Performing Arts

Miami Made Festival 2013: Arsht Center Shows Off Local Talent in Free, Daring Stage Shows

In Miami’s ever-evolving cultural landscape, change is not only welcome but also required for survival. And the Miami Made Festival, bringing up-and-coming theater and dance projects to the Adrienne Arsht Center February 26 through March 3, is evolving along with its local talent. The eighth edition of the festival comprises…

Saturday night, local theater collective White Rose Miami brought 15 smashing sketches to the stage at the Performing Arts Exchange (PAX). After a serendipitous meeting at another show inside the dark-walled and dimly lit den, PAX co-owner Roxanne Scalia struck up a deal with White Rose founders Melissa Almaguer and…

After two seasons of sold-out performances at the Arsht Center, Haiti’s Ayikodans is returning for a weekend of dance February through Sunday. The company will be presenting a world premiere of their Artistic Director Jeanguy Saintus’ “Lamentation 13,” a work commissioned by the Arsht Center. Not only that, the dance…

Project eÑe, a new bilingual theater program supported by Area Stage Company, presents notable works by Spanish playwrights in both English and Spanish. Unlike other similar programs, the plays are not performed in Spanish with English superscript, but rather presented in each language individually as separate performances. We attended the…

Calling Jessica Gross prolific is an understatement. It would probably be much easier to call her by the many titles she’s worked so hard to earn: comedian, cartoonist, writer, horoscope mocker, host of comedy nights all around Miami, 2011 New Times Broward-Palm Beach Best Comedian, heckler annihilator, former Cultist contributor,…

Miami’s LeBron James and Dwyane Wade are two of modern basketball’s biggest names. Miami’s Jeanette and Patricia Delgado are two of modern ballet’s most celebrated dancers. So some advertising genius thought to pair the two pairs in an ad campaign to promote the rising arts scene downtown. The results are,…

When the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre returns to the Arsht Center this month, Miami will welcome home the company’s Artistic Director Robert Battle. “It’s wonderful,” says Battle. “Home represents something very special.” The company will perform at the Arsht Center from Feb. 21 to 24, as part of its…

Hate! at Miami Theater Center: Solo Show Breaks Down Bigotry

An appreciation for dance has always required some form of discipline. Whether it’s attendance by the observer or practice by the performer, it takes a certain degree of dedication to commit to a work made up entirely of energy and movement. In the words of Sweet Brown, “Ain’t nobody got time…

A couple of years ago, an interracial couple told Miami actress Christina Alexander that several churches had refused to marry them. This sparked an idea — for a one-woman show about equality told from multiple points of view, connecting the historical and emotional dots between interracial and gay marriage. The…

If you’re not an “opera person,” the word opera probably calls to mind visions of shrieking, busty women in blonde braided pigtails and horned Viking hats. Here are some things it probably does not call to mind: cults, Helena Bonham Carter, Octomom, “Gangnam Style,” an acid trip at the zoo…

Last weekend, New Theatre began its run of a play that explores the line between devout religious faith and utter insanity. As a show that presents questions about the mental health of the saints and other deeply religious people, Agnes of God is a good fit for the New Theatre, whose…

Miami New Times’ Mastermind Awards honors the city’s most inspiring creatives. This year, we received more than 100 submissions, which our staff narrowed to an elite group of 30. We’ll be profiling those honorable mentions, and eventually the finalists, in the weeks to come. This year’s three Mastermind Award winners…

The fate of the Coconut Grove Playhouse, the historic theater that’s been shuttered for six years and that’s now facing foreclosure, may be uncertain. But the fate of its former contents — historic Playbills, costumes, video recordings, and other historic memorabilia — has been secured. Actors’ Playhouse and the University…

To dance on a stage, most people would probably say that one must not only be well-trained, but able to do just that: dance. The training part should be a given, of course, but the ability of who can dance and how to dance is always much more complex, rewarding,…

In Living Color’s Tommy Davidson is hard at work on Deconstructing Sammy, a biopic about Sammy Davis Jr. The film would follow other castmate turns like Jamie Foxx in Ray and Jim Carrey as Andy Kaufman in Man on the Moon. That’s great and all, but how much longer must…

The Carbonell Awards, South Florida’s prestigious regional honors for live theater, announced its nominations this afternoon. And though Palm Beach County rules the list with 45 nods, Miami-Dade’s growing theater scene is creeping up on the competition, earning 43. Maltz Jupiter Theater earned the most nominations out of any theater,…

If the standard selection of overpriced jukeboxes, off-key cover bands, and Jimmy Buffett wannabes at your local bar is getting a little old, there’s a new game in town — the opera. Once the domain solely of the rich (and Richard Gere), the opera’s modern-day makeover is coming to Midtown’s…

Other Desert Cities at Actors’ Playhouse: Ideology Trumps Family

In the fall of 2012, for Coconut Grove activists, everything seemed to be going according to plan. The scenario they backed, in which the state of Florida makes good on its promise to reclaim the decrepit and shuttered Coconut Grove Playhouse because it’s not meeting its requirement to show live…

Latex, birdcages, nude bodies, eggs, holy water. No, it’s not a list of items used in some bizarre demon-summoning ritual. They’re just a few of the props used by the artists in last year’s Miami Performance International Festival, curated by Edge Zones. Now in its second year, MPIF has artists…