Argentinian Aslan reinterprets the master of jazz-tango fusion Astor Piazolla with his quintet, in the last performance of MDC Live Arts season.

The MDC Live Arts series closes its 2012-13 season with the Brooklyn-based bassist and Argentinean bandleader Pablo Aslan and his quintet performing Piazzolla in Brooklyn this Saturday, April 20, at The Colony Theatre. Aslan’s work from his 2011 recording and follow-up to his Latin Grammy and Grammy-nominated Tango Grill, continues a tradition in fusion of jazz and tango first explored by Astor Piazzolla, tango composer and bandonéon virtuoso, the father of nuevo tango in the 1950s.

After World War II both jazz and tango moved out of the dance halls and ballrooms and into the popular clubs and concert halls, both becoming music to listen to with a much more diminished role for dancing. What saxophonist Charlie Parker and the other early beboppers were doing for jazz, Argentinean Piazzolla was doing for tango.

Piazzolla, while living in New York, was looking for commercial success in the United States, which led to his jazz/tango work Take Me Dancing, recorded in 1959. His nuevo tango introduced sax and electric guitar to tango, mixed electric and acoustic instruments, and fused harmonic and melodic structures.

Miami Herald, JazzTimes and Artburst contributor and critic Fernando González wrote in his 2013 Grammy-nominated liner notes for Piazzolla in Brooklyn that “the Piazzolla of Take Me Dancing was a musician desperately juggling artistic ambitions and subsistence needs. He was back in New York City, where he had spent most of his childhood, but now with a wife and two kids, and looking for a fresh new start for a sputtering career.

“The pearl of this work was supposed to be Take Me Dancing, a recording of both originals and jazz standards interpreted by his Jazz Tango Quintet, comprising electric guitar, vibes, piano, and bass, plus small percussion.”

The recording was anything but a commercial success, and as González recalls, even Piazzolla remarked how dreadful it was. However, his ideas about jazz-tango served to inspire Aslan to reevaluate the work and give it an open-minded listen. A master himself in the fusion of the languages of jazz and tango for the last 20 years, Aslan revisited Piazzolla’s pieces with the sensibility of jazz.

In his interview with González, Aslan says of Take Me Dancing that “the themes and the ideas were very strong and original, but some of them just went by too fast. I felt there were many places where the music could be opened up and developed further. That was the Eureka moment, when I realized that the material in this record had a potential that just needed to be unleashed.” González further says that the arrangements by Piazzolla for nine of those original 1959 pieces became the “road map” for Aslan’s Piazzolla in Brooklyn. Besides having the earlier work as a guide, one important element that Aslan had that Piazzolla didn’t was “an ensemble of musically bilingual players as knowledgeable and comfortable with the vocabulary, syntax, and rhythms of tango as they are with jazz.”

Piazzolla in Brooklyn should not be confused for a tribute album or a remake. Instead it is the culmination of an ongoing conversation between jazz and tango, over 50 years in the making.

As part of MDC Live Arts’ commitment to create meaningful educational experiences, two classes will be offered for MDC students, geared towards providing a musical and historical framework to this fusion of jazz and tango. In the first class, González leads a multimedia, curated listening session that will explore the music of Piazzolla within the history and evolution of tango. The second class is a live music clinic led by Aslan for NWSA music students that traces the innovations and techniques that popularized tango and jazz in the Americas. Both events offer students a unique opportunity to draw connections across cultures, nations, generations, and genres.

MDC Live presents Pablo Aslan Quintet on Sat., April 20 at 8:00 p.m., the Colony Theatre, 1040 Lincoln Rd.,, Miami Beach. Tickets are $25 for general public and $10 for MDC students; 305 237-3010; www.mdclivearts.org.

When performances are “based on” something, we all get that the inspiration is real, the interpretation not recognizable. Then there is the up-coming concert from the Montreal dance company Compagnie Marie Chouinard, which will feature a truly novel way of re-imagining an original work. As one of the last of Tigertail Productions offerings this season, the piece “Henri Michaux: Mouvements” is both avant-garde and accessible. It is based on a 1951 French book, which combined poetry and 64 pages of India ink drawings, black-and-white images that were, according to the choreographer Chouinard, a “feast of bursting lines, spots and kaleidoscopic arms,” which she then translated to a dance for the stage. True to the source material, the dancers are all dressed in black, the stage is white, and they morph into silhouettes – they are animated drawings, dancers, and moving art works all at once. Not surprisingly, Chouinard — who establisher her company in 1990 and has won numerous awards since then — has a background in set, costume and lighting design as well, which all comes out in her complete and stunning creations. “Mouvements” comes to the Colony Theatre (1040 Lincoln Rd., Miami Beach) on Friday and Saturday, at 8:30 p.m., with an opening each night of “Etude for Duets”; cost is $25, $35 $50; tigertail.org, www.mariechouinard.com.

See also the interview with marie Chouinard in the Miami Herald, www.miamiherald.com/2013/04/11/3338438/poems-drawings-inspired-new-piece.html

At 4:00 p.m. on Friday, March 22, hundreds of people were descending on South Florida for Ultra Fest, the Sony-Ericsson Open, and spring break festivities on the beach. In a world apart and oblivious to the vehicular chaos, the eight members of Dance Now Ensemble (DNE) — the six dancers that make up the company and co-directors Hannah Baumgarten and Diego Salterini — were hard at work all day on their upcoming presentation Songs of Spring, which will premiere on Friday, March 29 at The Colony Theatre on Lincoln Road.

It was the last hour of a full day of rehearsals and company class at the Little Haiti Cultural Center, where the company is in residence. The dancers were in the center of one of the building’s dance studios. In two circles of three people each, the dancers were rehearsing what looked like a blossoming flower.  “As cheesy as this might sound, this needs to be grandiose!” exclaimed Salterini. To which Baumgarten added, “imagine a Busby Berkeley musical.”

And you could picture Busby high on a crane filming the geometric explosion of a water ballet or the blossom of many a chorus girl in feathers. Once performed to satisfaction, the cast of young, sweaty talents was excused for a short break before running the whole piece. “Take your pee, take your water, and take your shoes off.  When do you want your toes to split? The night of dress or today?” And on that quip from Baumgarten, the studio emptied for a moment.

The stage may be the place where a dance is dressed in costumes and made up in light, but the studio is the real sacred space where the dance is birthed, shaped, nurtured, disciplined and then finally set free to greet the world. Songs of Spring is much like that, celebrating the triumphant awakening of all glorious and youthful things. During the run-through Salterini directs the company to “open your eyes, smile, discover the world with your bodies…see what’s happening.” Conceived to commemorate the week shared by both Passover and Easter this year, which falls during DNE’s spring concert, Baumgarten says, “both holidays celebrate life’s renewal.” Themes of spring and of flora bursting from hibernation dominate the choreographic translation.

The piece is set to one of Mozart’s most popular serenades, “Eine kleine Nachtmusik,” or “A Little Night Music,” which will be performed live during the concert by the South Beach Chamber Ensemble under the direction of Michael Andrews. Instantly recognizable from the opening fanfare, this piece of music seems to exist for the sake of music itself and rejoices in a celebratory tenor.

The four movements were danced with such commitment that one of the ballerina’s bobby pins flew from her hair like a projectile. The piece may look deceptively effortless because the dancers are so strong, but in truth it is a very difficult piece, with many quick changes in direction and petit allegro warping at full speed into lifts and quirky hip undulations. The dance could be a segment in Disney’s Fantasia with great illustrative elegance paired to flourishes of whimsy. It is reminiscent of the fleet footedness and interactions of Paul Taylor’s Arden Court with the one-to-one musical relationship of Mark Morris’ Gloria.  Listening to Baumgarten and Salterini count out a waltz beat or snap and clap the precise turns in a canon, you become aware that nothing is left to chance and every single note and rest has been mapped out, translated, and executed.

The directors prepare their dancers throughout the rehearsal process and especially in company class to become flexible, with different syncopation, qualities, and dynamics of movement and music. Their meshed backgrounds in rhythmic jazz, contemporary and classical ballet, Graham and Limon are ingredients introduced in class time that ultimately informs the rehearsal process.

And in this case in particular, Baumgarten adds, “with live musicians it becomes extremely important to know where the notes are because the tempo may change from the recorded version you get used to in the studio.” To which Salterini added an anecdote from his earlier days, “You could always tell if the Maestro of the orchestra was in a hurry because the run through and rehearsal would end about 30 minutes earlier than the night before.”

The program will also include Salterini’s 7 Duets in 7 Movements, which includes his previously choreographed duets presented together, and Baumgarten’s exploration of relationships covering new ground, in a departure from her usual edginess, in 8 Actions of Love.

Songs of Spring will be presented Friday and Saturday, March 29 and 30 at 8:00 p.m. at The Colony Theatre, 1040 Lincoln Rd., Miami Beach; Tickets cost $35; dancenowmiami.org, 305-975-8489 or The Colony Theatre, 305-674-1040.

As the dance title suggests, “Songs of Spring” celebrates the season of rebirth from the six dancers of the local troupe align with directors Hannah Baumgarten and Diego Salterini, in a program that also includes “7 Duets in 7 Movements” and “8 Actions of Love.”

Last year, Out Magazine bestowed upon Kyle Abraham, dancer/choreographer/director of Abraham.In.Motion (A.I.M.), one of the more interesting and often cited “sound-bites,” describing Abraham as “the best and brightest creative talent to emerge from New York City in the age of Obama.”

So if this is the “age of Obama,” where do we currently stand on the issues of race, gender, and identity? As an artist who investigates those topics, we asked Abraham if his work echoes a delicate hopefulness or a cautionary tale in our current social evolution.

“I think of my work as a more organic response to my experiences. And with that, I’m interested in exposing reality through an abstracted lens that allows the viewer to create his or her own outcome.

“Ultimately, I hope that the work spawns action. Even when celebrating uplifting achievements like President Obama’s recent Inaugural Speech, which was filled with inclusion and hope, we now need to take part in the follow through, to open the eyes, minds, and hearts of those who seemed blinded to see the unbalanced injustices in regards to gender issues and sexual orientation.

“It is the reality of both the joy and hardship that I’m focused on. When people see the work, they’re entering a theater with their own personal history. I like to, hopefully, show them mine. And see if a spark can be set off.”

The sparks were set off clearly on Friday night, Feb. 1, at The Colony Theater as MDC Live Arts presented Abraham.In.Motion’s Live! The Realest MC. The mixed-media piece is a luminous affair with lighting and projection design by Dan Scully and film by Carrie Schneider. Schneider’s films of running children in repetitive frame loops were projected on the bottom stage-left corner or on the floor under the dancers. Instead of projecting light from the booms, Scully physically and visibly set the lights on stage washing the dancers in warm hues while the rest of the stage was a monochromatic affair of stark bright lights against the black track suits with shiny silver inseams made by costume designer Kristi Wood.

The story of Pinocchio wanting to be a “real boy” serves as a metaphor as Abraham similarly searches for a way for his protagonist to assimilate or hide his identity in the more accepted physical movement, dress and posing of a male hip-hop dancer.

Abraham begins like Pinocchio as he comes to life trying out his appendages as he struggles to stand. In a brilliant physical translation, Abraham moves his joints like hinges — part puppet, part pop and lock — and deftly rolls over the tops of his feet as he falls or rises from the ground. He is costumed in a shiny sequenced top of bronze with muted gold pants, in an obvious contrast to the aforementioned tracksuits worn by all the other dancers.

Clothing and stages of undress were significant. The rules of assimilation are coded from head to toe as even the women with collars up mug and front an attitude to the audience.  The uniform tracksuits become such an intimidating shield that as dancers appear in shorts or tank tops, the sense of their vulnerability without their previous armor is tenfold. One humorous and telling moment occurs between two of the male dancers, Chalvar Monteiro and Maleek Washington. While a voice-over gives instruction on how to pose your arms and do a step, both men perform completely different interpretations of the instructions. Washington in the full tracksuit does the more acceptable hip-hop moves, while Monteiro in short shorts sashays and flexes his arms in perfect queer-boy fashion.

But the most apparent struggle with the inner self and the veneer of conformity was Abraham’s solo as he spoke into a mic set on stage, sometimes crying “he hit me mommy… I didn’t do anything” — or sometimes repeating a haunting chant and rap in a deep angry voice, “they held me down.” He would speak and move and try to do things the manly way, only to lose his composure and fall back into a crying fit, check himself, and return to the angrier posturing of a tough while he continued his rap without the crying.

The overall vocabulary of the piece was a seamless blend between hip-hop posing and electric modern movement, as the dancers spun like sharp precision blades in repetitive turns born from the solar plexus as their flung arms propelled them through space.  Interspersed were verbal moments, as when Washington tried his pick-up lines on a non-responsive female — and then when no one is looking tries to pick up the men. Men hold hands with men in stolen moments and are dropped as the ensemble gathers on stage.  Overall, there is a tension and pain in this struggle of trying to sublimate one’s true desire and assimilating into the body language of the norm.

At first glance, the Pinocchio of this journey has given in. Abraham conforms. In his final struggle as he dances against a piano riff moving in a one-to-one relationship with each note, he performs the hip-hop version of an adagio. He wears no remnant of his original flashy costume, instead it’s the full tracksuit that all the dancers end up in at the end. But just before the lights dim completely, Abraham takes off his jacket and approaches the lip of the stage. He grabs the mic and turns his back to the audience to reveal the back of his shirt all in glittery sequence. Underneath the armor, he is still true to himself.

Whether this is a sign of hope that both natures will coexist, or a sign of despair that even in the “age of Obama” we must still hide our differences, is an outcome only the audience can decide, as Abraham said. Or maybe it’s a question that we cannot answer until the question of differences no longer needs to be asked.

This boy is on fire. And he is headed back to Miami. Choreographer Kyle Abraham, that is. The Pittsburg kid, the Bessie Award winner, the one who now, on occasion, choreographs for the Alvin Ailey Dance Theater, the happy recent recipient of a hefty USA Artist grant,  whose work has been lauded by national critics as “luscious,” “stuttering” and  “complexly self-aware.”

It’s the Kyle Abraham whose work, one way or another, is always exploring our urban community, most especially its often heartbreakingly brittle gender roles and expectations.

Thanks to Miami Dade College’s Live Arts Program, Abraham and company –Abraham.In.Motion — will be performing “Live! The Realest MC” at the Colony Theater on Miami Beach Friday and Saturday.

The “realest” MC? Yep. In fact none other than Pinocchio drives this narrative. After all, what does it mean to be a “real boy?” Especially where Abraham grew up. And so we are back in Abraham’s memories of middle school and high school and issues of just how many distortions one may take on to be accepted.  We are caught in a dance that has as much to do with Voguing in stereotypes of Afro-American masculinity, as what Abraham quite tenderly calls, “Merce Cunningham’s insane acrobatics.”

For all Abraham’s roots in raves and free-style and hip-hop, he has been trained in more classical American lexicon and uses it well.

Still, as important to Abraham as the dance itself, is its social relevance. Indeed, the transformative moments in his life include not only watching a performance of the Bill T. Jones and the Arnie Zane Dance Company while in high school, but hearing them talk of the roots, the need, of each dance.

Wait a minute. Haven’t we here in these United States moved beyond what is described in “Live!” ? Hasn’t national attention to bullying made things really and truly better? “The situation may be improving, but we have a long way to go,” Abraham says. “Fairly recently I presented segments of ‘Live!’ to an urban high school. While in character within some of those segments, I cried on stage. A great many in the audience laughed in response.

“Let’s take a real look at the violence in urban America. A young person may listen to slurs, he or she may be pushed or punched, but at the end of the day, that kid is probably glad not to have been shot. I’d say we have a ways to go.”

Abraham is perhaps best known to Miami audiences for his Bessie-award winning “Radio,” presented in 2012 at the South Miami-Dade Cultural Center.

“’Live!’ is darker than ‘Radio,’” Abraham says. “’Radio’ is about dying. ‘Live!’ is about someone being killed. There is urgency to it.”

Rather than scaring audiences, this has brought them to the show. In a recent “Live!” run in Seattle, “groups of the same people kept coming night after night,” Abraham says. At least as moving for him was a conversation with a man born outside of The States, one who told Abraham how “Live!” had seemed to tell his own story, that of a immigrant, a man who must lose his accent among other links to his past to become accepted.

“This is what I love most,” Abraham says. “People recognizing themselves in my stories, no matter the context.”

Abraham.In.Motion’s “Live! The Realest MC” comes to the Colony Theatre, 1040 Lincoln Rd., Miami Beach, courtesy of MDC Live Arts Friday and Saturday at 8:00 p.m., tickets cost $25; www.mdclivearts.org; 305-237-3010.

A version of this was published in the Huffington Post.

Kyle Abraham and his talented troupe are back – and we are richer for it. Set to a tale of Pinocchio and his wish to be real, this time Abraham has created a piece investigating gender roles in the African-American community and the quest for acceptance. It explores our humanity in the modern digital age, counter pointing the childhood character against the industrialized world.

Abraham.In.Motion’s Live! The Realest MC at The Colony Theater (1040 Lincoln Rd., Miami Beach at 8:00 p.m.) on Friday and Saturday is part of the second season of MDC Live Arts programming. Abraham and A.I.M. will partake in several residency activities this week as well, including master and technique classes with students of New World School of the Arts at MDC campuses; lecture demonstrations on the company’s creative process; and workshops at Inkub8 in Wynwood. Of particular interest and poignancy is Abraham’s specialty workshop “Dance as Identity Ownership,” working with local LGBTQ youth groups and their exploration in finding a voice and facing their own quest for identity (local groups such as Teens for Equality,  Pridelines and Project Leap are all scheduled to be involved).

This emphasis on identity mirrors A.I.M’s assembly of dancers, who come from diverse backgrounds, and the company’s effort to “create an avenue for personal investigation on stage.”

The week will prove to be very busy and intense for the company that is just arriving in Miami on the heels of presenting two other repertory pieces, The Radio Show and Pavement, at the Alabama Dance Festival this past weekend. Touring across the country presenting various works throughout is the product of the tireless and prolific creator behind the company, Mr. Kyle Abraham himself.

Abraham began his training at the Civic Light Opera Academy and the Creative and Performing Arts High School in Pittsburgh. He continued his dance studies in New York, earning a BFA from Purchase College at the State University of New York, and an MFA from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. His choreography has been presented throughout the United States and he has really started to tack up the awards: a 2012 Ford Fellowship, a 2012 Jacob Pillow Dance Award, a 2010 Bessie Award for The Radio Show, and a 2010 Princess Grace Award for Choreography.

Live! The Realest MC takes us on a journey through the intense process of becoming an adult, and a “man,” in an sensual navigation of gender roles in a hip-hop world. Abraham is one of today’s most thought-provoking and creative choreographers out there, and if his previous outing here in Miami last year is anything to go by, it could be the dance highlight of the year.

For more information on the performances and tickets go to www.mdclivearts.org; 305 237-3010. For more information on workshops and classes, including at Inkub8 (2021 N.W. 1^st Pl., Miami), contact Tiffany Madera at tmadera@mdc.edu.

Another preview of Kyle Abraham’s “Live! The Realest MC” appears on the Huffington Post 

Kyle Abraham and his amazing dance troupe return to Miami for a show that mixes urban music, sensual movement, and political commentary.

Rennie Harris Puremovement passed through the Colony Theater in Miami Beach on Nov. 30, as part of its 20th anniversary tour. A native of North Philadelphia, Lorenzo (Rennie) Harris has been dancing since he was 12 and educating since he was 15 years old. He has brought to the proscenium stage the world over the very live and electric dance of the real world stage, the inner-city streets of African-American and Hispanic communities. Rennie Harris Puremovement is committed to the essence of hip-hop, which he states in his program’s biography “is the most important original expression of a new generation.”

The performance last Friday was more a dance party than a show. The fourth wall was non-existent as company co-director Rodney Hill encouraged the audience in his opening speech to join the block party, get up and dance, clap along, and yell out “if you like something and if you don’t like something.”

Stepping, breaking, popping and locking, the company of five men and three women gave name and truth to a virtuosic form of dance that you don’t perform but embody. In the midst of this celebration of, if not life, then the act of living, is an artistic form of whole body, vocal and dramatic expression that claims ownership of personal experience, language and communication. And at its heart is both the signature style of an urban and cultural identity married to the generosity of hip-hop, inviting everyone to partake and participate. Rennie Harris Puremovement was Pure joy.

The first half of the program was a suite Something To Do With Love Volume (1). In four acts, the company moves unrelentingly through many facets of the relationship between men and women to the music of Rain, Ayo and Marvin Gaye’s I Want You, mixed by Kenny Dope. The suite segues into Harris’ Nina Pah-Tina’s Troubled Man with music again by Ayo and Nina Simone and mixed by James Wilcoxson. The piece was a vehicle for the three women of the company, Cystal Frazier, Dinita Askew, and Melanie Cotton, to showcase how soul meets skill and precision.

The second-half opener, 1997’s Continuum, with music mixed by DJ Lee, was reminiscent of circle dances at a party where each person would take a turn in the circle and tag the next one in. The dancers, dressed individually instead of in uniform costumes, showcased their personalities and individual virtuosity as each took a turn in the center spotlight.

The P-Funk piece opens with an astounding spoken word performance by D. Sabela Grimes, an artist/choreographer/dancer from Los Angeles. While contorting his voice using his entire chest, he physically embodied his query, “will these lungs collapse enough for there to be no more breathing?” Set to music by P-Funk and Parliament, it’s a playful and show-stopping romp between the five male dancers.

March of the Antmen turned street dancers into camouflaged soldiers. The piece drew a somber parallel between trench warfare as the dancers crawled along the floor and death by drive-by as one of the company is lost in a gunfire exchange and carried out by the rest.

The final piece Students of the Asphalt Jungle had hints of Brazilian influences with Darrin Ross’s rewrite of the samba styled music by Dutch house artists Goodmen. The piece showcased the men of the company again, bare chested and wearing white capoeira pants. The dance was a climactic, no holds barred performance by the men, in the eclectic mix of martial arts and gymnastics yoga that is break dancing. With head spins, jackhammers, windmills, hand hops, air flares, deadman floats and no-handed somersaults, the men brought the house down and the audience to its feet.

The audience clapped, cheered and yelled along during the whole evening, proving as Grimes said in his earlier spoken word, we truly are “one nation under one groove.”

Pureimprovment came here thanks to MDC Live Arts, mid-way through its 22nd season.

It’s an offspring of Miami Dade College (MDC), which has been a cornerstone of the cultural and artistic life of South Florida for decades. The home of numerous centers, programs, and institutions such as the Miami Book Fair International, the Miami International Film Festival, and the New World School of the Arts, it’s helped shape our literary, theatrical and performance world. That’s reflected in the programming of MDC Live Arts.

Formerly known as Cultura de Lobo, MDC Live Arts was created in 1990, and is now celebrating over two decades of bringing diverse performers from all over the globe to South Florida. The rich artistry is equally matched by the diversity of art forms and cultures that are showcased each year. Its ongoing mission to represent both the diversity of our community and to expose it to globe-spanning artistic disciplines is well represented in their 2012-2013 season.

Along with Rennie Harris, this season’s offerings include dance with the American premier of Spain’s Nuevo Ballet Español and Abraham.In.Motion. Musical performances include Poncho Sanchez at Jazz Under the Stars featuring local artist Nicole Henry; the South Florida premier of Yemen Blues’ Yemenite and blues fusion; and the tribute to tango master Astor Piazzolla by the Argentinean influenced- and Brooklyn-based Pablo Aslan Quintet.

Programming and ticket information for other MDC live 2012-2013 season performances can be found at http://www.mdcliveart