Rose is a founding contributor of “Men Who Dance,” a ground-shifting dance program showcasing all-male performers that returns to the Broward Center for the Performing Arts’ Amaturo Theater for 2 performances on Saturday, November 26 and Sunday, November 27.
“For us, masculinity is rough and abrasive,” he continues. “Our view [of masculinity] is very different than, for example, what the ancient Greeks thought about it. For them, it was something beautiful so long as it was right and fit,” Rose explains.
Rafi Maldonado-Lopez, creative director of “Men Who Dance” and director of the Inter-American Choreographic Institute, produced the primary program in 2020 as a platform for exploring gender via dance.
Since then, “Men Who Dance” has grown from 15 dancers to 40 dancers and likewise contains two opera singers. The program’s mission has expanded, too.
“In fact, what has happened to us as we have gone to different countries, we’ve come to realize that the stereotypes of masculinity change,” explains Maldonado-Lopez. “In Chile, we encountered an indigenous people who were never invaded by the Europeans. Their notion of masculinity was very different. Every country we have gone to it has been different.”
Rose provides a little bit of American and European historical past.
“Whereas for Europeans, it was acceptable to be the romantic, more expressive male, [those aspects of masculinity] didn’t make it over here. For us, it was the Marlboro man, the cold stereotypical male which became dominant, and things that are bred in culture over time can take a long time to unravel.”
In 2021, Maldonado-Lopez assumed the position of principal managing director of the Sanctuary of the Arts, an artist-led arts establishment and humanities campus situated in Coral Gables at two historic areas – the Church of Christ complicated at 410 Andalusia Ave. and St. Mary’s First Missionary Baptist at 136 Frow Ave.
Though he calls Miami-Dade house, Maldonado-Lopez has chosen to stage every iteration of “Men Who Dance” on the Broward Center for the Performing Arts.
“I really wanted it to be in Broward because we need to have a unified South Florida approach to the arts,” explains Maldonado-Lopez. “If we don’t advocate for the cultural councils to think of a tri-county approach to the arts we will not be able operate differently post-COVID than we did pre-COVID.”
For their half, Broward Center officers have cultivated shut ties with Maldonado-Lopez and the Sanctuary of the Arts with game-changing implications for the South Florida dance scene, he says.
“There is not a single professional dance company in Broward,” says Maldonado-Lopez. “We would like to help Broward grow their own professional companies.”
For Maldonado-Lopez, the central motivation behind “Men Who Dance” is about giving alternatives to dancers.
For occasion, Rose will premiere at this yr’s “Men Who Dance” a brand new work, Messianico, a four-minute quartet for 4 male dancers impressed by the overture to Handel’s “Messiah.”
Tango Out’s contribution to the 2021 pageant was Monólogo, carried out by Argentine twin brothers Nicolas and German Filipeli.
Photo by Gabriela Yero
Rose invited Miami City Ballet Corps dancers Jordan Martinez, Ethan Rodrigues, Francisco Schilereff, and Sean Miller to bounce to his new work as a result of they joined MCB both proper earlier than or throughout COVID. Recent MCB packages have showcased ladies’s dance roles, and Rose says the 4 have had restricted stage time.
“Most of my growth as an artist occurred when ballets were made on me,” says Rose. “This will be a good opportunity for them.”
Another returning performer is Randolph Ward, dancer, choreographer, and creative director of RTW Dance. Ward is understood domestically for cutting-edge choreographies that confront notions of “toxic masculinity.” His new work for “Men Who Dance” is Code Switching, which he performs with dancers Natanael Leal and Savery Morgan.
“The first section is about being yourself and not dumbing down your Blackness to feel safe,” explains Ward. “The second part displays on the response given in 1968 by African-American author James Baldwin to the query, ‘What does a Negro want?’ The final part goes again to the motherland,” provides Ward, who researched tribal communities for this a part of the work. “We have red handkerchiefs in our mouths, and throughout the piece, we are dressed in neon green to represent the alertness you need to have in order to code switch.”
Dancer, choreographer, and filmmaker Enrique Villacreses is one other founding “Men Who Dance” contributor who returns this yr. Villacreses first met Maldonado-Lopez on the New World School of the Arts when Maldonado-Lopez taught musical theater there.
Villacreses’ new work, Jupiter Jazz, is an 11-minute piece in three sections set to music by United Kingdom cellist Oliver Coates.
“I first workshopped and experimented this at the Sanctuary of the Arts over the summer,” says Villacreses. “I brought in six dancers, both straight and gay. All six [performers] dance in all three sections and are on stage for the entire performance.”
Villacreses labored via his choreography by assigning every dancer a objective.
“I’m mostly following my intuition as I experiment with sequences on the dancers. These dancers were so different, from different backgrounds and different training. I had to design and adapt the dance around their specific bodies,” he says.
Maldonado-Lopez says that every of the items stands by itself.
“Each of these three [performances] is so different from the other,” Maldonado-Lopez provides, “after which take into consideration how there will probably be 17 performers. Well, as an viewers member from final yr’s MWD stated to me, ‘If you don’t like this one, anticipate the subsequent one as a result of they’re all so totally different from the one earlier than.'”
– Sean Erwin, ArtburstMiami.com
“Men Who Dance.” 8 p.m. Saturday, November 26 at 3 p.m. Sunday, November 27 on the Broward Center for the Performing Arts, 201 SW Fifth Ave., Fort Lauderdale; 954-462-0222; browardcenter.org. Tickets value $25 to $45.