Miami Herald http://www.miamiherald.com/entertainment/story/700913.html
Posted on Fri, Sep. 26, 2008
Avant-garde meets Carnival at 801 Projects
Avant-garde meets Carnival at 801 Projects
BY MIA LEONIN
When Octavio Campos, artistic director of the arts organization Camposition, set up his office in Edificio Jose Marti on the edge of Little Havana, the building's manager gave him free reign of the common area on the second floor.
Two and a half years later, the Cuban-American choreographer known for his daring, sometimes controversial contemporary dance theater has produced 35 events -- an eclectic range of experimental performances, dance-theater productions and workshops -- in what is now called 801 Projects.
''The more I work in this community, the more I believe artists must work together and forge partnerships,'' Campos says. ``It's not enough to worry about your own company's mission.''
Saturday night, Camposition presents Revelation: A Night of New Dance, a program that will underscore Campos' ''come one, come all'' philosophy with two vastly different performances.
The Miami performance of Bolo marks the debut of ERE. Bistoury, an avant-garde company, on the local dance scene.
''They're bringing some hardcore contemporary dance to this town, something we haven't seen in a long time,'' Campos says.
Bistoury co-founders and choreographers Alexey Taran and Carla Forte Sillié are former members of the critically acclaimed Venezuelan company Nuevadanza. Their training draws on an array of disciplines, including classical ballet, ashtanga yoga and contact improvisation. Taran, a native of Cuba, and Forte Sillié who's from Venezuela have performed Bolo in a loft in New York City's SoHo, as well as in alternative spaces in Caracas, Venezuela, and Hermosillo, Mexico. The Miami performance will be staged in the parking lot of 801 Projects.
''Bolo is improvisational,'' Taran, a Guggenheim fellow, explains. ``We want a piece that responds and changes with each new space and audience. Every time we perform it, the result should be different.''
The 801 Projects space will be dedicated to an exhibit of Miami Bridge Youth and Family Services' new arts initiative, Miami Bridge Carnival. Founded by journalist and Barry University professor Celeste Fraser Delgado, the project teams professional artists, writers and musicians with the crisis shelter's young, at-risk clients to teach mask making, drumming and writing inspired by the carnival traditions of Latin America and the Caribbean.
Visual artist Maritza Molina paired up the youngsters and guided them through the process of creating masks from plaster strips and layers of papier-maché. Molina says her collaborative approach inspires respect for the individuality of each mask and its maker.
A similar theme of interactive learning carries over to the project's musical component. Veteran Afro-Cuban dancer and teacher Elena García and drummer Jimmy Daniel have taught Bridge residents the rhythms and dance steps of the Cuban conga. García says she struggled to motivate the teenagers at first, but ``to my surprise, the second day, some had learned the rhythm patterns.''
García says that, like mask-making, the conga teaches teamwork: ``If a little shaker or the big bombo goes off beat, or a person turns in a different direction, the entire routine looks different.''
The dancing and drumming Bridge residents will be featured in a video, but García and Daniel will invite those who attend Saturday's events to participate in a presentation of Cuban conga.
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