PAMM’s WAVES series presents artist Helado Negro’s fusion of music, dance and sculpture | Miami Herald

The Pérez Art Museum Miami’s WAVES series presents challenging, intriguingly hybrid, commissioned collaborations between musicians and dance, video and visual artists. They’re installations that come to life, uniquely created for the PAMM space.

The final WAVES event this Thursday is No Love Can Cut Our Knife in Two, a mix of electronic music, dance and transformative sculptural “costumes” created by Helado Negro. That’s the creative name (it means black ice cream in Spanish) of Brooklyn-based Roberto Carlos Lange, an Ecuadorian artist raised in South Florida. Lange has a host of art world and cool pop bona fides: his dreamy, bassy electronic music — sort of Latin electro-lounge with an edge — has drawn praise from Pitchfork and NPR, he’s performed in venues ranging from clubs to museums, and he’ll tour with art-pop idol Sufjan Stevens later this summer. For No Love Lange pairs his music with the excellent Miami dancers Marissa Alma Nick, Rudi Goblen, Katie Stirman and Megan Holsinger, cloaking them in clouds of metallic silver tinsel that turns them into moving sculptures.

No Love takes place at 7 p.m. Thursday at the auditorium at PAMM, 1103 Biscayne Blvd., Miami. Tickets (which include museum admission) are $4 for PAMM members, $20 for adults, $16 for students, seniors and children 7 to 18. Space is limited and reservations are recommended. Information at www.pamm.org/calendar, 305-375-3000 or by emailing education@pamm.org.

FUNDING FOR THE ARTS

Nine Miami arts groups have received awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, for a total of $225,000 in the NEA’s second major grant announcement this year. Recipients include the Florida Grand Opera, which got $20,000 for community outreach for next season’s presentation of The Passenger, an opera about a concentration camp survivor and her former warden; Locust Projects, which got $25,000 for exhibits and commissions for emerging and mid-career artists; Miami-Dade County Public Schools, which received $20,000 for Beethoven Lives Upstairs, an introduction to orchestral music for fourth-graders in partnership with the Cleveland Orchestra; and the Miami Light Project, which got $20,000 for community outreach for a June presentation of New York’s Bang on a Can All-Stars. Florida International University, the Historical Association of Southern Florida, Miami Book Fair International, Teatro Avante and the New World Symphony also received grants from the NEA.

The Funding Arts Network awarded $215,500 to fund 20 visual and performing arts organizations in Miami-Dade County at its 19th Annual Awards Luncheon last week. For the world premiere of George Balanchine’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream Reimagined, the Miami City Ballet received $25,000. Zoetic Stage and GableStage each were awarded $20,000 for productions in the 2015-16 season, which include Zoetic’s world premiere of Stripped by co-founder Christopher Demos-Brown and Gable Stage’s South Florida premieres of six award-winning plays. Also awarded were Orchestra Miami Inc., New World Symphony, the Chopin Foundation, The Jewish Museum, Friends of Chamber Music and Performing Arts Center Trust, M Ensemble Repertory Theater Company, Caribbean American Heritage Foundation, Pérez Art Museum Miami, Arts Ballet Theater and Florida Grand Opera, Bakehouse Art Complex, Lowe Art Museum, Festival Miami, Community Arts and Culture, Miami Lyric Opera and Seraphic Fire.

GUITAR VIRTUOSO

French Algerian guitarist Pierre Bensusan returns to Islamorada for an exclusive concert with limited seating at Cafe Moka, next to the Tavernier Hotel at mile marker 92, at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday. Bensusan, something of a guitar prodigy, released his first album at 17, and won the Montreaux Festival’s Grand Prize in Switzerland. He has since released 11 more albums with his signature blend of Celtic, folk, world music and chamber jazz.

Tickets are available at www.keysice.com for $20, tickets at the door are $25.

PRESERVATION THROUGH THE ARTS

What if Works Inc., a community-based organization that uses the arts to champion social change, focuses its gaze on the increasing number of historic structures falling victim to the bulldozer by performing Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard, an examination of the value of home, identity, history and memory, as the self-made Lopakhin, played by Zack Myers, returns to purchase the estate where he was once an indentured serf. Nineteenth century Russia and 21st century Miami coalesce through the integration of a series of images from “Absence of Place,” a collection of photographs by environmental artist/activist Xavier Cortada that depict spaces and places that are no more. The images are on loan from PAMM.

The play is directed by Phillip M. Church and cast features Margaret Ricke as Madam Renevsky as well as Pia Vicioso-Vila, Charles Sothers, Natalie Brenes, David Neale, Sofia Sassone, Allyn Anthony, Gabriel Bonilla, Andrea Bovino, AJ Ruiz and Quillian Minot.

The production can be seen at 7 p.m. Monday and Tuesday at the New River Museum, 219 SW Second Ave., Fort Lauderdale; 7 p.m. May 15-16 at Phil’s Berry Farm, 13955 SW 248th St., Homestead; and 7 p.m. May 22 at FIU Miami Beach Urban Studios, 420 Lincoln Rd., Miami Beach. Tickets are $10-$15. Information at 305-271-1073 or www.Whatifworks.com.

DOWN SOUTH

Not to be outdone by more fashionably located venues, the South-Miami Dade Cultural Arts Center, 10950 SW 211th St., Cutler Bay, has serious entertainment brewing this week.

Siempre Flamenco presents Café Cantante, with an international cast of world-renowned flamenco artists led by Siempre Flamenco founders Paco and Celia Fonta. Through guitar, song and dance, audiences can experience the mesmerizing magic of flamenco. Shows are 8:30 p.m. Friday; 7:30 and 9:30 p.m. Saturday; and 3:30 p.m. May 17. Tickets are $25 in advance, $30 day of show.

Saturday night in the Center’s RRazz Room, jazz singer Vonda Shepard will preview her 14th album, Rookie, a project she released with funds crowdsourced through Kickstarter. The album promises a mixture of moods and tempos, from funk to ballad to pop. The show starts at 8 p.m. and tickets are $35, $60 VIP (which includes a glass of wine).

Tickets for either show can be purchased at SMDCAC.org or by calling 786-573-5300.

DANCE BAND NIGHT

The Rhythm Foundation has taken over programming for the North Beach Bandshell with the goal of getting Miami moving, hence their latest series, Dance Band Night, kicking off Thursday night with swing band The French Horn. The free concerts will take place the second Thursday of each month and will feature a dance lesson before the show. This week learn how to move with world champion swing dance duo Yuval and Julia. The lesson starts at 7 p.m. with the concert following. The North Beach Bandshell is at 7275 Collins Ave., Miami Beach. Information at 305-672-5202 or www.northbeachbandshell.com.

FROST GETS NEW ARTISTIC DIRECTOR

Grammy-winning film composer James Newton Howard has been named the new artistic director of the Henry Mancini Institute at the University of Miami’s Frost School of Music. A multi-award winner in his field, Howard has created music for over 120 films, including The Sixth Sense, all three of the The Hunger Games movies, The Bourne Legacy and Pretty Woman, and received eight Oscar nominations, including for Best Original Score for Defiance, Michael Clayton and The Fugitive. He and Hans Zimmer won the 2009 Grammy for the score for The Dark Knight.

Howard, who starts in January, succeeds jazz trumpeter and bandleader Terence Blanchard, who has led the Mancini Institute since 2008. The Institute provides recording, performance and multi-media opportunities to its 65 graduate Mancini Fellows, as well as the 700 students at the Frost School. The Henry Mancini Institute Orchestra is the resident orchestra of the Jazz Roots series at the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts, has performed in three PBS and one HBO special, and recorded with George Benson, Gloria Estefan and Chick Corea, among others.