dance at New World School of the Arts. He came out of New York, and Julliard, and the Limón dance company, and he founded the New World School of the Arts dance program. He also did a lot to create different initiatives in the community — we’re talking about 30 years ago — one of which was the Modern Dance Sampler. So he’s kind of the granddaddy, one of the major players of the dance community. Of course, he’s also internationally renowned in his own right. But in this particular instance, we named the event after him because he was the first person that came up with this idea and he ran it for such a long time.
– Catherine Hollingsworth, artburstmiami.com
Daniel Lewis Sampler
With Dance Now!, NWSA Dance Ensemble, Momentum Dance Company, Siempre Flamenco, the Tattooed Ballerinas, Stephanie Fuentes, Atma Yoga Dance, Whole Project Brigid Baker, Brigette Cormier, and Arts Ballet Theatre on Saturday, October 17, at 8 p.m. and Sunday, October 18, at 2 p.m., at New World School of the Arts Dance Theater, 25 NE Second St., Miami. Tickets $25; dancenowmiami.org.