Sol Ruiz: Positive Vibration Nation
Who wouldn’t like to be a superhero, especially these days? Miami-bred, Cuban-rooted singer/songwriter/musician Sol Ruiz’s superpower is music. Which she unleashes in Positive Vibration Nation, a “multimedia music theater rock guaguanco opera.” Whew.
Shamar Wayne Watt: Dawning of the Suns
Spiritual revival and the raw power of the dancing community, whether in a rave, a street dance cypher, or church, ignite Shamar Watt’s Dawning of the Suns. A fiercely mesmerizing performer, Watt has enthralled Miami audiences in Nora Chipaumire’s portrait of myself as my father (for which he won a Bessie award) at The Light Box in 2016, and earlier this month in Pioneer Winter’s Birds of Paradise. For his Here & Now piece, he draws on a personal, spiritual sense of mission.
Kayla Castellon & Patricia Rose Suarez: Closed Rehearsal
Classmates, dance mates, roommates and best friends Kayla Castellon and Patricia Rose Suarez celebrate friendship, youth, play and transformation in the actually quite open Closed Rehearsal.
José Manuel Domínguez: Watch Out, Joe!
Theater artist José Manuel Dominguez knows about being different – as an immigrant, and as someone who can’t see. But Watch Out, Joe! explores other people’s anxiety at dealing with those who are different. “There’s a moment when I say ‘blind’ and I’m not talking about me,” Dominguez says. “I’m talking about you.”
Enrique Villacreses: GoldenSociety
Dance and filmmaker/human rocket Enrique Villacreses takes a sci fi flight in GoldenSociety, following his wild imagination and his exhilarating, double-take inducing, hiphop-gaga-modern movement style to create a surreal vision of futuristic people in a subterranean world.
Dorothy Hindman: Questions We Don’t Dare Ask Ourselves
Dorothy Hindman’s Here & Now piece challenges the audience, her musicians, and herself. An acclaimed new music composer and professor at University of Miami’s Frost School of Music, she had to venture into foreign theatrical territory – lighting, video, directing. That’s the turf for Here & Now’s younger artists; and of Hindman’s sister Christine Dolen, the doyenne of Miami theater critics, and their father, an accomplished actor.
Brittany Williams: Swamp Body – Recollections of the Salt Water Railroad
Activism is in Brittany Williams’ blood. So is street dance. So is the legacy of her Bahamian ancestors and the struggle of Black people in Florida. She brings them to moving life in Swamp Body – Recollections of the Salt Water Railroad: embodied ritual, celebration, protest, struggle.
Lighting up the Dark: Shamel Pitts and TRIBE Residency at the Light Box
Collaborate to create. That’s the center of our latest story on powerful dancemaker Shamel Pitts, whose riveting new work with his innovative AfroFuturist collective TRIBE has been commissioned by Miami Light Project and YoungArts. Our resident writer Jordan Levin visits with Shamel and his TRIBE co-creators during their recent residency at The Light Box, to explore how coming together empowers Shamel’s singular vision.
Randy Valdes: Cuba, Art and Life on Film
Randy Valdes is consumed by filmmaking and captivated by Cuba. Miami Light Project, and their frequent collaborator FUNDARTE, have been integral to both.
Carla Forte & Alexey Taran: Life as Improv
Improvisation is not only at the heart of artist couple Carla Forte and Alexey Taran’s work, but how they live. They’ve hopscotched from Cuba to Venezuela to New York to Europe to Miami, always looking for new ways to create, live and stay true to what they love.
