By the fourth time the rows of fifth graders were exhorted to raise their voices, they were psyched. “Roooooaaaaaaarhhhh,” they again shouted. This time it worked. The community had spoken; bullying muscle-bound storm god Anzu was routed; the huluppu tree was liberated!

You actually could leave the kids home and still thoroughly enjoy Inanna and the Huluppu Tree. Combining music, dance, aerial acrobatics and theater, the piece was created by Miami Theater Center (MTC)’s founder, Stephanie Ansin and artistic collaborator, Fernando Calzadilla. Based on ancient Sumerian myths, and featuring original music by Luciano Stazzone with choreography by Octavio Campos and aerial choreography by Lleigh Reynolds, it is presented at the MTC in Miami Shores.

If yours are not among the busloads of South Florida schoolchildren lining up for weekday morning performances, bring them to a Saturday evening show. A well-produced study guide serves as a crib sheet to the unfamiliar names and the story line, while also giving props to Sumerian innovations: the wheel, writing, irrigation, arithmetic, the hover-craft. (Not really, but Inanna’s brother Utu’s nimble horseless chariot is slick.)

Actually, the play’s strongest take-away lies in its moral messages, rather than historical lessons. These are first intoned by Great Grandmother Earth, Goddess Ninhursag (Shaneeka Harrell), in a resounding invocation to the play’s principals, her offspring. And more injunctions percolate up during the course of a drama that is delivered in a flowing sequence of short songs, performed with varying degrees of finesse; a wide-ranging musical backdrop; and dances created by Campos in an appealing diversity of fanciful styles — Middle Eastern-ish.

As the play opens, three masked acolytes peer through a richly painted scrim and nervously ask, “Where is he? Where is he?” A restive crowd in the ancient city of Uruk impatiently awaits the coronation of a new king, Prince Gilgamesh (Rico Reid), son of the late king. But he is AWOL, and the play’s namesake character, Inanna (vivacious Diana Garle) — goddess of love, war, fertility, plus a few other divine attributes — is desperate. She has descended with haunting luminosity from heaven to crown Gilgamesh, and he is a no-show. What’s a goddess to do? Stage a diversion.

Enter the huluppu tree. Uprooted and washed adrift in a river of the Urukians’ tears (grieving their king’s death), this sapling was rescued by Inanna, and, after a three-generation divine family dust-up, she plants it next to the temple to serve as a time-marker for the arrival of a new king. Thus, we have our diversion.

But in drama, as in life, plans go awry. Replete with golden fruit and elegantly crafted in graceful wooden arcs and poles, the huluppu tree stands commandingly center stage. It grows thicker and denser before our eyes. An attractive nuisance, however, it soon hosts an unwelcome encampment of three lively new deities (the Sumerians had thousands of them), two of whom flap, roar, swoop and somersault in the air: Luckner Bruno’s thunder-cracking Anzu and acrobatic goddess of merriment and laughter, Siduri (Ana Mendez). They are lifted and propelled with skill and strength by unseen stagehands. (Tip of the hat to Cirque du Soleil, Crouching Tiger and MTC technical director, Ron Burns.)

These oversize characters, each with a distinctive trick bag, neglect official duties to instead cavort, vie for position and devour the tasty huluppu fruit (a few of which they toss into the audience). Among these three freeloaders, the “pharmacist” Ningizzida, (Troy Davidson) eloquently exploits his jokester role and his signature props: a roulette wheel of maladies and herbal remedies and a multi-pocketed cloak of herbs. Inanna is stymied by these loafing lodgers, but then Prince Gilgamesh, the would-be king, returns from his pilgrimage and is put to the test: Can he turn out the freeloaders and restore order to the kingdom? Can Inanna keep him on track, avoiding violence? Will the audience repeatedly surge to his aid? (Does Superman wear a cape?)

Some of the larger-than-life characters are effectively amped-up with computer-enhanced voices and, in the case of Anzu, by that glorious steroidal body armor, enormous wings and yellow-feathered legs. Subtleties of staging and delivery are interwoven amid broader styles of engagement with an indulgent and mostly guileless audience, reared on The Lion King, Star Wars and Xbox. The assembly eagerly embraces this combination of old and new stylings.

In the music, sound design, choreography and deep, richly layered set, we inhabit an ambiguous milieu, but when did you last encounter “authentic” Sumerian music or dance? A combination of live percussion (musicians perched in a Mondrian-like scaffolding within a luminous cathedral of modulated blue light) and commissioned music evocative of such diverse sources as John Williams’ extra-terrestrial scores, early rap and Putamayo’s Arabic Groove carries us through tonal moods that complement the drama. Never outright campy, the playwrights, director, choreographer and actors give an occasional wink to avoid sanctimoniousness, even as they preach that old time religion.

Confession one: My wife and I have no children. Confession two: We cheered with the best of them. You will too.

May 1 – June 2, 2013 at the Miami Theater Center, 9806 N.E. 2nd Ave., Miami Shores; at 10:00 a.m. Tuesdays through Fridays; 7:00 p.m. Saturdays; cost is $20; 305-751-9550; www.mtcmiami.org.

The recently formed multicultural dance troupe founded by dancer/choreographer and NWSA professor Peter London gets its first big local stage outing for “Spring Nights at the Arsht,” which is comprised of six new dances.

“The Best of the Classical Repertoire Gala” includes eight dances, two of which come from Marius Petipa from the 19th century. But the highlight of these performances is that many will be danced by six recent exiles from Cuba and the Cuban National Ballet, in their first U.S. performance, presented by artistic director Pedro Pablo Pena.

The Miami City Ballet Company (MCB) will close its 2012-2013 season this weekend at the Arsht Center with Broadway and Ballet, a valentine to Jerome Robbins and George Balanchine. No surprise there, since the MCB has been acclaimed far and wide for its devotion to the masters, especially Balanchine. What makes this program so delicious is the unpredictable pairing of the works as well as the works themselves.

The first part of the performance belongs to Jerome Robbins. So successful was he as a choreographer of Broadway musicals — “West-Side Story,” “Fiddler on the Roof,” “The King and I” are only a sampling of his handiwork — that it is easy to forget that Robbins loved ballet as well. And ballet as pure as it gets: that’s what his “Dances at a Gathering” is all about.

Originally created by Robbins in 1969 and set to the piano music of Chopin, it marked his return to more classical forms, most particularly pas de deux. The ballet has no props, and hardly any set. Five couples came together in no less than 18 movements, nearly all of them waltzes and Slavic mazurkas. This “Gathering,” in the hands of the rotating cast of MCB, which includes Jeanette and Patricia Delgado as well as Rene Penteado, is a nearly encyclopedic examination of flirtation. One may as often sigh at its sheer beauty of a piece as laugh aloud at its wit. There are the twists that Robbins was so fond of: a gesture at odds with the lyricism of a movement that manages to zap up its impact. And there are the times when flirtation becomes surrender. Look out then.

If the evening begins with elegance and a delight in non-narrative movement not ordinarily associated with Jerome Robbins, the evening ends with bawdiness and very nearly a funk not ordinarily associated with Balanchine. His ballet, “Slaughter on Tenth Avenue,” was originally a play within a play, part of a Rodgers and Hart Broadway hit, “On Your Toes” from the 1930s. Several decades later Balanchine dusted off his work and expanded it into a stand-alone ballet filled with ladies of easy virtue, silly coppers, sly gangsters and a very deadly competition between two male dancers centering far more on their skill as dancers than any issues of romantic attachment. The real question seems to be, can a great classical dancer become a great hoofer if circumstances demand.

Yep. Especially with a little help from one’s friends, or in this case one Phillip Neil, tap-dancer, former New York City Ballet principal and current South Florida resident. Suddenly — that is after a bit of tutelage — several MCB members  including the great Yann Trividic, become the irrepressible hoofers and jazzistas   “Slaughter” demands. Patricia Delgado, dancing in very high heels, plays the love interest in a climax that could wake the dead.

If all this weren’t enough, on Friday night, the part of gangster gunman will be played by retired Major League Baseball catcher extraordinaire, Mike Piazza. He promises no errors.

Miami City Ballet’s Program IV Broadway and Ballet, Friday and Saturday at 8:00 p.m., Sunday at 2:00 p.m. at the Ziff Ballet Opera House, the Arsht Center for the Performing Arts, 1300  Biscayne Blvd., Miami; tickets range from $20 to $175; www.arshtcenter.org.

This review also appears in Miami New Times.

Photo: Daniel Azoulay

Miami City Ballet closes out the season with Program IV, a combination of Jerome Robbins and George Balanchine with a special guest appearance from baseball great Mike Piazza.

In a single weekend, we will be able to see two of this country’s reputable dance companies, both selecting ballets made in the United States and in a variety of American styles, in one Broward setting.

The Broward Center for the Performing Arts is offering a ticket deal — $99 to see both companies on two separate days. And, like many things American, each of the five ballets delivers a distinctive taste, influenced by a worldly palette. The red hot contemporary Trey McIntyre Project (TMP) will perform three of McIntyre’s ballets, flavored by traditional Basque dancing, Shakespeare and more, Friday and Saturday at the Center’s Amaturo Theater. South Florida’s Miami City Ballet (MCB) will present repertory of George Balanchine, founder of the New York City Ballet (NYCB), and Jerome Robbins, best known for his Broadway choreography, Friday through Sunday at the Au-Rene Theater.

Local dance-goers might already have plans to see MCB, which conducts four programs plus The Nutcracker annually at the Broward Center (it will be in Miami at the Arsht Center May 3 through 5). They might also be familiar with the 10-member TMP, who performed there last year, led by the much sought-after choreographer McIntyre, who has created dances for ballet companies from Moscow to Santiago, New York to Chicago. Seeing both in one weekend, a viewer can observe how choreographers working in the United States have made different soups from the same stock — the stock, in this case, being classical ballet vocabulary.

Dancer Elizabeth Keller embodies many of dance’s histories and experimentations. Born in Dubai to Pittsburgh-native parents, she trained in London at the Royal Academy of Dance and in Houston and Philadelphia. Dancing with MCB for 10 seasons under founder Edward Villella, formerly a leading dancer at NYCB, she absorbed the speed, clarity and precision of Balanchine technique. Earlier, in Pennsylvania, she fell in love with Balanchine’s choreography by working on it with the French ballerina Violette Verdy, Villella’s colleague and one of Keller’s mentors. Keller remembers Verdy describing the circular movement rond de jamb in this appealing way: “Stir, stir the chocolate  fondu. It’s gooey.” A striking movement, frappé, was “sharp, sharp like cheddar cheese.”

Now in her first season with TMP, Keller challenges her ballet-trained body with new tasks. McIntyre’s rigorous choreography includes not only pointe work, but also weighty, grounded movement. Dancers are sometimes called upon to rotate their legs externally, as in ballet, but Keller now must also engage other parts of the body to work in a parallel stance. Additionally, Keller says, McIntyre “encourages us to be present and almost, in a way, vulnerable,” both in the studio and on stage. In rehearsal for Queen of the Goths (2007), loosely based on Titus Andronicus, McIntyre pushed Keller to investigate each moment and detail of choreography — “It has to mean something, it has to cost you something,” she recalls him saying about a series of gestures by her character, Tamora, who unwittingly eats a meat pie made from the remains of two of her slain sons.

MCB’s offering of Balanchine’s burlesque Slaughter on Tenth Avenue (1968), based on the 1936 musical On Your Toes, tells a lighter story. And Robbins’ elegant Dances at a Gathering (1969) depicts human relationships through the physical expression of Chopin’s music. Keller says that, like Robbins, McIntyre encourages his dancers to engage with one another on stage, drawing the audience into their world and stirring their imaginations.

McIntyre’s Pass, Away, commissioned by the Broward Center and premiering this weekend, and Arrantza (2010), join Queen of the Goths on the TMP program.

This is the deal: for $99, you choose one night in an orchestra seat to see TMP, at 7:30 p.m. on Friday or Saturday; one night day or night to see MCB, on Friday at 8:00 p.m., or Saturday and Sunday at either 2:00 or 8:00 p.m. The Broward Center for the Performing Arts, 201 S.W. Fifth Ave., Ft. Lauderdale; for tickets call 954-462-0222.

Photo: MCB’s “Slaughter on Tenth Avenue”; photo: Daniel Azoulay

This also appears with Miami New Times.

At its 1853 premiere in Venice, Giuseppe Verdi’s beloved opera La Traviata was jeered. That may have been the fault of the singers, as the composer hinted in a letter to a friend. Since Verdi’s time, lush orchestrations, a string of aria hits, and a libretto about a libertine courtesan who finds love and dies have made La Traviata the most performed opera in the world. Indeed, the need to make such a familiar production fresh has lead to many outlandish and sometimes even absurd productions.

Not so with Florida Grand Opera’s 2013 season closer. FGO plays La Traviata straight – and the singers would have made Verdi proud.

On April 20, María Alejandres was indisputably the best leading lady of the season, and one the best Violettas I’ve ever heard. Her voice projected powerfully, with a flawless technique and colorful musicality. It was deliciously decadent to hear Sempre libera, Violetta’s first act tour de force sung, not shrieked.

Ivan Magrì held his own as Alfredo, with a youthful lyric tenor in complete control and balancing neatly with Alejandres throughout. However, it took a couple of acts for dramatic chemistry to flare between the two, in the duet Parigi, o cara. It was worth the wait.

Giorgio Coaduro made a fine Germont, with a convincing paternal presence and vocal command. Although it took him a little while to warm up, he did so in time for a heartfelt Di Provenza il Mar, il Suol.

The cast as a whole seemed disconnected from each other in the first acts, finally coming together as an ensemble in Act III. Bliss Heberts’ staging did not help. It seemed static, perhaps because Allen Charles Klein’s majestic sets did not leave much room for anything or anybody else. This posed a particular challenge for the dancers in the Gypsy and Picador chorus. Fortunately, choreographer Rosa Mercedes made the most of the limited space.

Maestro Ramon Tebar brought out the best in the orchestra, taking a Bel Canto approach that highlighted the influence that style had on Verdi’s work. The contrast in tempi between the pathetic opening prelude and the adjacent party scene, and the unusually fast Brindisi were refreshing jolts.

Energized, the audience responded to FGO’s production of La Traviata with a standing ovation that lasted almost as long as the courtesan’s drawn-out death.

Space and sound are closely related, even if it often goes unnoticed. Over the course of two weeks, many of the performances at the Subtropics Festival in Miami Beach confronted this relationship.

Paula Matthusen, a former Miami resident, spent hours recording sounds in New York City’s historic engineered underground, including Old Croton Aqueduct, which was used in the 19th century to deliver water to the city. Her surround-sound composition prominently featured the acoustic hallmarks of water dripping in caves, even incorporating sounds of a tour guide at one point. But particularly striking were the shifts to a new space. The sonic difference between an underground tunnel and the outdoors is significant, and without a visual aid, the listener is struck by the contrast.

At one moment, we abruptly moved from the watery echo of the aqueduct to silence. The background sounds disappeared, replaced by a loud, violent metallic sound, like a hammer striking a metal pipe. In a soundscape composition, these are the equivalents of themes and melodies, and indeed Matthusen described her piece as a “theme and variations.”

Water was also prevalent in Dafna Naphtali’s performance. Naphtali is a New-York based vocalist who uses computer processing to significantly alter her voice during performance. In one piece called “Dripsodisiac,” she made sounds with her voice that recalled dripping water. The computer then took those sounds, repeated them, and spun them around the speakers that surrounded the audience, creating a wet, sonic space that falls somewhere between a natural environment and a digital one.

Ron Kuivila performed a piece from his laptop that incorporated dial tones, ring tones, and FAX machine sounds from different countries, combining them with actual analog telephones stationed around the room, the sort you will remember if you were alive in the 1970s. The dial tones and the ringing telephones with their bell gave a nostalgic quality to the piece, a reminder that sounds can go extinct like wild animals. Now we can hear them in a gallery, but how much longer will they be found in their natural habitat?

These performances took place at Audiotheque, a studio in the ArtCenter South Florida building at 924 Lincoln Rd. Gustavo Matamoros, the sound artist and director of Subtropics, has turned it into a performance space that seats around 40 people, surrounded by speakers. The intimate atmosphere complements the music, allowing the electronics to stay at a comfortable volume while still conveying subtle nuances. And the audience feels at home, enough to ask a lot of questions after the performance.

The festival included several performances at other locations, including Matamoros’s trio Frozen Music at the Miami Beach Botanical Gardens, also featuring David Dunn and Rene Barge. On a beautiful sunny day, children climbed around the many nooks of the garden, and speakers surrounding the open grassy lawn produced an urban collage of sounds. Chief among the mix was a six-hour recording of Dunn’s electronic automaton, which produces a never-repeating, chaos-driven stream of beeps and hums and bloops, sort of like Finnegan’s Wake performed by an Atari.

The sounds were reminiscent of mockingbirds, and much like Natali’s water drips, they produced a curious effect that sounded both natural and synthetic at the same time. The same can be said of the Botanical Gardens, a beautiful space that achieves much of its beauty through human manipulation of nature, and that can’t entirely escape the rumble of busses and traffic on the surrounding streets.

In a different context, these same sounds can kill. In a lecture the day before, Dunn had described his fascinating work recording the communicative sounds of bark beetles — a parasite that is devastating hardwood forests across North America. Before Dunn, no one realized how chatty the beetles were, as the sounds are very quiet and can only be picked up by special microphones embedded in the tree. Working with biologists, Dunn developed his electronic automaton in part to kill the beetles. By piping the sound into a tree, the beetles become disoriented, uncommunicative, and unable to reproduce.

The Subtropics festival will return in two years, and while at times it may be challenging and provocative, it will absolutely not affect your reproductive abilities.

Meanwhile, if you’d like to catch more music and sound art along these lines, check out Phill Niblock’s piece Aomoni Water playing at the 24/7 outdoor Listening Gallery (underneath the awning) at 800 Lincoln Rd., Miami Beach. On Sat., April 20, you can check out The Treble Girls at the Miami Beach Botanical Garden, 2000 Convention Ctr. Dr., Miami Beach ,at 5:00 p.m. –  a mother-daughter duo featuring flute, violin, voice, and electronics. Part of the 12 Nights of Electronic Music and Art, a production of The Feta Foundation; 12nights.org; $7.

Image: Dafna Naphtali

In a cool collaboration of poetic fusion, MCB dancers Sara Esty, Leigh Ann Esty and Nicole Stalker are working with poet Barabara Lisette Anderson as part of the month-long O, Miami Poetry Festival, for one night.

Mixed abilities dance first occurred to Karen Peterson in 1990. She received a phone call from a wheelchair bound woman who wanted a part in a ballet.

“My direction to her was to write about her physical memories, and that gave us the direction for our duet. She gave me incredible inspiration to do something I’d never done before. I was really bored as a choreographer and she gave me something to sink my teeth into,” says Peterson, a veteran dancer and choreographer. For the next 23 years, mixed abilities dance would be the foundation of her internationally known dance company, Karen Peterson and Dancers. “It’s a force and an energy that keeps going round and round,” she says.

Known as KPD for short, the company has featured about 35 choreographies and toured throughout Florida, the United States, Europe and the Americas. About half of the works use mixed ability dancers, which includes a range of formally trained students from New World School of the Arts and Florida International University, as well as a paraplegic, a quadriplegic, and a dancer with Spina Bifida and others. Among the company’s upcoming performances, it will hold its more extensive “23^rd season” concert on April 11 and 12, before heading to Belgrade in May.

On stage, Peterson’s dancers with disabilities are tightly woven with abled body dancers and are equally supportive to execute complex, professional caliber choreography. “It’s a particular art form that has developed along the way,” says Peterson, who has collaborated with the Miami String Project, among other entities, that she said helped attract new audiences. Her clever use of lighting, shadows, backdrops, and mixed media add another element of entertainment to the company’s performances./
Peterson talked to Artburst about the special qualities of mixed-abilities dance, her upcoming performance and how this art form has transforms lives.

What is the process of turning people with disabilities into dancers?

A: I use movements that work best on their bodies. Say there’s a dancer who can only move his right elbow and his head, so you of think of how many ways you can find that uses those body parts. You find common denominators as a group. These are simple tasks. It’s almost like working with a palette and meshing together certain colors.

Your company breaks the mold of traditional dance. Therefore, what is your idea of a dancer?

Someone with an open hearted, generous spirit of physicality that needs to be shared with others. Intimate, honest and willing to be flexible and patient and willing to be part of a creative process, where you don’t know where you’re going, but at the end of the line there will be something that’s waiting for me.

How do you convince a disabled person that they can actually perform as a dancer? And how have abled body dancers embraced the concept.

My experience is that it’s not for everyone. I don’t think you really need to sell the idea. I think dancers have decided that it’s something that they want to do. They understand my vision and my work and that they are part of the creative process. Both disabled and abled body dancers balance the other out 50 percent.

What type of impact has performing had on some of your dancers with disabilities?

On March 10, we had a performance with 190 students with learning disabilities from Miami middle and high schools. The kids really love it. They usually don’t get the opportunity to train with dance instructors and it’s a very supportive day. They all love to move and dance. Despite their learning disability, there was never a moment when they didn’t want to dance and express themselves.

From where do you draw inspiration to create dance pieces?

Some are driven by music. Some are driven by visual images such as animals, water and trees. But this particular concert (April 11, 12) follows a narrative of one man and two women drinking in a café and what can happen. The dancers range in age from 28 to 63, so there’s a wide-range of abilities and a wide-range of ages. That’s a great maturity and a great weight to the work.

What are some of the most memorable experiences that you’ve had with your dance company over the years?

I feel very lucky. I’ve met some beautiful people along the way. We had a performance in New York City in 2003 at a mixed-ability festival. My first teaching residency in Brazil, which was the first thing I did by myself out of the country. We were welcomed, accepted and embraced in their country. And in 2010, when I made my dancers jump from their wheelchairs into my pool. We video-taped them underwater and the footage was used as a backdrop to one of the performances.

Karen Peterson and Dancers Season of Dance With New Work, Thursday, April 11 at 8:00 p.m. and Friday, April 12 at 8:00 p.m., Miami-Dade County Auditorium On Stage Black Box, 2901 W. Flagler St., Miami; tickets $18, $13 students; www.karenpetersondancers.org.