BEST BETS
• A Miami First: Miami will finally get a look at Susan Marshall & Company's poetic, tremendously resonant dance theater March 14-15 at the Colony, courtesy of Tigertail Productions.• Homegrown Talent: Often provocative, sometimes frustrating, occasionally subversive -- but never boring -- Miami dance-performance artist Octavio Campos presents his most ambitious piece, The Bugchasers, which looks at body culture and AIDS, at the Carnival Center for the Performing Arts Oct. 25-27.• Of Men and Women: The all-female Urban Bush Women have always offered physically dynamic, emotionally powerful dance theater. They join up with male troupe Jant-Bi for The Beauty of Little Things, the result of an exchange project with Africa, on March 15 at the Caleb Auditorium, presented by Miami Dade College.-- JORDAN LEVIN
Miami City Ballet's most ambitious new production, a dance-theater work on AIDS from unpredictable Miami artist Octavio Campos, the return of American Ballet Theater in another fairy tale classic, and a compelling array of contemporary dance from the United States, India, Spain, Africa and Brazil highlight this dance season.
MCB performs its most significant commission ever, a new work with choreography by Twyla Tharp, one of the most important modern dance choreographers of the past 40 years, with an original score by punk-icon turned songwriting-auteur Elvis Costello. The still untitled piece premieres March 28 at the Carnival Center for the Performing Arts in MCB's Program IV. The company opens Oct. 12 with one of its brightest Balanchine gems, the evening-length abstract work Jewels.
Always provocative Miami dance and performance artist Campos tackles a controversial subject in his first major commission, from the Carnival Center for the Performing Arts and Miami Dade College. In The Bugchasers, Campos looks at AIDS, the quest for the perfect body, and the unsettling phenomenon of young men who seek to become HIV positive Oct. 25-27 at the center's Studio Theater.
The Concert Association of Florida brings back American Ballet Theater, the star-packed troupe that brought its lavish production of Swan Lake to Miami last spring, in a new production of another 19th-century classic, Sleeping Beauty, March 13-16 at the Carnival Center.
The new season also brings a wealth of troupes from abroad. The Centro Cultural Español adds dance to its visual art, music and film offerings with contemporary Spanish troupes Provisional Danza and Alta Realitat, in October. The Carnival Center has Brazil's Companhia de Danca Deborah Colker in Rota on Oct. 5, with a giant abstract Ferris wheel and the virtuoso athleticism at which Brazilian dancers excel. The lovely Nrityagram Dance Ensemble, which brings a contemporary sensibility to exquisite performances of classical Indian dance, is at the Hollywood Central Performing Arts Center from March 7-9. Karen Peterson & Company brings the Ballo Dance Company from Montenegro to its Excello Dance Space on Oct. 12-13.
Ballet Gamonet opens its season Oct. 20 with a new work from director Jimmy Gamonet De Los Heros, and presents his version of Carmen, a local hit when first presented by Miami City Ballet, with its original star, Iliana Lopez, in March. And Miami Contemporary Dance Company brings back director Ray Sullivan's popular Tango Undressed/Tango al desnudo to the Colony Theater the first two weekends in October.
Palm Beach's Kravis Center for the Performing Arts has two excellent companies that unfortunately won't come farther south: the vibrant Joffrey Ballet, in Cool Vibrations, featuring music from the Beach Boys, Motown and Prince, on Jan. 16; and the Martha Graham Dance Company, still glowing in the groundbreaking work of modern dance's godmother, on Feb. 10.
