M Lamar Makes Out in the Tropics Super Topical

Various performers this season have brought us thought-provoking takes on black masculinity. Both Nora Chipaumire’s powerful paean for her father, presented in December at the Little Haiti Cultural Center, and Shaneeka Harrell’s look at Cassius Clay, shown at the Miami Light Box during O, Miami, examined how the image of…

Hip-Hop Plus Classical Equals Elastic Dance

MDC Live Arts closes out their season on Saturday with the RUBBERBANDance Group, a Montreal-based dance company that seamlessly fuses hip hop and ballet aesthetics to create a unique movement experience. Speaking from his hotel room during a Philadelphia tour stop, company founder Victor Quijada speaks more like a scientist…

Nadia Beugré and an African Woman’s Voice That Soars in Dance

Tigertail Productions will present Ivory Coast dancer and choreographer Nadia Beugré in a solo performance this weekend at the Miami-Dade County Auditorium, as its month long FLA-FRA festival approaches its end. And what a finale this will be. Beugré has been described by the New York Times as “wild like…

Ballet Memphis Flows Like the River That Runs Through It

The Tennessee-based company Ballet Memphis will be serving up quite a feast, with a three-part program featuring works by exciting North American choreographers Trey McIntyre, Julia Adam and Matthew Neenan this Saturday at the South Miami-Dade Cultural Arts Center, presented by Culture Shock Miami. The company was founded in 1986…

Miami Dance Festival Showcases Choreographers at Work

This year’s Miami Dance Festival features an afternoon of new works this Sunday, covering a variety of dance forms during PAN (Performing Arts Network) Choreographers at Work. For instance, there’s Nina Martin’s tribute to Marcel Marceau. And there’s Colleen Farnum’s original work In Everything I See You, a dance piece…

The Wooden Magnificents Disappoints at the Arsht

The Magnificents, like many of the House Theatre of Chicago’s productions, is driven by its transformational set design, drop-down projection screen, and impressive aerial showmanship. The term “dog-and-pony show” applies, though in this case the live animals onstage are a rabbit and a parakeet.

Bill Burr Takes Comedy Too Far, and It’s Great

Bill Burr is one angry and funny dude. At least that was the consensus from his new hour of comedy, which he let Miami in on Friday night during the South Beach Comedy Festival. Burr got noticed for his recurring role on the second season Chappelle’s Show and has since…

Miami Dance Festival Kicks Off at the Colony Theater

Whether or not you have a background in modern dance, Delma Iles and her company of dancers at Momentum Dance Company want spectators to look beyond the movements they see on stage. Drawing inspiration from modernist paintings, classical music, and devastating real life experiences, the company’s artistic director and her…

What Will Happen When We Join Sirens in Space?

Miami-based choreographer Pioneer Winter and visual artist Jared Sharon have invited us all to a “crazy space pirate Mean Girls and an operatic cyborg-like ship mixed with film projection, contemporary dance and extreme beauty regimens.” This new project, Sirens in Space, premiers on Thursday at the Miami-Dade County Auditorium’s versatile…

Wynwood Walls Inspire Miami City Ballet and Justin Peck

Commissioned to create a new dance for Miami City Ballet, Justin Peck ran up against a wall — many, in fact. Lucky for him, these loomed among the ones with vibrant colors and suggestive figures that have turned the streets of Wynwood into an open-air art museum, a source of…

Dancing Through Jewish Exodus and Survival

It’s not really news that modern dance companies have experienced extraordinary pressures since the 1970s, with seasoned companies closing their doors and celebrated choreographers fleeing for shelter to coveted academic posts. However, New York-based Carolyn Dorfman Dance has defied the trends, remaining independent and producing critically acclaimed, avant-garde modern choreographies…

Romance and Laughs at Actors’ Playhouse’s First Date

The first date in Actors’ Playhouse’s First Date is neither a hellish mismatch nor a heavenly connection. It’s rather like most of them—generic questions, nervous laughter, the occasional foot-in-mouth blunder—except for the irrepressible song and dance that erupt from the voices in the characters’ heads. In this musical comedy, which…

Flamenco’s Fiery Duende at Arsht Center

Miami can’t seem to get enough flamenco. And the Arsht Center for the Performing Arts has been ground zero for satisfying that desire, bringing in numerous international flamenco stars and festivals. Like this year’s eighth annual Flamenco Festival inside the John S. and James L. Knight Concert Hall. The star…

Miami Open Stage Showcases Talented Local Choreographers

Organizers Hannah Baumgartner and Diego Salterini — co-founders of Dance Now! Miami — created Miami Open Stage for talented Miami choreographers to showcase their new work. They also intended it as a venue for dance enthusiasts looking for a chance to discover what’s happening on the ground floor, and to…

Rude Mechs: A Theater Company’s Take on LARPing

Named after the group of laborers that mounts plays in the woods in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, this Austin-based collective launched in 1995 after its members, then undergrads at the University of Texas, studied the Bard in barns. It was all part of a summer retreat called Shakespeare at…