Tigertail will present a full season of music, dance and spoken word events to mark its 37th year of cultural work in Miami.
In the 37 years, Tigertail has commissioned and presented more than 580 artists in dance, music, theater, film and video, as well as the visual and literary arts.
The season will begin with Tigertail’s annual fundraising party, followed by a dance concert, then a music concert. It will climax in April with a festival called FIRE.
The season will begin on Saturday, Oct. 1, with Tigertail’s annual fundraising party, Ring of Fire-A Hot Ticket, which will take place at Miami’s historic Koubek Mansion and Gardens. Guests are invited to arrive in fire-themed costumes or in their favorite party attire to enjoy an evening of camaraderie, food, drink, dancing, performance and a fine art silent auction curated by Carol Jazzar.
On Friday and Saturday, Oct. 14 and 15, leading Scottish self-identified disabled artist Claire Cunningham and U.S./Berlin choreographer/performer Jess Curtis join to perform their duet The Way You Look (at me) Tonight at the Miami-Dade County Auditorium
On.Stage Black Box. In this piece, which was to have its world premiere in London in early September, Curtis and Cunningham investigate the role of movement and sensory dynamics in the perception and performance of otherness. It is a dance, a song, a story, a sculpture, a play, a fight, a journey to be sung, spoken, seen, felt, heard, read, viewed.
Guitarist Mary Halvorson performs solo in the intimate setting of the Miami-Dade County Auditorium On.Stage Black Box on Thursday, Oct. 27. Halvorson has been steadily reshaping the sound of jazz guitar with her elastic, wholly unique style. One of improvised music’s most-in-demand guitarists, Mary Halvorson has been active in New York since 2002. She has performed with Anthony Braxton, Marc Ribot, Jessica Pavone, Myra Melford, Taylor Ho Bynum and Trevor Dunn, among others.
As it has for many years, Tigertail’s WordSpeak teen spoken word team will launch the annual book of poems just after Christmas, Thursday, Dec. 29, at Books & Books in Coral Gables. The teens will perform poems that were praised by their peers at the Brave New Voices festival in Washington, DC, this past July.
In its fourth year, declared Best Festival of 2016, ScreenDance Miami will take place Jan.19-22. The festival highlights Miami-based choreographers, movers and filmmakers who are working with dance on camera. ScreenDance Miami is comprised of screenings, discussions and workshops. The festival events will take place at Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM), Miami Beach Cinematheque and other locations to be announced.
As last year, the opening event at PAMM will consist of films from Amsterdam’s Cinedans, considered the world’s premiere festival of screendance.
In February and early March, two return residencies by noted spoken word artists will benefit teens in Miami-Dade County high schools with workshops, performances and spoken word slams. From Feb. 6 to 11, the WordSpeak program will be led by Houston-based poet Emanuelee “Outspoken” Bean, who conducted the program in 2016.
Then, Feb. 27-Mar. 3, Andrea Assaf returns for a third year to head up SpeakOut, Tigertail’s LGBTQ spoken word program. Each of these artists will perform at The Betsy Hotel, where they will be in residence in the hotel’s Writer’s Room. Bean also will perform on Saturday, Feb. 11, at the Miami Beach Cinematheque.
Tigertail’s FIRE festival commences on Apr. 1, 2017, and runs for the entire month. FIRE is a month filled with site-specific events and new performance throughout Miami at theaters and unexpected locations. Events in FIRE dismantle labels and provide opportunities for audiences and Miami artists of all media to explore a dialogue between artist and participant. Along with stone tools, the controlled use of fire is the most significant technology in human evolution. It warms our homes, cooks our food, and fuels our passions.
Following are the featured events among many more that will take place during the festival:
On Saturday, Apr. 1, noted pianist and composer Frederic Rzewski will appear in a solo concert at Miami-Dade County Auditorium On.Stage Black Box. Brussels-based Frederic Rzewski, a great American composer and virtuosic pianist, will make a rare appearance in the U.S. for this single Miami concert. Rzewski is recognized both for his innovative works and for his strong political convictions. He studied with composer Luigi Dallapiccola in Florence, Italy and with Elliot Carter in Berlin.
In 1966 in Rome, Rzewski co-founded the seminal ensemble Musica Elettronica Viva with fellow American composer-musicians Richard Teitelbaum and Alvin Curran.
On Wednesday, Apr. 12, Tigertail has commissioned FIRE Gods in the Garden, a dance event by four Miami-based choreographers Marissa Alma Nick, Carla Forte, Hattie Mae Williams and Pioneer Winter. These four five- to 7-minute solos will be performed sequentially, one after the other, in the gardens of Vizcaya Museum & Gardens on a moonlight evening celebration. Each artist has selected a location and their fire god/goddess, Marissa Alma Nick – Hawaiian Fire Goddess Pele, Carla Forte – Mayan Fire God Huracán, Hattie Mae Williams – Egyptian Goddess of Fire and War Sekhmet, and Pioneer Winter – Greek Fire God Hephaestus.
On Friday and Saturday, Apr. 21 and 22, noted NYC-based choreographer Reggie Wilson brings his dance company, Fist and Heel Performance Group, to Miami-Dade County Auditorium On.Stage black box to perform Citizen. In this work, Wilson asks, “What does it mean to belong?,” and “What does it mean to not want to belong?,” core questions of Reggie’s investigations for this new evening-length dance work.
In Citizen, Wilson drills down into the human desire to belong with exponentially expanding questions: “Do the injustices in today’s America engender a feeling of belonging? What supports belonging? Is belonging solely something internal, inside the individual? Is a sense of belonging or not belonging, a private or a public matter?”
Citizen promises to engage and compel while igniting perspectives on our compassion and humanity.
The FIRE festival closes on Saturday, Apr. 29 at Miami-Dade County Auditorium On.Stage Black Box with a solo concert by jazz and guitar legend James Blood Ulmer. Ulmer is among the most distinctive and influential free jazz electric guitarists to emerge in the past four decades. He has worked and recorded with Ornette Coleman, Art Blakey, Joe Henderson, Arthur Blythe, David Murray, Ronald Shannon Jackson, Vernon Reid and George Adams as bandleader and sideman.
Ulmer is recognized as a central figure in the post-fusion movements of 1970s and 1980s jazz. Yet within this experimental framework, his guitar playing and songwriting incorporate blues, funk, and rock idioms, making it difficult to categorize his innovative musical forms.
