On Sunday, September 24, 2023, I attended “Summon” at the Sandrell Rivers Theater in Miami. This production was presented by Live Arts Miami, Third Horizon, and Diaspora Vibe Cultural Arts Incubator and featured Jamaican-American Shamar Watt’s latest evocative and cosmic work. “Summon” is a multi-disciplinary work that incorporates cinema, live performance (music and dance), and spoken word to “investigate the spirit of resistance embodied by the Maroon people of Jamaica…” (https://liveartsmiami.org/events/summon/) and in true fashion summons spiritual, physical, sensual/sexual energy. Watt’s ..read more

There are more questions than answers in Leyla McCalla’s remarkable new project, Breaking The Thermometer to Hide the Fever. What does democracy look like? Who does it work for? How long can it last? On its surface, the piece explores the legacy of Radio Haiti —Haiti’s first radio station to report the news in Haitian Kreyòl, the voice of the people— as well as the journalists who risked and lost their lives to broadcast it for nearly 50 years. But on a more fundamental level,  it is a deeply personal reckoning with memory and identity, with the roles of artists and activists and immigran ..read more

How a Dancer from Kansas City and her Ground-breaking Company Revolutionized North American Dance, and How You Can Join the Movement Too. Change is in the A.I.R. Can you feel it? It’s time to move, create, take flight. February is almost out. March is just around the corner. And if you haven’t heard, dance and movement are afoot on the horizon. A whole dance movement, in fact, is coming to your screens at home starting as early as next week, in the form of the 2021 Artistry in Rhythm (A.I.R.) Dance Conference. The event — a month-long, virtual dance symposium tailor-made for our times of socia ..read more

  Hi! You may have heard our name is changing… You used to know us as MDC Live Arts. Now, we go by Live Arts Miami. We’re turning 30 this year—yes, the big 3-0. Three whole decades of impactful live arts programming in the community. Thirty seasons of powerful performances and public projects. Hundreds of shows and collaborations. Thousands of artists, audiences, and students whose lives have been touched by our work. We are one of Miami’s oldest, and boldest, performing arts series. For 30 years we’ve helped to breathe new life into the local arts environment, seeded growth in free and ..read more

Creative Climate Action in the Wake of Global Crisis Our View from Backstage. Last year, MDC Live Arts kicked off its latest season of groundbreaking, genre-bending performances by talented artists from throughout the nation, and all over the world: ECOCultura, a series of performances for the planet—dynamic theater, dance and music events that spark action, advocacy, and dialogue around global environmental challenges and its impacts in South Florida. With its historic practice of producing performing arts programs at the intersection of social change, MDC Live Arts brought an activist onto i ..read more

Large groups of people weave in and out of a shared promenade, gathering at a choreographed location. They are artists and content producers, marketers, and social media experts, cultural workers, and concerned citizens -a mass of accumulated skill and raw emotional power poised to participate in the powerful production that lay ahead. The time to start the public act has officially arrived. Colorful signs; impromptu chants and rhythmic drumming; the sounds of collective prayer, megaphone melodies, and fleeting jazz-like improvisations. All this and more accompanied the sea of folks gathered f ..read more

On Thursday 30 April, I’m partnering with MDC Live Arts’ EcoCultura initiative and Venture Cafe to offer an online workshop on how to set up an audio livestream from your balcony or yard. During the presentation, I will introduce the principles of acoustic ecology and teach participants how to share their soundscape with other people listening around the world for a 24 hour radio broadcast called Reveil which coincides with International Dawn Chorus Day. As I prepare for these events, it seemed like a good moment to trace how I came to involve sound in my work, and why these events are importa ..read more

“So, I guess you’ve had to cancel National Water Dance 2020?” That’s a question I’ve heard over and over again and reflexively I respond, “No! We’re dancing! Dancers from across the United States, Puerto Rico and Washington D.C. will be dancing on April 18 at 4:00pm EST. So, find a computer and go to nationalwaterdance.org or get on your cell phone and follow a dancer that you know or go to @nationalwater_dance on Instagram. There will be plenty to see.” Luckily, live-streaming National Water Dance has always been a part of the structure of this national event so as we adjusted our focus to s ..read more