© 2024 WLRN
MIAMI | SOUTH FLORIDA
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

Miami City Ballet Kicks Off New Year With Catalán Folk Music And Bare Feet

Miami City Ballet for the first time is dipping its (bare) toes into the work of famous Spanish choreographer Nacho Duato this Friday. The work, “JardiTancat,” is a soulful and lyrical piece, performed in barefoot to Catalán folk music. It is one of four works making up the ballet’s Program II, See the Music.

Miami City Ballet artistic director Lourdes Lopez has made bringing new works to the company one of her priorities.

“I want to show people how diverse and distinct dance is — to break the idea of what ballet is,” Lopez says. “If you come to this program, you’re going to look at this and you’re going to say it’s hard to connect the dots other than there are four great choreographers.”

A mixture of old and new round out the rest of Program II See the Music. It opens with preeminent American choreographer George Balanchine’s “Concerto Barocco.” He’s also responsible for the quote eponymous to the program: “See the music, hear the dance.”

Lopez says it’s easy to see what Balanchine meant by “see the music” in “Concerto Barocco,” as the two female soloists represent the first and second violins.

“When you listen to a piece of music and hear the different layers, a violin concerto, when they come in, when they go out, when the cellos take over. Then, all the sudden, you see that same coming and going, the entrances, the exits, going on, on stage. That’s what I believe Mr. B. meant,” she says.

Barocco is followed by a piece choreographed for Miami City Ballet, “Chutes and Ladders,” by young, up-and-coming choreographer Justin Peck. The finale is another work choreographed for MCB, “Symphonic Dances,” by one of the most in demand choreographers of the day: Alexei Ratmansky.

Program II See the Music starts out at the Adrienne Arsht Center in Miami running from Jan. 10-12. Broward Performing Arts Center performances are Jan. 24-26 and the Kravis Center’s Jan. 31-Feb. 2.

More On This Topic