Seeing the Miami City Ballet’s opening program of the season Nov. 18, which featured George Balanchine’s Jewels, was very much like opening a box and finding an array of precious gems inside, beautifully crafted in elegant and intricate settings. Each section of Balanchine’s acclaimed triptych was distinctly different but all were polished, multi-faceted and brought to … [Read more...]
Arts Preview 2017-18: The season in dance
Devotees of dance this season can sample Miami City Ballet’s continued artistic honing by Artistic Director Lourdes Lopez, the ongoing successful dance programming at the Duncan Theatre or the breakthrough PEAK presentations at the Kravis Center, as well as decide to experience the continuity and strength in the local dance scene. Amid this strong lineup, this season it … [Read more...]
Fist & Heel’s ‘Citizen’ was powerful, subtle
There was a subdued elegance to Citizen, the multimedia work presented May 6 at the Rinker Playhouse in West Palm Beach. It wasn’t at all what I had expected from the Brooklyn-based dance company that calls itself Fist & Heel Performance Group. The clean and concise structure of the work was reminiscent of the post-modern dance movement of the 1960s and 1970s, when … [Read more...]
Momix’s ‘Opus Cactus’ stuns, but only intermittently
The Sonoran Desert in Arizona is a very impressive place. Imagine seeing it for the very first time if you grew up on a dairy farm in rural Vermont. How would you react? Moses Pendleton — who did — was so impressed that he created his own version of it to put on the stage. Although he is not really known as a choreographer, he created his first incarnation of Opus Cactus as … [Read more...]
MCB closes season with lively, elegant Program 4
Miami City Ballet finished its season at the Kravis Center for the Performing Arts with Program Four — an upbeat and lively show — that presented two Balanchine works and a Paul Taylor work from its repertory. But it was the first work, Divertimento No. 15, performed with elegant and confident finesse, that was the true jewel of the evening. The 1956 work that George … [Read more...]
‘Revelations’ still best thing about Ailey show
This time around, it was the past that was the highlight of the program when Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre came back into town Feb. 28 to perform again at the Kravis Center for the Performing Arts. Revelations, choreographed by founder Alvin Ailey almost 60 years ago and the undisputed cornerstone of the company’s repertory, was the backbone of the evening. Though the … [Read more...]
MCB’s ‘Fairy’s Kiss’ tops a rich evening of dance
It was the world premiere of Miami City Ballet’s The Fairy’s Kiss that grabbed my attention on Program Three on Feb. 25 at the Kravis Center. The eagerly awaited and highly publicized new work of the ballet world’s heralded master-choreographer Alexei Ratmansky was beautifully presented. It was all that it was expected to be, but it was the convergence of the creation of … [Read more...]
BodyTraffic brings another challenging program to Duncan
Two years ago, in a fresh and gutsy program, the audiences at the Duncan Theatre in Lake Worth got to experience BodyTraffic, an upwardly-mobile contemporary dance company that hails from Los Angeles. Earlier this month, the company returned and presented a program of new works by different choreographers that was perhaps less fresh but equally gutsy. Founded in 2007, … [Read more...]
Tharp evening needed more highlights of her work
I imagine that I was not the only one who went to the Kravis Center to see the Twyla Tharp 50th Anniversary Tour show on Feb. 17 with the expectation that I would see an array — a sampler — of her best hits. But instead, there were just two works on the program: Preludes and Fugues, which was created especially for the tour, and Nine Sinatra Songs (1982) which is probably … [Read more...]
Audience samba is joyful postscript to energetic Brazilian dance show
The 24 performers of Balé Folclórico da Bahia entered the Rinker Playhouse — as we did — from the outside and stood right next to us as they sang. Bathed in a warm, reddish light and dressed in the traditional white clothes and head wraps of the Northeast of Brazil, they sang with a gentle fervor and we felt their presence intimately. Presenting Bahia Of All Colors, … [Read more...]