Dancing Around the Issues

Miami choreographer Brigid Baker has been producing elegant interrogations into the dream life of America past and present for years. Though her earlier pieces are suffused with nostalgia and whimsy, her latest arrangements are stamped more decisively with the lingering effects of global catastrophe. Baker’s new works, Vanishing and Lullabies from the Axis of Evil, bear her trademark subtlety, which is kind of neat considering the subject matter: humanity’s precarious position in a world whose natural resources are rapidly being wiped out. Baker is a ballet teacher who creates awe inspiring dance every once in a blue moon. Her 2002 piece Grace premiered with the Miami Contemporary Dance Company and reflected the petticoat and frontier charms of the prairie days. The whispery fervor of Grace and Baker’s novel presentation of women’s history bore hints of the political even then. While her new pieces offer bleaker commentaries, Baker’s haunting mimesis of loss and the destructive wake of war are complemented by a gorgeous ensemble of bodies in motion. Witness the movement Friday, January 20, and tonight at 8:30 at FIU’s VH100 Black Box.

Sat., Jan. 21