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Like a contact improvisation piece that stretches over two decades, the Florida Dance Festival has morphed and sprung into new dimensions over its 25-year life span. With Sunday’s opening of Giovanni Luquini’s Slices, the festival kicks off its silver anniversary season — one that attests to its relevance and commitment in a changing artistic and political climate.
“In the festival business, 25 years is quite an accomplishment,” boasts festival director Tom Thielen. “If you make it to 25 years you can proudly say, ‘We’ve made our mark.'”
The festival’s legacy could be the ability to provide a South Florida forum for experimental forms of dance theater despite budgetary setbacks because of dry funding sources. And without fail, the festival brings together a roster of national and Florida-based companies that will perform mainstage works and conduct seminars and workshops.
Luquini’s work promises to set a daring and energetic tone for the two-week performance celebration as his dancers suspend themselves from ropes and contort into cardboard boxes. From there the festival breaks open with offerings from Tampa Bay’s Moving Current and Orlando’s VOCI Dance Group as well as works by university dance programs from Florida State University and University of Florida.
This year Miami’s Tigertail Productions commissioned two original works for the festival’s danceAble program. In it Germany’s DIN A 13 Dance Company will present Body Distance Between the Minds, a duet for wheelchair-bound dancers. Contributing to the experimental tone of the festival is Washington, D.C.’s Liz Lerman Dance Exchange, who will be performing Near/Far/In/Out, a community-based work drawn from the stories and exchanges of Miami’s lesbians and gays.
