After patiently waiting for an audience member to silence his/her phone, Maestro Giancarlo Guerrero gave the downbeat to a performance full of color and dance. The Cleveland Orchestra, being the extremely fine-tuned instrument which it is, responded gracefully and lavishly to the Maestro’s controlled but immensely exciting and sometimes dance-like conducting throughout the evening.

The first work of the program, Neruda Songs for Mezzo-soprano and Orchestra by Peter Lieberson, was a sensuous treat. Lieberson selected these five sonnets out of the Cien Sonetos de Amor (One Hundred Love Sonnets) by beloved Chilean poet and Nobel Laureate Pablo Neruda, and set them to music specifically for his wife, the great late Mezzo-soprano Lorraine Hunt Lieberson. In the composer’s own words, “each of the five poems that I set to music seemed to me to reflect a different face in love’s mirror.” Anyone familiar with Hunt Lieberson’s incomparable artistry, with her natural gift for phrasing melodic lines and dynamic shaping, would understand the enormity of the shoes Mezzo-soprano Elizabeth DeShong had to fill for this performance. With a deep but tender, powerful but soothing voice, and a vast palette of musical colors, DeShong more than did both Mr. and Mrs. Lieberson justice. It was an intimate rendition, becoming apparent that Ms. DeShong understands that Neruda Songs are filled with a sort of delicate passion and peace made with the loss of a loved one. Maestro Guerrero accompanied Ms. DeShong very sensitively, also bringing out of the orchestra the vast array of sound colors in Mr. Lieberson’s score, especially pleasingly in Amor, amor, las nubes a la torre del cielo (Love, love, the clouds went up to tower of the sky) with the winds ascending to a climactic chord, and in Ya eres mía. Reposa con tu sueño en mi sueño (And now you’re mine. Rest with your dream in my dream), with its repeating sensual bossa-nova rhythm. In the last song, Amor mío, si muero y tú no mueres (My love, if I die and you don’t), DeShong’s diminuendo on her final Amor made me believe that peace is in fact attainable.

Expecting to be bombarded by Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, the main course on the evenings menu, I was very pleasantly surprised by Maestro Guerrero’s relaxed but nevertheless intense interpretation. Despite the endless debate over Beethoven’s tempo and metronome markings, Maestro Guerrero chose to obey the Master’s wishes and for the first time in my life was able to hear the written articulation in the second violins and cellos in the opening of the first movement. I was also able to hear the different instrument sections’ interaction and famous Beethoven crescendi boil to a simmer, making me break a sweat. The second movement made Maestro Guerrero dance on the podium. His precise and subtle conducting filled the movement with an elegant drama, as opposed to a nervous one. The third movement made ME dance. At a slightly slower tempo than that in Beethoven’s marking, the enhanced heartbeat-like pizzicati in the double basses and cellos created a great groove which made the graceful melodic line dance. The Finale, that symphony within a symphony, shined with the presence of roughly 200 members of the combined forces of the Master Chorale of South Florida, Alec Schumacker, director, and the Master Chorale of Tampa Bay, James K. Bass, director. After the series of beautifully shaped recitatives in the cellos and double basses, and the exposition of the “Ode to Joy” theme, came the commanding presence and voice of bass Raymond Aceto, triumphant and virtuosically stating his own recitative. While the balance between orchestra and chorus was perfect throughout the movement, the same thing cannot be said about the four soloists as they sang together. Ms. DeShong, after having thrilled us earlier in the evening, disappeared into oblivion, making it seem as if she did not know her part well and was afraid of being found out. Soprano Nicole Cabell had some intonation issues, but displayed great command of her part, a very difficult one. Tenor Garrett Sorenson, with a lovely lyric voice, sang his solo majestically, and was in perfect balance with Mr. Aceto at all times. The massive choir maintained a well-shaped sound throughout, and got the most bravo shouts in the four curtain calls at the end.

Maestro Guerrero looked exhausted but blissful, and I’m sure he had a tremendous night sleep after such a fabulous performance, probably ecstatic at the thought of doing it all over again the next evening, AND the next.

Never assume that because an artist performs in his or her city’s premier arts venue that they’ve reached their pinnacle.

Sometimes, performing there is just the beginning of bigger and better things, like reaching new audiences, or being discovered and catapulted to other markets. And that’s what the Miami Made Festival, now in its fifth season, and its home the Arsht Center for the Performing Arts, can help artists do.

“You think about New York, Chicago, L.A., as places where new work is created, but really, I believe that Miami-based artists are creating some of the most exciting art anywhere in the country,” says the Arsht Center’s executive vice president, Scott Shiller, who’s been involved with Miami Made Festival since its inception.

From Feb. 26 to March 3, the Miami Made Festival 2013 — now with new philanthropic sponsors including the Riviera South Beach hotel on board — features a week-long plethora of events that include, free of charge, staged play readings, pop-up performances, and a dance showcase.

The twist here is that these are works in progress, which first come to life at the Arsht Center in previous incarnations, and are now ready for the broader world to see their evolution.

Last year the dance highlight was the almost evolved work from the much-acclaimed Rosie Herrera Dance Theater, Dining Alone, which will make its fully formed premiere in New York at the Baryshnikov Arts Center in April.

This year the focus is on Cuban-American Letty Bassart, a choreographer, dancer, and writer who in a previous life was a hospice nurse and, you guessed it, an epidemiologist.

“It’s so powerful to be able to show your work in a place where there’s a certain level of production and support in terms of resources, and it’s really interesting too that this particular support comes for a work that has been seen in a very raw kind of state, and that they’re willing to invest in its growth,” says the Miami native. “That is something that is so rare.”

Bassart’s dance piece Good, God, Go, whose first iteration goes back to 2010’s Miami Made edition, will be showcased on March 2 at 3:00 p.m. and at 7:30 p.m., at the Carnival Studio Theater in the Arsht’s Ziff Ballet Opera House, 1300 Biscayne Blvd. All that you need to know for now is that this work features a trio of dancers, animation and film, sculpture, a cappella singing, a marching band, and 50-plus wooden canaries (yes, wooden canaries.)

“Miami Made Festival is a step further, not just a launch of these ideas as a work in progress, but it’s also the recognition of the development of these ideas, which is incredibly humbling,” says the 2012 Knight Arts Challenge grant recipient.

For Bassart and her Miami Made Festival colleagues, more good news may be on the way.

“This year’s festival really represents sort of a new commitment to the Miami Made program,” says Shiller. “Out of all of the projects that are being done this year, the Arsht Center will likely produce some, if not all of these, as fully developed works in our future seasons.”

Along with the Good, God, Go, other highlights include:

Pop-Up Performance: Extended Stay from the Project [Theatre], in the style of reality TV, Feb. 26 & 27 at 9:00 p.m. at the Riviera South Beach Hotel, 2000 Liberty Ave., Miami Beach.

Staged Play Reading: Fear Up Harsh, based on a military phrase that refers to “enhanced interrogation,” Feb. 28 at 7:30 p.m. at the Carnival Studio Theater, Arsht Center.

 Staged Play Reading: Two-Merz, dark comedy about brothers with cancer, March 3 at 4:00 p.m. at the Carnival Studio Theater, Arsht Center.

All are free on first come first seated basis; www.arshtcenter.org.

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 premier of their Artistic Director Jeanguy Saintus’ “Lamentation 13,”  a work commissioned by the Arsht Center. Not only that, the dance company will be celebrating its 25^th anniversary here with a companion piece “Eritaje 25” (Heritage 25), a collage of 25 years of Ayikodans’ choreography.

We spoke with the award-winning Saintus about the Miami visit.

Q: What should a South Florida audience expect from your February performances?

A: These works are largely autobiographical. They are the work of a Haitian interested in creating a country, let alone a place for dance in that country. They are the work of a dialogue between a Haitian and the rest of the world.

Our entire company will be in Miami. That includes dancers, drummers, and our vocalist.

Since so much of Ayikodans’  work has deep roots in Haiti’s traditions, those drummers can’t be separated from the dancers. The same goes for the tonalities of our vocalist.

Q: Your choreography has often been compared to that of Martha Graham. Do you feel indebted to her?

A: I find the comparison very interesting. While I have taken a number of workshops on various techniques, I have never  worked intensively within a Martha Graham system of dance. As dancers I think we learn various techniques to more easily communicate with one other, let alone help protect our bodies. But as any dancer knows, technique will only take you so far. What transforms a dancer and an audience, is the feeling a dancer can convey. Graham knew that. But to find it for myself, I turned to my own traditions. I spent far more time deep in the Haitian countryside than I did in workshops in New York City. I studied the artistry, the dancing of the vodou ceremonies, for they are the stuff of art. I was hardly the first to recognize this.

Katherine Dunham, the dancer and choreographer, contemporary of Martha Graham, spent years in Haiti studying these dances.

Q:Yet even the mention of vodou makes people nervous, no?

A  Yes, we have Hollywood to thank for those distortions and prejudices.

But imagine what it was to be a young boy who loved to dance, as I was in Haiti far more than 25 years ago. The only options available to that young man in Haiti then was classical ballet. This, while my body was hungry to express so much more. Of course I turned to my own traditions to try to understand my place and my heritage.

Q: By now your company has become something of a legend in South Florida. How does it feel to return again and again to the Arsht Center?

A: It  is nothing less than a homecoming. After all, it was thanks to a fundraiser sponsored by the Arsht Center that we had the monies to find a new home for Ayikodans after the 2010 earthquake. Not only that, the Arsht Center has been and continues to be keenly aware of what is happening in the arts in Haiti. Thanks are not enough to their commitment to spread the word.

Ayikodans performance in the Carnival Studio Theater of Ziff Ballet Opera House at the Arsht Center for the Performing Arts, 1300 Biscayne Blvd., Miami, on February at 7:30 p.m.; Saturday at 2:00 p.m. and 7:30 p.m.; and Sunday at 5:00 p.m. Tickets cost $25; www.arshtcenter.org.

Photo credit: Carl Juste

This preview also appears in Miami New Times.

The acclaimed Haitian troupe returns the world premiere of “Lamentation 13″ and “Eritaje 25″.

The fifth season of the incubator series, which seeks to develop local works from beginning to completion, features the dance showcase of Letty Bassart, “Good, God, Go,” along with pop-performances and staged play readings.

This weekend the Arsht Center will present a unique performance, Light/The Holocaust & Humanity Project, choreographed by Artistic Director Stephen Mills and performed by his Austin City Ballet Company. The work is a culmination of a three-month community and education collaboration in Miami-Dade – it’s both a dance and an exploration of the origins of discrimination, of trauma, of genocide, and of the ultimate redemptive response. In this singular performance, 31 community partners set out to fight bigotry through education and the arts.

We spoke with Mills about this one-of-a-kind experiment.

Q. Your work has spanned genres and subjects, from re-imaginings of Shakespeare to classic dances of Broadway, to work with important Flamenco artists. How did you find your way into this story?

A. Like so many of us, after 9/11, I had to understand my world in a new way. I had to ask myself what was my purpose as a dancer and a dance maker. I needed to find a way to connect more deeply both with myself and with my practice of  dance. I spoke with friends about this and one suggested that I might find some insight if I considered my questions in the light of the Holocaust. She told me then of one woman, living not far from us in Texas, a woman who had survived time in three camps. She asked if this might be the story I had felt I needed to go deeply enough into my work.

My first reaction was absolutely not. I feared I would be trespassing. I feared I might unwittingly be disrespectful or even cause more pain. This was not my story to tell. I had no right. Not only was I not Jewish; I had no family member who had fought in World War 11.

It was [the survivor] Naomi Warren who convinced me to go ahead. ‘People who have a voice,’ she said, ‘people who have a platform can lead the way towards discussion of all that happened. Art can be a way in.’

Q. Your work has been presented in various cities. Each time a great many community partners have become involved, presenting events focusing not only on Holocaust education but a wide range of human and civil rights. Some might say this diminishes the Holocaust.

A. Initially that worried me. It is impossible to measure the suffering of the Holocaust. It is without end. When once again I turned to Naomi, she said “Genocide didn’t stop in 1946.”

Now I see these various partnerships as concentric circles and am very grateful for each of them.

Q. This work is Naomi’s story. Can the audience expect to see overt violence and Nazi iconography? What should the audience expect when they enter the theater?

A. My hope is that the audience would come to the theater expecting a powerful experience. My hope is that they would come with an open mind and heart.

They will see a dance that takes place in a non-descript setting. The costumes and the music are all very modern. I chose to present the work like this as a way of saying all that the work chronicles persists. Still, there is no violent activity in the work. I was determined not to present a perpetrator. The dance is pared down. One doesn’t need for there to be violent activity for an audience to feel the presence of evil.

As preparation for creating this work, I spent a great deal of time studying the archival photographs of the Holocaust. As you know, the Nazis kept meticulous records. I came across one photograph of a large group of women standing in the woods. Although the gas chambers of Buchenwald were obscured by the trees the women, although the capturers had been silent, the women knew they were waiting: next it would be their turn in the chambers. The stories of the Holocaust were in their eyes. The stories were contained in the gestures of those women, in the way they held their bodies. Those are the stories I worked with in this work.

Since the perpetrator is not present, since the audience sees only the response to the terror in the eyes and movement of the dancers,  the audience itself comes to feel like the perpetuator.

My hope is that the audience would come away from the performance thinking of how important it is to effect change, to ask something of themselves.

Light/The Holocoust & Humanity Project takes place on the stage of the Ziff Ballet Opera House at the Arsht Center for the Performing Arts, 1300 Biscayne Blvd., on Saturday at 8:00 p.m. and Sunday at 7:00 p.m.; tickets cost $35 to $90; www.arshtcenter.org.

This article appears in Miami new Times Cultist.

Photo: Tony Spielberg

The Austin Ballet performs the contemporary piece by Stephen Mills, part of a community and nation-wide humans rights initiative.

Port-au-Prince based Ayikodans returned to Miami this weekend for the second year in a row. And choreographer Jean Guy Saintus, with his unrivaled corps of dancers, proved once again that Haiti is home to immense and sophisticated culture worthy of the world stage.

Ayikodans is an ideal of global artistic exchange. Saintus has mastered the potential of contemporary European and American dance while remaining loyally embedded in the traditional African influence that animates his country. Ayikodans uses almost none of the repetitive patterning found in folkloric dance, which Saintus dismisses as touristic. Instead, their elaborate spatial and movement compositions, defined by elegant lighting design and set pieces, were highly original.

As contemporary and culturally expansive as Ayikodans may be, their performance was intimately bound to the Haitian experience. Anyone who visits Haiti is imprinted by the sounds of the country. Music is everywhere — from compa on loudspeakers to roaming rara bands to the singing and drumming of Vodoun. At the Arsht, Ayikodans foregrounded both recorded and live Haitian music. Their new piece, Danse de L’Araignee, represents a spider spirit from Vodoun called Gede Zarenyen. Here, within fully developed contemporary dance language, Saintus planted the dynamics of traditional Haitian dance and music. Danse de l’Araignee began with a long interval of pitch black, colored by a high wailing voice. The singer was James Germain, a man with a humble but captivating presence. Over the course of the piece, Germain traded sound space with a group of impressive traditional drummers who sometimes shook with their own intensity. Alternately sharp and driving rhythms punctuated the dancers’ bodies as they pulsed through a stream of vivid visual configurations.

Distinctly Haitian emotional, political, and spiritual landscapes were also present in full. In particular, the heartbreak of the 2010 earthquake and its aftermath was keenly felt in Anmwey Ayiti Manman. Miami first saw this piece in 2011, but last year’s version was decorated by refined lighting effects. This year, the piece in its new form was almost unrecognizable. Aesthetic beauty was stripped out and the black box was left essentially bare. Two walls, papered with newspaper pages, stood on either side of the stage and the entire performance space was lined by razor wire. The performers were not so much dancing as expressing pain. They described physical wounds, but also betrayal by national and international political players and a crisis of faith in the earth itself. The audience was presented with anguish, raw, and unadorned. But finally, Anmwey Ayiti Manman revealed the persistence of the will to live. While this piece recalls tragic circumstances, its existence as a work of art is one kind of triumph against disaster.

In a subtler link to Haitian culture, every performer demonstrated a total and almost spiritual dedication to the artistic vision behind the performance. Such devotion points towards a high level of creative commitment but its particular tone bears a relationship to Vodoun. When devotees are possessed during a ceremony, their bodies are totally given to the expression of sacred spirit, and the individual’s own movements, physical limits, even ways of talking are transformed. In the same way, the Ayikodans performers seemed to have given every cell of their bodies over to the dance, and their athleticism was so complete that it was almost superhuman. On stage, performers jumped high in the air and then landed on the floor in complex poses like some kind of animal. They rippled from their heads and shoulders down to their feet while their hands and faces, even their gazes, were intensely focused. There was nothing unconscious about their movement — they were each entirely present in the performance, not as individual egos but as a cohesive group of high-caliber performers in service of an idea.

Given the quality of this performance, it was inconceivable that only a handful of people would see the show in the Arsht Center’s small Carnival Theater, even with a sold-out crowd. Recently, the company was saved from the brink of dissolution and now, with a broader base of support including Miami-based backers, the company may well be able to take their work to larger audiences around the world. This is the kind of exposure they deserve.

Photo: Manny Hernandez

This article first appeared in Miami New Times

The top-notch Haitian dance company returns for a second year.

Hip-hop purists still fret about sellouts. But somewhere between Run DMC hawking Adidas and Nas declaring “hip hop is dead,” hip hop got to be everybody’s culture. That much was clear at the Arsht Center last week on the sold-out opening night of the Cirque Èloize show, iD.

There was old school graffiti projected on a futuristic cityscape. Muscular dancers bust classic moves, spinning on their heads and flaring their legs. Little battles broke out as the dancers rocked up and back at each other. All these moves have technical names. But even if the audience didn’t know them, they recognized the moves. We’ve been watching them for nearly 40 years now.

So why not an urban circus? Everybody’s seen all the circus moves too. Might as well mix it up.

iD is the first venture into urban dance by Cirque Èloize, a circus arts troupe from Montreal. In the program, about half of the 16 performers are identified as “urban dancers” and the rest with circus specialties like “contortions” and “Chinese pole.” Onstage, they all look like they could be winners on Canada’s Best Dance Crew.

But whether it’s an air flare or a guy balancing on a tower of chairs, just because we’ve seen something before doesn’t mean it’s not breathtaking. Xuan Le moved like liquid poetry on inline skates. Fletcher Sanchez brought new meaning to pole dancing, whipping himself from top to bottom then pausing to hold his arms and body in a perfectly straight, horizontal line. And an entire show could have been devoted to things that contortionist Emi Vauthey can do in a back bend.

Over at the Little Haiti Cultural Center last Saturday, an evening of dance curated by choreographer Afua Hall proved once again that tradition is worth carrying on. The standing only crowd clearly exceeded expectations: there were programs for only about half the audience.

Each of the evening’s two acts opened with a performance by youngsters who participated in the Center’s Discover Art! summer camp. This was urban dance by urban kids, yet the most current street move was Michael Jackson’s moonwalk. If “urban” is a code word for African traditions, these dancers and choreographers went way back, through tap to centuries-old dances from Haiti and Senegal.

No sign of the circus here. If anything, the featured choreographers toned down the spectacular nature of many African dances by mixing those moves with contemporary concert dance. Of particular interest were works by Petagaye Letren and Ronderrick Mitchell that stripped down the leaps and arm circles of Senegalese dance into quiet meditations.

In videos screened on either side of intermission, Megan Swick set vaguely Cuban moves on serious-faced young women who swished while hanging laundry and wandering along railroad tracks and Lazaro Godoy, a choreographer visiting from Israel, pulsed through the streets of what looked like an Israeli city with the mischievous gestures of the Yoruba trickster, Elegua.

Two Haitian pieces each hewed close to tradition, but the similarity in choreography was offset by the contrast in the dancers’ appearance. In the first act, the Haitian-born, long-time Miami based-beauty Yanui wore a white dress and head wrap that set off her dark skin. In the second act, the lovely Annie Hollingsworth and Brooke Joy Waszak, in stylish rompers and red lipstick that emphasized their pale complexions, looked more like silent screen stars than Haitian folklorists.

All three women performed faithfully, proving that skin color is no bar to any dance form. But the surprising contrast was a reminder that, thanks to the world order, Haitian dance has remained largely the province of Haitian people. Meanwhile hip hop has become a global vernacular as familiar to urban kids in the Bronx as to circus performers in Montreal. Let’s hope programs like this one will introduce more people to lesser-known traditions. Next up: a Haitian folklore circus.

This article was first published in the Miami Sun Post.