A palace is typically extravagant, filled with too many pillows and too many luxury items. It’s the ultimate signifier of wealth and consumption. But for Japanese choreographer Kota Yamazaki, it’s a frenetic, meditative space where dark and light coexist. Inspired by utakai (poetry readings by Japanese aristocrats) and renga (collaboratively…
After a long day’s work, most people like to plop down in front of the TV to unwind — but not Jamar Roberts. The 33-year-old dancer, choreographer, illustrator, and fashion designer considers the act of watching television an exploration of what’s happening behind the lens. “I usually watch on mute…
Step Afrika! returns to the South Miami-Dade Cultural Arts Center this week for a celebration of dance with roots in African traditions during Black History Month. The rhythmic stepping tradition uses dancers bodies as percussive instruments through marches and response choreography. Based in Washington, D.C., and founded in 1994 by…
Toby Lerner Ansin, founder of Miami City Ballet (MCB), compares choreographer Justin Peck to famed ballet choreographer George Balanchine. “Every time you see their choreography, and depending on where you sit when you watch the ballet, you’ll take away something different,” Ansin says. For the founder’s 70th birthday, her family launched…
It has become impossible to say the words “women aren’t funny” — regardless of a lot of boring, unfunny men trying hard to do so. Miami’s Villain Theater proves women comics are seriously hilarious, which is why they are part of the Saturday Gigantic lineup every week. On Thursday, February…
Trapped in a shoe store in Buenos Aires during an end-of-world hailstorm in 2001, I gritted as ice the size of ball bearings struck the steel roof like shotgun blasts. Later that afternoon, while at a dinner theater in Recoleta, it seemed to me someone had created a dance out…
Miami’s Fundarte planned to bring a searing production of Sophocles’ Antigone — or more precisely Antigonon, un Contingente Epico (perhaps best translated as a really big, maybe the biggest Antigone, ever) — to town last year. Everything was in place. Except visas. The production hails from Havana, Cuba, and though the visas…
Kristina Wong was in the town of Gulu, Uganda’s northern commercial and administrative center, for only a day when she began to really understand her mzungu (Swahili for “white”) privilege. Cramped in a Western hotel for the night, she decided to get out and explore. With a flashlight in hand,…
Bill Maher had never asked his Real Time audience for anything. Until last Friday night when, seated next to Ralph Reed, Nicolle Wallace, and Cornel West, he requested one thing for his 60th birthday. He asked viewers to sign a petition to get President Barack Obama — who has appeared…
The adage “write what you know” has given the world more books about books, films about films and plays about plays than we could possibly need to illuminate the struggles of the creative process and the vagaries of show business. But after an exhilarating perusal of Terrence McNally’s It’s Only…
Followers of Downton Abbey hear “gala” and have visions of long coats, silk top hats and mustaches waxed to a rapier point, haute couture dresses squared off like combative tulips, and a night of a lifetime. However, for an arts organization like Miami City Ballet, a gala is serious business. The…
Gabri Christa is back. This is the third year Tigertail has invited the dancer/choreographer/filmmaker/Guggenheim Fellow to its annual ScreenDance Miami Festival. Her films opened the 2015 festival, and this year Christa will offer a hands-on workshop. The dancer intends to focus her workshop on ways to direct dance for the…
Screendance, sometimes called videodance, was born decades ago in the work of Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton. A lack of performance space led dancers to experiment with new ways of presenting their work. The term refers to “the short film form in dance [that is] diverse, global, emergent, alive, trans-media,…
Earlier this week, the Carbonell Awards announced the nominations for the 2015 season. In its 40th year, the prestigious award honors excellence in theater in South Florida — from Cutler Bay to Jupiter. With 100 nominations in 20 categories, Fort Lauderdale’s Slow Burn Theater Company leads the pack with 15 nominations,…
Michel Hausmann and Moises Kaufman could have inaugurated their new theater company with a humble play — a two-character piece with a single set, for instance. But The Golem of Havana, opening this weekend at the area’s newest theater company, Miami New Drama, is decidedly not humble. It’s an ambitious,…
Tony Yazbeck received quite the surprise when YoungArts came calling a few years ago. “They called saying that since I’m an alumni, maybe I’d consider teaching a master class,” the Broadway star says. “I had won an honorable mention in high school, but I didn’t realize until later that this…
Miami choreographer and dancer Pioneer Winter knows a thing or two about producing a live performance piece that integrates its surroundings in order for the piece to become fully realized. His Ebb/Flow performance took place aboard a floating canoe in Biscayne Bay for the SoBay Festival of the Arts in 2012,…
For many American actors, it would be difficult enough to recite a lengthy soliloquy in a convincing Russian accent. But doing so while wearing sky-high heels and almost nothing else while performing acrobatics on an unsteady stripper pole mounted in the center of the stage? That’s a feat of physical,…
Children enthralled by orchestral music? An invitation to sing along with the symphony? In an age where orchestras either need to evolve or become extinct, Ted Ricketts has found a way for families to feel comfortable at a symphony concert. He’s created With Disney in Concert: Magical Music from the…
It can be an interesting test to ask someone how they know Paul Rodriguez. The Mexican stand-up comedian or the 4-time X Game winning skateboarder? Not everyone knows about the father and son duo, though that may change soon. Talent runs in the family but Paul Sr. won’t be overshadowed…
Jessica Trujillo is a world champion salsa dancer. Her team, the Omambo Dance Project, won the professional salsa team division at the World Latin Dance Cup last year. When she called her best friend back home in Los Angeles from the competition at the Deauville Hotel in Miami Beach, the champ…
For decades Brian Regan has been one of the hardest-working comedians in stand-up. In a business where a comedian’s gravitas has been tied to TV and film credits, Regan has built his loyal theater audiences through relentless touring and undeniable jokecraft. However, the comedian is not resting on his reputation,…
