Celebrated dance critic Margaret Putnam once wrote: “Tango is the Everest of social dance. Impossible. Demanding. Intricate. And therefore irresistible.” Astor Piazzolla must have believed this to be true as well, as he poured every one of those adjectives into every musical note of his life’s work, also adding a few more like violent, sad and secretive. María de Buenos Aires, his “Tango Operita,” was part of a double bill last Thursday evening along with american composer Robert Xavier Rodriguez’ Tango presented on Florida Grand Opera’s “Unexpected Operas in Unexpected Places” program. The venue, Design District’s The Stage, was not all that an “Unexpected Place,” since it regularly hosts live music, film, and theater — but this was a first venture into nightlife for FGO.

The doors opened at eight o’clock, a good time to arrive since seating and standing room was limited. Furthermore, guests were informed that the performance would take place throughout the entire space, both indoors stage-side and the outdoor patio. Sharply at nine o’clock the pre-show started with FGO Young Artist Lyndon Meyer announcing the evening’s proceedings with the piano, moving on to  exquisitely soulful renditions of Alberto Ginastera’s Canción al Árbol del Olvido (Song to the Tree of Forgetfulness) and Kurt Weill’s Youkali by fellow FGO Young Artists Rebecca Henriques and Carla Jablonski. Meyer’s colorful and extremely sensitive playing was the musical heartbeat of the evening, in more ways than one.

First on the bill was Rodriguez’ Tango, with a text based on newspaper articles about the the tango craze about a century ago, was brilliantly executed by tenor Matthew Newlin, also an FGO Young Artist. Although mostly recited with the occasional chant and recitativo-like passages, Newlin managed to bring life and coherence to what seems more like a comedy sketch than an opera. Also, this seems like the perfect moment to start lauding, with a full brass orchestra, the highly virtuosic and achingly passionate dancing of Jeremías Massera and Mariela Barufaldi, indisputably the soul of the entire performance.

After a brief intermission for cocktails, guests were instructed to take their seats to welcome Catalina Cuervo as María de Buenos Aires. The music, unmistakably by Piazzolla since the first bars, was excitingly delivered by a small band formed by FGO Orchestra members who, much to my pleasant surprise, did not sound like a bunch of classical musicians playing some other type of music. A source for their inspiration must have been bandoneón player David Alsina, of whom Piazzolla himself would have been proud.

Less inspiring, unfortunately, was  Cuervo’s performance. Whether because of opening night jitters or embarrassingly noticeable technical difficulties with the sound system (her mike didn’t work at all for her opening number), she failed to convince me about who María is and who or what she later becomes. Cuervo, strikingly beautiful, is endowed with a deep, raspy voice much like that of the great Amelita Baltar. Gorgeous, yes, but there is not enough pain in her voice for this role.

Distractingly, Luis Sosa, a Venezuelan actor who played the poet-narrator El Duende, did not even try to speak in an Argentine accent, making his treatment of tango slang lunfardo annoying at best.

Thankfully, velvet-voiced Luis Alejandro Orozco, with his skip-a-beat good looks, tied it all together as El Cantor (here, a singer delivering décimas, usually improvised 10-line poems). The Mexican baritone appeared to be the only cast member who understood what Piazzolla’s opera is about.

José María Condemi’s staging worked beautifully. With creative and precise use of the space, Mr. Condemi is a natural theatrician. He even joined the action at times, sidling up to the women of the chorus at the bar.

Maestro Ramón Tebar looked like he was having the time of his life conducting the band, as always, displaying command and comfort. I must also give a final Bravo! for dancers Massera and Barufaldi, who supplied the evening’s sustenance, breath, sex, torment…in short, the tango.

]]> http://artburstmiami.com/2013/03/24/it-takes-fgo-to-tango/feed/ 0 http://artburstmiami.com/2013/03/16/the-cleveland-orchestras-ode-to-joy-and-other-dances/ http://artburstmiami.com/2013/03/16/the-cleveland-orchestras-ode-to-joy-and-other-dances/#comments Sat, 16 Mar 2013 15:02:46 +0000 Fernando Landeros http://artburstmiami.com/?p=3383

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.

 

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Unlike, say, ballet, basketball, and mathematics, opera is an endeavor where talent deepens with age. That makes the young talent gracing the stage of the Florida Grand Opera in two current productions a mixed blessing. The cast of Mozart’s The Magic Flute and Bellini’s La Sonnambula are a good-looking bunch, with young lovers in both productions played by age-appropriate leads.  However, only in La Sonnambula did the singers sound as stunning as they looked.

In The Magic Flute, Lisette Oropesa made for a lovely Pamina and Andrew Bidlack a charming Tamino. Yet these young lovers didn’t seem to feel much passion for each other. Oropesa often sounded tentative and Bidlack’s singing at times lacked support. Jeanette Vecchione delivered a feisty Queen of the Night, but her voice and stage presence fell short of the Queen’s terrifying power. Jonathan Michie was a pleasant surprise as Papageno. That role calls for more comic acting than vocal prowess, yet Michie had both, stealing every scene with his marvelous baritone and peacock strut.

Ironically, the most mature singer on stage, Jordan Bisch as the high priest Sarastro, delivered the least convincing performance. He was outshone by the priest’s speaker, a member of FGO’s Young Artist program, Adam Lau. With his thrilling, true bass, Lau has been a consistent highlight of this season, and we couldn’t help wishing he’d had a turn as the high priest. So much for our theory about age.

None of the singers received much help from the orchestra or the staging. Conductor Andrew Bisantz slowed the pace of Mozart’s score to a crawl. Perhaps that’s because stage director Jeffrey Marc Buchman managed to drain this fantasy of its zany fun. In this production, Tamino is not really a young hero finding his way in a mysterious world. He’s a teenage boy circa the 1950s, falling asleep while reading a fantasy book given to him by his father. This conceit made the young man’s first encounter with the Queen’s randy ladies a bit kinky, but it neutered the opera’s usually spectacular ending. Rather than seeing Sarastro rise in triumph with the chorus, and perhaps the sun, we see a young man waking from a dream, alone, in his bedroom, to the sounds of off-stage singing. Sigh.

The young cast of La Sonnambula seemed to soak up plenty of maturity from stage director and legendary diva Renata Scotto. Where many contemporary directors at FGO and elsewhere have the singers contorting themselves – trying to sing while laying on their backs or bellies — Scotto kept her cast at the center of the stage, upright and facing forward, positioned to make the most of their voices. The minimalist set and period costumes too, designed by Carlo Diappi, kept the focus on the singers. Conductor Ramon Tebar again showed a mastery of the music, and sensitivity to the performances on stage.

With all of that support, Michele Angelini and Rachele Gilmore shone as betrothed lovers nearly parted when a jealous Elvino encounters a sleep-walking Amina in the chambers of the handsome and mysterious Count Rodolfo (an elegant Tom Corbeil). The chemistry crackled across all points of this love triangle, while the entire cast drew steady applause, even in the middle of arias. Gilmore delighted the house with her breathtaking vocal flourishes, delivering bel canto at its best. FGO Young Artist Hye Jung Lee held her own as the envious innkeeper, Lisa, and Adam Lau, once again, excelled as her unrequited lover.

All of the young talent at FGO is likely to get better over the years.  Let’s hope they all get the kind of support that will make audiences happy they heard them here first.

La Sonnambula continues on Friday, February 15 and Sunday, February 17. The Magic Flute on Saturday, February 16 at the Arsht Center and Thursday, February 21 and Saturday, February 23 at the Broward Center. 

“We are going to a dance performance!” That was all I knew. See, I just moved to Miami from New York, so the details don’t mean much to me. I spend most weekends lost and wandering northeast and southwest never quite sure of where I am. In an effort get acquainted with the Miami art scene, I have vowed to go see pretty much anything. That night, last month, at Dance Now’s Open Stage was one of those nights. And am I ever glad I went.  

The Dance Now! Ensemble opened the night with Forte, Lirico, Drammatico, a piee in three parts, choreographed by   Diego Santerini. The first was a tense and combative tussle between two male dancers trying to find compromise. The next segment seemed to imagine how two women would address a similar situation with grace and cooperation. Lastly was a lovely duet exploring the intimate maneuvers of two people drawing closer to one another.

Next, Prince Emmanuel Adiodum Aderele’s Yoruba Rhythm took me on a journey of West African drumming and dance traditions as they are translated across the world. Through this short piece we were introduced to the base rhythms of the atabaque (conga) drum used in Brazilian Capoeira. We admired its resurgence in the grandiose sway and lumbering downbeat cadences of New Orleans Mardi Gras Second Line dances. The moans of the talking drum were replicated through the scats of American blues and the improvised wails in jazz. I look forward to seeing the fuller, fleshed out version of the piece with teams of dancers and drummers in full regalia.

In a continuing exploration of new forms, choreographer Allisen Learnard presented a fusion of Middle Eastern and African movement as translated through tap. The Next Day started out stark and angular. The dancers moved in unison, the intricacy of their time-steps ticking the seconds of arduous hours. Gradually they fell out of sync, the stresses of modern life bearing down. This symbolic death of conformity gave birth to the sultry, round, soft undulations of belly dance and jubilant cadence of African movement. The dancers literally released themselves from their restrictive social trappings, revealing the sensuality and interconnectivity we all secretly long for.
Martin Luther King Jr. once famously asserted, “If you can’t fly then run, if you can’t run then walk, if you can’t walk then crawl, but whatever you do you have to keep moving forward.” In Bipedalism: Learn To Stand On Your Own After Life Knocks You Down, Dance Now! Ensemble member Megan Holsinger started at the opposite end of this spectrum. The audience followed breathlessly as the choreographer writhed on the floor, soon to crawl, eventually to walk, finally to stride, and ultimately taking off running around the stage. We all sat transfixed by this victory lap. Holsinger later confessed she herself was overwhelmed with emotion at the end of the piece, which affirms that she gave a fully spirited performance.

When two young women darted out and frantically began to rip off their dresses, it was hard not to be intrigued. So began What is Meant. The women have just escaped the Salem Witch Trials and are heading into the woods toward their new lives. It was easy to imagine how these women, one spritely, with mysterious long dark hair and the other impossibly tall with cropped hair, could spark suspicion amongst the townsfolk. The music set the dark, angsty mood, interspersed with night sounds and crickets. Even on a bare stage it was easy to imagine the dark forest the ladies whipped through, sick with fear and worry. The hope of redemption travelled with them.

The choreographer, Brigette Cormier, revealed during the Q&A how the piece has morphed. When Cormier couldn’t find the right music, she mixed it herself. She changed the wardrobe to better set the mood. The movements in the pieces were inspired to keep both dancers’ dangerously long hair out of their faces. So when Cormier’s partner Joanna showed up one day shorn, the choreographer wisely didn’t change a thing. The result was truly bewitching.

Work in Progress (W.I.P) by Dr. Constance McIntyre was a remarkable and triumphant performance, beautifully executed by an ensemble of high school students. Singer/songwriter Giel sang an original song and provided live accompaniment via acoustic guitar just upstage from the dancers. These young ladies danced with emotional maturity heightened by the live music. During the discussion afterward, it was revealed that this piece was rehearsed for only 6 hours! This only amplified my appreciation for this piece. I am looking forward to seeing what this ensemble could produce given more time.

Crystal Lewis invited the audience for an enlightening ride on her emotional roller coaster. In Transition was an exploratory voyage through the process of changing behaviors through a loop of similar phrases, as each rendition slightly changed and evolved. The methodical, surgical execution of Lewis’ movements exemplified the stubborn characteristics of her personality. With each repetition of her phrase, this rigidity gave way to softer, meandering movements that appeared more organic. After much trial and error, the dancer finally came up with the winning combination. The transition complete, the dancer to strode simply and directly towards the audience with conquering confidence.

Play and Breathe are two excerpts from Piano Pieces by Hannah Baumgarten, one half of the Dance Now! Miami directorial team. This last installment capped off the night with a languid ensemble piece and a captivating duet. These were, for me, the most fully actualized pieces.

Often in my experience, recitals and dance performances can be rigid and reserved. In conversations after previous performances, I have seldom heard an audience voice their true opinion publicly, no one wanting to come off common or uncultured. But tonight some of the best performances were in the house seats. After each piece, moderator and Artburst contributor Celeste Fraser Delgado introduced the choreographer and took questions, comments, and criticism from the audience.

I have rarely seen an audience so engaged. Throughout these pieces, I could hear the whispers and gasps, the sounds of opinions and insights being formed. The questions and comments were posed with such curiosity and emotion, the kind you ask when you are falling in love.

Dance Now! next presents Open Stage on Saturday, March 23 at the Little Haiti Cultural Center. For details, visit dancenow.org.

In Wynwood last Saturday night, the streets were overflowing with random bits of energy, from the insect car parade driven by camera-ready hairdos gelled into disarray to the less-fastidiously disheveled imbiber barking loudly at a guard dog: drink in one hand, 90-proof antagonism in the other. Stepping out of the car on 23rd Street, there was a buzz and crackle in the air: it emanated from the grid of electrical transformers in the power station that eats up part of that block.

Around the corner, outside the Harold Golen Gallery on 2nd Avenue, the energy had organized into a semicircle of smiling spectators focused on a bearded, stocky man in a yellowish plaid shirt, spitting into a microphone. That man was Adam Matta, human beatbox extraordinaire. Armed only with a microphone, three effects pedals, and his mouth, Matta fired off a barrage of raw hip-hop beats, layering the expected drum sounds with scat syllables and an echo-laced trumpet straight out of fusion-era Miles Davis.

The show was part of the The Street: Festival of Electronic Music, Art, and Performance. Presented by the FETA Foundation and organized by Juraj Kojs during Art Basel, Matta was part of the Saturday lineup that concluded the three-night event. The down-to-earth Matta’s approach is simple and employs a loop pedal—a foot-triggered device that allows the performer to record a few seconds of audio, play that back in a loop, then layer more audio on top. Matta uses two of these pedals and has perfected the art of manipulating them along with his voice to produce a seamless, evolving rhythm.

Like its cousin turntablism, beatboxing often disregards the suggestions of equipment manufacturers. One of its characteristic sounds is the loud, low-pitched burst of noise that happens when you breathe or make a “puh” sound directly into a microphone. In “normal” usage, that sound is something that a performer would want to avoid, but in beatboxing, what might be seen as a limitation or defect of the equipment gets utilized as an important part of technique.

Another performer at Saturday’s event, Taylan Cihan, employed a more anarchic approach to this sort of technological subversion. Bent over his homemade synthesizer—a little red box covered with black knobs—the musician touched metal nodes with his fingers. That human contact inserted his body into the synth’s sound-producing circuit, radically altering the sound in unpredictable ways. The sonic results weren’t pretty: the soundscape was an abruptly shifting collage of chain-saw buzzes punctured by the occasional ear-splitting squeal and the sort of low ominous rumble that marks the territory of hirsute men on Harleys.

But pretty wasn’t the point. The idea was just to play around with the sound-producing capabilities of electricity and see what happens. Cihan said he rarely knows what his music is going to sound like, and the overall impression was akin to a giddy mad scientist unleashing the hidden forces of nature.

The third act of the evening was the FIU Laptop and Electronic Arts Ensemble (FLEA)—FIU students Kyle Motl, Brian Del Toro, Daniel Yellin, and Ricardo Lopez—who stood facing the sidewalk, each with a laptop perched precariously on an individual stand. In one piece, the performers followed a set of written instructions by professor Jacob Sudol to electronically manipulate the recorded sound of a gong, generating subtle variations on a single, evocative sound. The performance provided an unexpected, meditative background to the busy activity of the street, as if a mystical presence had emerged half a block from the vacant lot of food trucks, its aura protected by the four men transfixed in the glow of their laptop screens.

The laptop performance got me thinking about electricity and the difference between analog and digital. In the digital realm, computer hardware is carefully designed so that software can see it as a collection of switches that are either on or off, one or zero. The electricity has been tightly bound into little boxes. That control enables all kind of magic like the Internet and the smart phone. But in the real world of analog continuity, electricity is disorderly and messy just like we are.

Across the street, several graffiti artists practiced their renegade street craft inside a large open gallery, embraced by the commercial art world. Had they been digitized?

Well, it has taken me quite a while to digest The Living Earth Show’s concert from way back on November 9. It was only an hour long and performed by a small ensemble, just two men, who apparently make a living performing contemporary experimental music, much of which they commission themselves. With whatever money they have left over, they also order custom-built instruments like guitars with double the frets and two-of-a-kind vibraphones (the other one is in Norway) that can do things like play extra notes — like quartertones — that usually don’t show up in Western music, built as it is on the rather limited 12-tone scale (in case you like math, sneaking in quarterones makes for a 24-note scale).

So I’ve taken a little time to let the extra notes sink in. Also, I’ve had to do a lot of homework. Besides learning about quarter tones, I had to brush up on my Moby Dick, which I am embarrassed to say I had not read before (okay, I still haven’t read it, but I did google the relevant excerpt). The name of the composition by Luciano Chessa, “Squeeze! Squeeze! Squeeze!” came from this sentence in Melville’s opus:

Squeeze! squeeze! squeeze! all the morning long; I squeezed that sperm till I myself almost melted into it; I squeezed that sperm till a strange sort of insanity came over me.

The not-so-subtle double entendre proved irresistible to an ensemble that offered, as one of the incentives in a recent Kickstarter campaign, to “play Dangerous Toys’ not-famous-enough 1989 rock and roll anthem “Sport’n A Woody” 50 times in a row at the intersection of Powell Street and Market Street in San Francisco.”

That same campaign features percussionist Andrew Meyerson (above) and guitarist Travis Andrews walking the streets and parks of San Francisco, basically raining on other people’s parades: snatching sandwiches from people’s mouths, knocking over their coffee, disrupting their juggling, and smashing a birthday cake with a huge mallet.

Which gives you a good idea of how The Living Earth Show treats an audience. Just before the show started, Andrews warned: “We like to joke, as difficult as [the piece] is for us, it’s actually more demanding upon the audience.”

But to make it easier on us, Andrews introduced the most brilliant stroke I have ever seen in experimental performance: he turned over an hour glass. Often, during the performance, I glanced at the the lurid, green sands slipping through the glass: we’re a quarter of the way through; it’s half-way done; only a third left to go.

Reassured that in the definite future, the performance would end, I was able to slip in to the hypnotic soundscape of a single motif played on vibraphone, then repeated a quarter tone above or below on the guitar, or vice versa, at faster and slower speeds, up and down the 24-tone scale, on and on.

There were some variations, and diversions, like the introduction of several toothbrushes to replace the mallets on the vibraphone and wedge between the strings on the guitar. Sometimes the toothbrushes simply vibrated on the keys of the vibraphone, sometimes they fell softly to the floor.

At different times, each of the musicians abandoned his instrument to pour a glass or two of Southern Comfort and sit sipping bourbon on one of two red sofas. At what might be described as the climax, Andrews read from Moby Dick: “Let us squeeze ourselves!”

A strange sort of insanity came over me too.

The Florida Grand Opera’s La Bohème features award-winning soprano Aylin Pérez in the title role. But the star of the production was the company’s new musical director, conductor Ramon Tebar.

Reminiscent of legendary Austrian conductor Herbert von Karajan,  Tebar opened space for La Bohème to breathe. He was especially sensitive in following the singers, from a flourish that sounded precisely when the flirtatious Musetta sprinkled wine on her lover to more unexpected variations as the singers at times set their own pace, especially in the first two acts. Tebar hustled to catch up with an early entrance, and patiently held back when an entrance was delayed. The orchestra responded with equal sensitivity, softly conveying tender moments and forcefully highlighting the drama, but never drowning out the singers.

(Above) FGO Musical Director and Conductor, Ramon Tebar. Photo by Alissa Dragun of South Moon Photograph (Top) Act IV – Ailyn Pérez as Mimì and Arturo Chacón-Cruz as Rodolfo – FGO La bohème 2012 – Photo by Gaston de Cardenas

The first act of La Bohème is a challenge for the leads. Barely fifteen minutes in, impoverished writer Rodolfo (Arturo Chacóno-Cruz) and the feverish Mimi (Perez) must each deliver a love-struck aria and a duet in rapid succession, with the tenor hitting a high C. Chacóno-Cruz nailed it, and both singers acquitted themselves competently, but the power of their individual performances and the chemistry between them grew stronger throughout the opera. By act three, Perez seemed utterly believable and moving in her farewell to her fearful lover in the aria, “Donde lieta usci.”

The rest of the cast provided strong support. Mark Walters, in a less prominent role than his star turn in Rigoletto last season, still showed himself the accomplished veteran of the cast, exuding confidence and stage presence. Adam Lau, a member of FGO’s Young Artists program, was in strong voice throughout as Rodolfo’s friend Colline, and was especially moving in his aria in Act Four, where he decides to sell his beloved coat to raise money for Mimi’s medical care. Brittany Ann Reneé Robinson played Musetta for laughs, perhaps concentrating more on her acting than her singing.

Like the leads, the audience took a bit of warming up too. There was a pause between Acts One and Two that was not announced in the program, leaving people wondering whether to stand up or stay seated. Then after Act Two, the curtain fell on the busy street scene, then rose again after a few minutes so the chorus could take a curtain call. This caught unawares many a soul eager to get in line for a cocktail or snack and diminished what might have been stronger applause. By Act Three, everyone was settled in their seats, oohing and ahing over the artificial snow fall, which received the strongest applause to that point. By then, the singers were warmed up too, and the audience deeply appreciative. At curtain call, though, the biggest applause was reserved for the conductor.

 Florida Grand Opera’s La Bohème continues Nov. 21, 24, 27, 30, and Dec. 2 at the Adrienne Arsht Center in Miami and on Dec. 6 and 8 at the Au-Rene Theater in Fort Lauderdale. For details, visit fgo.org.

In celebration of National Dance Week, the Florida Dance Association and Dance Now! Miami presented the Daniel Lewis Dance Sampler on April 27, at the Little Haiti Cultural Center. The eponymously named event is a revival of the Modern Dance Sampler, founded and run for many years by former New World dance dean Daniel Lewis. The ongoing mission of the event is to feature and celebrate the diversity of local companies and individual choreographers that make their work in South Florida.

Lewis, a former Jose Limón dancer and choreographer in his own right, developed the dance program at New World School of the Arts and through his company Miami Dance Futures produced, among others, the Miami Balanchine Conference, the Dance History Scholar’s Conference, the aforementioned Modern Dance Sampler, and various dance companies such as Houlihan and Dancers. It was very fitting to see a former Houlihan dancer, Bill Doolin, director of the Florida Dance Association, along with co-directors Hannah Baumgarten and Diego Salterini of Dance Now! Miami, present to Lewis an honorary award in recognition of his dedication and success in nurturing and promoting dance in Miami.

The sampler presented a diverse concert representing 10 companies and choreographers, including a special performance by Carolyn Dorfman Dance Company’s Keystone, danced by Jacqueline Dumas Albert and Louie Marin. The duet moved in three acts to the accompaniment of Rufus Wainwright’s haunting cover of Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah; the ever inspiring Louis Armstrong recording of What a Wonderful World; and a modern cover of Irving Berlin’s White Christmas by Jamie Randolph. Using a vocabulary full of counterbalance and weight-sharing, the couple gorgeously maintained an intense and athletic energy while making the most difficult partnering look seamless and effortless. Albert and Marin’s physicality was ever present in both the most intimate and moody moments to the most jubilant.

Pioneer Winter’s Mother-Son(days) was a profound piece performed by Winter and Ana Bolt as the mother-son pair. The duet was accompanied by the live narration of Winter’s mother’s diary from when she was 17 years old, ruminating on her future about love, family, and death — and from Winter’s own diary as a 10 year old facing the death of his mother. The diary entries are almost 20 years apart and illustrated the similarities in the mother’s and son’s emotional and sometimes prophetic tenor. To use Winter’s own words, “separated by time… [the entries] reflect similar personalities, fears, and even [the] same humor.”

In less capable hands this could have easily been a maudlin and overly sentimental piece.  But Winter’s true genius is that the he created a movement landscape that, although was as abstract as the dialogue was literal, existed alongside the narration within the same tone poem. The dancing rested like a subconscious layer over the words without any literal translation yet still provoked the sense of love, loss, and humor without any sentimental manipulation. His work evidences a profound maturity in such a young creator whose talent was well matched by the incomparable stage presence, subtlety and intensity, of Bolt. Both dancers mirrored and informed each other in their separate landscapes only to join at the very end to the echoed sentiment of how Winter and his mother both really didn’t like Sundays.

The Brigid Baker WholeProject performed Wonderlawn excerpted from Comet Lovejoy Survives and choreographed by Baker. Baker is known for her “hand made environments” and the piece opens with a dim lit stage offset by a garden of glittery and illuminated trash including lights, shiny garlands, and gold paper strewn about the stage that has transformed the space into something otherworldly. The dancers, in black evening wear and dresses, walk through this landscape while one of the men throws paper airplanes as he walks the circumference of the stage. Ultimately the company dons sanitary gloves and collects the garbage and heaps it into a corner. Once the stage is cleared the pedestrian act of sweeping the stage follows. The second movement with the full company is lush and gestural, with large sweeping unison movement. The dancers seemed released from some confinement just as the stage had been cleared of its debris and they moved as dark whispers in the wind. On their own, both the hand-made environment prelude and the subsequent dance were interesting and captivating.  The only detraction is the two put together felt like they belonged to two different pieces, or needed a more unifying transitional component.

Arts Ballet Theater danced a lively ensemble, A Celebration to Klimt that lifted the Handel selection off the floor with a swash of bright colors and strong diagonals in this pleasant interpretation by Vladimir Issaev of Gustav Klimt’s art nouveau symbolist paintings. Another ballet offering was the modern balletic duet Liminally Venn choreographed by Lara Murphy with an articulate, tense, quick, and staccato vocabulary impressively danced by the duet.

Brazarte Dance Company’s Corpo was a piece more driven by the music than the movement vocabulary. The strong rhythmic music dictated the transitions in the piece, whereas the movement, at times overly pedestrian and posturing, felt flat despite the energy of its accompaniment. The ensemble at times was blatantly not together in the unison sections and the appearances at the beginning and the end of the piece by the one male dancer lacked reason or device for his entrances and exits. Luis Alberto Cuevas’ It Gets To A Point, similarly relied on music changes for its choreographic transitions. The recorded accompaniment of classical strings playing pop selections from the Isley Brothers and No Doubt was jarring and the piece deserved to live free of these selections.  However, as a group ensemble this was a stronger piece and there is some build to the final moment of one single dancer moving frenetically as the lights fade. In terms of vocabulary, this final moment was the most interesting and arresting and just as the piece actually found its legs, it had ended.

Afua Hall’s Sitting Stand starts with Quilvio Rodriguez wearing nothing but dance briefs with his back to the stage. The striking and vulnerable moment fades too quickly without further exploration as partner Ronderrick Mitchell dresses Rodriguez in matching Bermuda shorts and unbuttoned shirt. What follows are different partnering sections that although sometimes interesting, together seem disjointed and awkward and never fulfill the promise of such a strong and provocative beginning. Karen Peterson and Dancers Potpourria, a 2012 excerpt, is another duet that had visually interesting moments in a “mixed-ability” partnering duet but did not create any distinguishable emotional tenor or overt definition of the space.

The bookend pieces of the concert were offerings by Dance Now! Miami. Megan Holsinger and Quilvio Rodriguez partnered in Mitosis, the opening duet piece by Salterini. Costumed in shiny body suits and lit in purple hues, the dancers moved and appeared like pieces of silk in a stream of water through a series of lifts before coming to a full and breath catching stop, alone, on opposite sides of the stage. The closing piece by Baumgarten, Visions of Unrest, is excerpted from a larger work and presents the final three of five movements. The piece progresses from Dariel Milan’s solo where he moves like flesh turned liquid in his fluid but frenetic rendering of IN-somnia to the duet in the fourth act, Dreams, and finally the group finale in Awakening. The piece is rich in  Baumgarten’s quirky original motifs such as the opening head toggle and sauté.  Baumgarten builds layer upon layer both in the emotional tones of her piece and in the carving of space through progressive variations, canons and inversions as dancers weave in between each other and join together in satisfying unison.

The Union Project Dance Company finds inspiration in great art. Since debuting in Miami last year, the company has performed pieces such as Demoiselles d’Avignon, drawing from the famous Picasso painting, and Dancing with Tom, set to the music of bossa nova great, Tom Jobim.

This weekend, choreographer Mariana Oliveira and her group takes another direction with a new work,  Malemolência. This work is inspired Oliveira’s childhood experiences in the backlands of Northeast Brazil, called the sertão. The name of the piece comes from the local slang, and could be translated, according to Oliveira, as “swagger.”

So six dancers swagger as they embody the stories of life in the sertão. Keeping them going is a live six-piece orchestra playing forró, Brazil’s answer to country music, which comes from the same region. The music is conducted by Oliveira’s husband, Michael O. Hurwitz, the company’s musical director, composer, and songwriter.

But this is fun with a message. In Malemolência, Oliveira is trying to show part of her native country in a wide context.  “Brazil’s Northeast is one of the poorest regions of my country, but also has amazing beauty,” says Oliveira. “I want to show the contrast and not just one side.”

Get your swagger on this Saturday, April 14, at 8 p.m. at the Little Haiti Cultural Center, 212-260 N.E. 59th Terrace, Miami. Tickets cost $20. theunionproject.webs.com