By Mary Damiano

	The Merce Cunningham Dance Company

The artistry of Merce Cunningham, recognized by many as America’s greatest living choreographer, will be celebrated with “Merce in Miami”, a city-wide festival which showcase the life and work of this legendary artist. 

The two-week festival will feature the Miami debut of New York’s Merce Cunningham Dance Company at the Carnival Center for the Performing Arts.  One of the highlights of Merce in Miami will be a rare public interview with Cunningham, who will turn 88 in April.  There will also be a music festival featuring the work of Cunningham’s collaborators, including a live performance by Sigur Rós.  Many of South Florida’s arts organizations are teaming up to make Merce in Miami an unforgettable event, with workshops, lectures, and other creative collaborations with Museum of Contemporary Art, New World School of the Arts, Florida Dance Association, Miami Dade College, South Florida Composers Alliance, and the interdisciplinary Sounds Arts Workshop (iSAW) - producer of the Subtropics Experimental Music and Sound Arts Festival.  

	Merce Cunningham Photo: Annie Leibovitz

“Merce Cunningham’s pioneering vision has influenced all disciplines of the arts world,” says Michael Hardy, president and CEO of Carnival Center. “Carnival Center’s city-wide tribute incorporating dance, music, education, and innovation is the most fitting way to fully represent his 50-year-career and the immense impact he has had on our culture.”

“Merce in Miami” will feature performances of five masterworks by Cunningham, including the world premiere on February 23 of his newest work eyeSpace, a piece commissioned by Carnival Center for this festival, in which Cunningham’s choreography is united for the first time with designs by Miami visual artist Daniel Arsham and music by David Behrman.

Three other major Cunningham works to be performed on the stage of the Ziff Ballet Opera House include the U.S. premiere of the revival of CRWDSPCR (1993); Crises (1960), which former MCDC Musical Director John Cage has described as a dance concerned with decisive moments in the relationship between a man and four women.

“When two people are together, they are bound not only by invisible ties, but by actual elastic bands,” says Cage.

There will also be a performance of Split Sides (2003), which will feature a rare live performance by the Icelandic ambient rockers Sigur Rós and recorded music by Radiohead.

“Merce in Miami” will culminate with Cunningham’s mammoth masterwork Ocean, which will be staged in the Knight Concert Hall. Fourteen dancers will perform in the round as the audience sits around and above the dancers in a raked, circular stadium configuration, while 112 musicians surround the audience.

The festival will also include dance students from New World School of the Arts, who will perform a series of free public performances in the Carnival Center’s lobbies, including two world premieres.  While Cunningham’s dances are performed throughout the complex, Gustavo Matamoros’ 19th edition of the Subtropics Experimental Music and Sound Festival (ST-19) will present music by many of Cunningham’s most distinguished collaborators.

“With ‘Merce in Miami,’ Carnival Center aims for what a performing arts center can do best: Provide a home for the finest in the performing arts, reveal connections between who we are and what we create, celebrate artists, nurture new work, collaborate with other arts and teaching organizations to broaden the artistic experience for all our audiences,” says Hardy.

	Adrea Weber and Cedric Andrieux in Ocean Photo: Tony Dougherty

Merce Cunningham was born in Centralia, Washington and studied tap dancing in his youth.  He received his first formal training in dance at Cornish College of the Arts, where he met future life-partner and collaborator John Cage.  After moving to New York and attending the American School of Ballet, Cunningham became a soloist in Martha Graham’s dance company.  He formed the Merce Cunningham Dance Company in the summer of 1953, when he took a group of dancers who had been working with him in New York to Black Mountain College, a progressive liberal arts school near Asheville, North Carolina. The company has collaborated with a number of renowned artists, including Jasper Johns Frank Stella, Andy Warhol, and Robert Morris.

In recognition of Cunningham’s influence in all aspects of the arts and across all demographics, Carnival Center will also offer residency workshops, master classes and activities on campus and in the community, including collaborations with the Florida Dance Association and Youth Expressions, a nonprofit arts education program for high school students based in Miami’s Little Haiti. Miami audiences will be introduced to the historical as well as the innovative aspects of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company through workshops and seminars that will focus on everything from computer-generated choreography to dance lighting and technical production.

For a complete schedule of events for “Merce in Miami”, visit merceinmiami.org.

“Merce in Miami” is only one facet of what’s coming up on Miami’s dance horizon.  Several other companies, including the American Ballet Theatre, Dance Now Ensemble, the Miami Contemporary Dance Company and tap dancer Savion Glover will also perform in Miami over the next few weeks.

Dance Now Ensemble
The Dance Now! Ensemble, (DNE) now in its seventh season, will premiere Donne: Mothers, Daughters, Sisters, Lovers…, February 17-18, at the Byron Carlyle Theatre in Miami.

	Dance Now Chronicles

Donne, which means “women” in Italian, is the second of DNE’s concert presentations with an Italian title, an influence of Roman born co-director, Diego Salterini. Donne is inspired by the lives of the women of this predominantly female company.  Donne: Mothers, Daughters, Sisters, Lovers…, offers up the marriage of modern, jazz, ballet and yoga movement for which DNE has become known.

“Since the inception of this company, we have experienced a lot through the lives of our dancers,” says Salterini.  “From marriages and births, to the death of one of our founding dancers due to cancer, to another member’s triumph over the disease, Donne pays homage to them all.”

Encore presentations of Donne will be presented May 11, 2007 at the Colony Theatre on Miami Beach and at the Hollywood Central Performing Arts Center, June 1-3.  For tickets and more information, call the box office at 305-867-4194, or 305-975-8489. 

Savion Glover

Tap dance genius Savion Glover will perform his show Classical Savion, February 20 at Broward Center for the Performing Arts and February 22 at the Carnival Center.  The program, which will feature Glover tap dancing on stage in front of an orchestra of 20 musicians, will include xcerpts from Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons, Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto, Stars & Stripes Forever as well as other works.  Tickets are available through TicketMaster or at the Carnival Center and Broward Center box office.  For more information, visit concertfla.org.

Miami Contemporary Dance Company

The Miami Contemporary Dance Company, lead by artistic director Ray Sullivan, will perform the world premiere of Love Without Permission (Amor Sin Permiso), a tribute to the love between non-traditional couples.  The piece, which was choreographed by Sullivan, will be paired with an encore presentation of The Death of Garcia Lorca, an abstract work which examines the tragic end of 20^th century Spanish poet and playwright Federico Garcia Lorca.   The performances will take place at the Colony Theatre on Lincoln Road, Friday, Feruary 23, and Saturday, February 24, at 8 p.m.  Tickets are available through Ticketmaster and the Colony box office, 305-674-1040.  For more information, visit miamicontemporarydance.org.

American Ballet Theatre
Recently honored by Congress as “America’s National Ballet Company”, the American Ballet Theatre, will perform Swan Lake with a full symphony orchestra, March 8-11 at Carnival Center for the Performing Arts.  Presented by the Concert Association of Florida, the five performances of Swan Lake are ABT’s only Florida engagement, and its first South Florida engagement in six years.

	The American Ballet Theatre performs Swan Lake

ABT’s engagement has an added significance for CAF President Judy Drucker.

“It’s fitting that we present American Ballet Theatre this year, in our first season at the Carnival Center for the Performing Arts,” says Drucker.  “It is one of the greatest ballet companies in the world, representative of both the high level of artistry that we present and the level of artistry that needs to be presented at the new theater.”