Midday the lobby of the Eden Roc Resort & Spa on Miami Beach is a swirling current of baggage, people, and noise. The flotsam and jetsam of shrieking and darting children, cleaning ladies, and clanging plates wash around Los Angeles-based site-specific choreographer Heidi Duckler as she energetically discusses her Collage…
“Flamingos are very sexy,” says Paulo Manso de Sousa. “They’re very vain. They’re very into themselves,” he adds, as if describing South Beach models or snobbish ballerinas. Clearly Manso, who’s delved into a multitude of roles as an actor, dancer, teacher, and choreographer since leaving the Miami City Ballet five…
About the time your eggnog buzz wears off, so does the negligible charm of your houseguests. So like any gracious host, you smile and say, “Hey, let’s go for a ride!” You then drive for miles into the Everglades and ditch them. (Martha Stewart would understand.) But when they escape…
Magda Watts cuts two slits in a clay head and nudges them open. White plastic eyeballs eerily appear; the vague blob is no longer blind. With another tool she sculpts a deep wedge, forming a mouth through which a voice, a song, a scream can escape. Carefully she tends to…
Wearing big baggy dungarees and a loose red sweatshirt with extralong sleeves, k.d. lang proved this past Thanksgiving weekend that there wasn’t another diva in oh-so-fashionable South Beach, White Party be damned, who could top her. After an opening set by sister duo the Pierces (think Indigo Girls lite), the…
So you’ve supped at Versailles, sipped at La Carreta, salsa-ed at Café Nostalgia, shopped at Botanica la Abuela, and seen every episode of ¿Que Pasa, U.S.A.? … twice. But how much do you really know about Little Havana? This weekend South Florida history expert Paul George leads his Little Havana…
Cultural memoryscapes; sophisticated movement; everyday sounds, rhythms, and speech patterns: the tools used by four challenging contemporary choreographers participating in the dance element of the Florida-Brazil arts collaboration known as FLA/BRA. Elevating the dialogue between sound and motion to a lively debate, the works offer vibrant perspectives on creativity, humanity,…
In 1992 fifteen acres of Miami-Dade parkland was designated as the Women’s Park. It was intentionally dubbed somewhat generically, explains Roxcy Bolton, the project’s visionary, so that “every woman would have a park … [a] special place. Women aren’t often remembered,” observes Bolton, an outspoken activist for gender equality in…
Do you have latent supernatural urges? Craving a bit of that old-time religion? Afraid if you don that ratty bunny suit again for yet another year of bar hopping on South Beach, you’re going to chew your paws off? Well, have no fear, something Wiccan this way comes: a refreshingly…
“Hasta la vista, buggies!” boldly declares pixilated pixie Phig (voiced by annoyingly perky TV sitcom star Jenna Elfman), who’s part Tank Girl, part Judy Jetson. She’s literally referring to computer bugs in the Galleria Animatica software, version 3.0, the program she’s supposed to demonstrate for viewers in the IMAX 3-D…
The folks at the Women’s Professional Football League (WPFL) repeatedly use words like tackle and full contact in their press releases. They want you to know their players — Olympians, weightlifters, and other athletic types — “have the desire to hit.” They want you to know this is no girlie…
According to gallery-owner Brook Dorsch, artist Kerry Ware paints because “he loves the way paint looks.” Dorsch must love the way Ware paints, because “whence,” Ware’s fourth solo installation at the Dorsch Gallery in about as many years, opened two weeks ago. The bold collection of oversize, three-dimensional pieces shows…
Two men in T-shirts and baggy pants are taking a cigarette break at the entrance to the Mencia-Pikieris School of Dance in Perrine. The blonde with the Australian accent is David Palmer. His dark-haired counterpart is Yanis Pikieris, who runs the school with his wife, Marielena Mencia. Together Palmer and…
“A meal was brought/With blood, and each sate sullenly apart/Gorging himself in gloom: No love was left;/All Earth was but one thought — and that was death.” — George Gordon, Lord Byron from “Darkness” In Unsheathed: A Gothic Tale, an original story and work by choreographer Esaias Johnson, it’s not…
Pretty and popular Megan (Natasha Lyonne) tromps through what she assumes is the life of a normal high school teen, while her parents secretly pray for her over dinner and plot an intervention with her friends. Quicker than you can say, “Two, four, six, eight. God is good. God is…
In the multimedia performance memoryscan, New York-based modern dancer, choreographer, and composer Koosil-ja Hwang wields the instruments of Nineties pop culture like a scientist. The 39-year-old Hwang and her company, Dance KUMIKOKIMOTO, are the subjects of inquiry, relating personal memories through abstract movement, gesture, sound, and monologue. Hwang’s scalpels are…
Strolling through South Beach on a clear night, you enter a lush garden. You pass a horse-drawn carriage only to be greeted by a dazzling bearded lady on stilts; behind her a lit fountain sparkles with flames from a fire juggler. Everyone is wearing white. Just as you marvel at…
The peach-color, two-story house with a balcony overlooking Biscayne Boulevard appears more suited to a sleepy suburban street than a depressed urban throughway. But Uragami Fine Arts is not your average gallery and coffeehouse. Its inventor, 25-year-old Ignacio Velez, Jr., has constructed in his unlikely surroundings a whimsical setting in…
