When the MPAA gave Blue Valentine an NC-17 rating, cynics suggested that the so-called “kiss of death” was better publicity for the gently experimental marriage drama than anything famously crafty distributor Harvey Weinstein could buy. Then the rating was reversed–downgraded to an R without a single cut to the film–after…
Only one week after playing a gig at the Stage in Miami, a true American original, the 88-year-old Alabama-bred bluesman Eddie Kirkland, died on Sunday morning in a car wreck. Even at the age of 87, Kirkland never stopped touring and drove himself to every one of his gigs. He…
Ana Mendieta fell to her death from her bedroom window in New York City one early morning in September, 1985. The acclaimed visual artist was heard crying out “No, no, no” before her body landed on a roof below. Her husband, who was with her in the bedroom, was acquitted…
For over a decade, Miamians have watched and wondered about what’s going to happen to the South Pointe Pier. It’s tragically similar to the local Cuban situation: just sit and wait and see when they’ll open the border and let us back in. Likewise, it has been so long that–for…
It’s tough to pick out the single most thrilling aspect of the whole Quintron & Miss Pussycat project. Is it the fact that this married duo puts on original puppet shows? That Quintron is the kind of musician who concocts his own musical contraptions, like the theremin-esque Drum Buddy? How…
The Coconut Grove Arts Festival. A Miami tradition. Whether you like crappy overpriced art or not, it is a ten-dollar people-watching extravaganza. On a gorgeous day, it is the perfect excuse to get liquored up with your friends, eat a gyro, and watch a great band like Suénalo at Peacock…
For Robert Battle, artistic director designate of Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater (he takes the reins in July), Miami isn’t just another stop on the company’s 24-city national tour. It’s home. And starting tonight at 8 p.m. at the Ziff Ballet Opera House you’ll be able to witness his return…
Miami has given burlesque a bit of a bad name. So thinks Erika Moon, who has arrived from France to show us a thing or two about how it’s done in a “classy, elegant way,” she says. Moon is inaugurating the Evolution of Burlesque tonight and Friday at the Colony…
What can you get for $10 at the Swap Shop? In past years, we’ve haggled over knickknacks from animals to construction equipment to a handgun. We bought a fat-tailed gecko from a toothless woman who had, amongst other animals, prairie dogs and baby alligators. On another occasion, we held our…
Since they formed in 1990 and cut their teeth busking on the streets of Havana, Gema Corredera and Pável Urkiza have incorporated various sounds into their modern take on Cuban music. Their approach to music is known as neo-filin, a genre known for bringing together the feeling of ’40s bolero…
A great man once said, “Go big or go home.” That particular philosophy applies to almost everything in life — surfing, rocking the fuck out, and guzzling a gallon of hard liquor. In that spirit, here’s a nice list to help you and your liver prepare for a night of…
See the full, three-day International Noise Conference 2011 lineup. People have the internet and it’s hard to shock them. Once threatening musical aesthetics like punk and hip-hop have long been neutered and incorporated into the popular culture canon. But noise is one of the few genres that can still get…
Choreographer and hip-hop ambassador Rennie Harris stages real-life situations drawn from his reality growing up in North Philadelphia in the Rennie Harris Awe-inspiring Works company (RHAW). His mission: To spread peace and love, while “challenging realities through my work,” he writes in RHAW’s program. “This is my small but…
“So dad, I want to be a dancer.” “Um, right…. In this economy? A nurse, a lawyer, heck, even a politician I can see. But a dancer… ha!” This fictional bit of dialogue, or something along those lines, is perhaps what students who have decided to make dance their career…
The New York-based, all-male Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo’s comedy doesn’t stop with the gimmick of ballet-in-drag. Nor does it rely solely on the novelty of heavy things trying to be light or the inherent humor of classical ballet’s unnatural manners. Using thorough research, artistic director Tory Dobrin and…
This past Saturday, punks from around Florida gathered in Downtown Miami to commemorate the final show at the Firefly. Since 2006, the space has been a locus of the radical, activist-oriented South Florida punk scene, and it’s demise is the product of an all-too-fitting corporate enemy: demolition at the hands…
In Mike Cahill’s Another Earth–a multiple prize-winner at this year’s Sundance Film Festival and one of two titles co-written by and starring the festival’s biggest break-out, Brit Marling–both hope and anxiety follow the discovery of Earth 2, a planet on which each resident of our globe has a doppelgänger living…
Fillmore Miami BeachSaturday, January 29, 2011Better than: Having your temporomandibular joint examined. Oscar-winning musician and former otolaryngologist Jorge Drexler may as well have been performing in a small, candle-lit taberna for all the warm little jokes and idiosyncratic anecdotes he tossed off during his performance at the Fillmore Miami Beach…
Liony Garcia is a mess. He’s collapsed with his head down on a table, his eyes brimming with tears. The song “Cheer Up Charlie” from Willy Wonka taunts him. Standing behind him in an elegant suit, Octavio Campos pulls a roll of Scotch tape from his jacket pocket, yanks Garcia…
Myrna Kincaid anxiously shifts her weight from foot to foot, hands clasped under her chin as she monitors Johnny and Billy, her five- and nine-year-old sons, playing together. These two boys aren’t into touch football or in-line skating, but strumming acoustic guitars, playing harmonica, and singing classic country and rock…
“It’s like they’re all making dances for a fictional body that none of them have,” choreographer Jess Curtis remembers his colleague saying, describing a university dance program he’d just seen. A seed was planted for Curtis to begin Dances for Non/Fictional Bodies, a work of dance, theater, circus, and more,…
Birthdays and funerals are more than just places to pick up dates. You get front row seats to the witness the polar opposites of human emotion. That’s what fascinates choreographer Rosie Herrera. Fitting then that at her new piece, Pity Party, “is about grief and loss.” But that doesn’t mean…
