Dance NOW! Miami was founded in 2000 by Artistic Directors Hannah Baumgarten and Diego Salterini. Voted “Best Dance Company” by the Miami New Times in 2022, and in residence at the Little Haiti Cultural Complex and the Miami Beach Bandshell, the company presents several major projects annually, featuring original work from the artistic directors individually and collaboratively. The Masterpiece in Motion series honors the rich legacy of dance through the reconstruction of historic works of ballet and modern dance from the 20th and 21st centuries. Dance NOW! also presents branded, immersive, site-specific performances that take place in museums, galleries and architectural sites.
Dance NOW! Miami Program III takes place May 11 in Lake Worth, May 12 in Fort Lauderdale and May 13 in Aventura. The program includes a restaging of Gerald Arpino’s The Relativity of Icarus, along with a world premiere company work, Gli Altri/The Others. For information, call 305-975-8489 or email info@dancenowmiami.org.
Hannah Baumgarten, a Juilliard graduate, is a Florida Choreographic Fellow. She has danced internationally, and her work has been presented on three continents and in 15 states. She was director of dance at Dillard Center for the Arts in Fort Lauderdale for 10 years, serves as faculty at Miami Arts Charter School and has taught throughout the U.S. and abroad. Diego Salterini, originally from Rome, Italy, moved to the U.S. in 1997 after an illustrious career as lead dancer and assistant choreographer for many popular Italian TV and theatre shows. His choreography has been presented in nine states as well as Europe and Central and South America. His teaching career, spanning almost three decades, includes national and international organizations.
Hannah Baumgarten’s and Diego Salterini’s thoughts and reflections:
What is your history—separately and together with Dance NOW! Miami—with Arpino’s works?
Hannah: As the founders of Dance NOW! Miami, Diego and I always believed in creating an organization that recognized and incorporated various styles of concert dance. Both in the training of our dancers and the work we presented, we welcomed ballet, modern, jazz and contemporary dance styles into our repertory. In the pursuit of this versatility, for our Masterpiece in Motion series, we sought out works that spanned this gambit and have presented the historical works of Isadora Duncan, Doris Humphrey, José Limón, as well as living master choreographers including Michael Uthoff, Tandy Beal, Carolyn Dorfman and Daniels Lewis.
After meeting Cameron Basden while working under her directorship at the Interlochen Summer Dance Camp, we began to investigate whether DNM might perform Gerald Arpino’s work. After getting to know us and the capacity of our dancers, Cameron opened the door to us with the Light Rain pas de deux in 2014. We were thrilled. The work was performed by the company for several years throughout the U.S., and we became the first contemporary dance company to present his ballets.
Since then, we have worked together to curate the presentation of Arpino ballets. Cameron has researched to find the right fit for us, and in 2019 we presented Touch Me. This revival took a bit more work, bringing back the steps, finding and cleaning up the music and building a new costume from images and video. This led us to where we are now, with a complete reconstruction of The Relativity of Icarus. We were excited to bring the ballet back to life, with its powerful choreography, set, costumes and music, especially since it was almost lost to obscurity, with controversy surrounding its content and themes. We feel honored, but also a great sense of responsibility presenting this rarely seen work.
What does it mean to you to have The Relativity of Icarus on your May program as we celebrate Mr. Arpino’s centennial?
Diego: Dance NOW! Miami has a long history of restaging work from master choreographers from the last century, namely, the Arpino works Hannah mentioned, Humphrey’s Ritmo Jondo, Limón’s La Malinche and The Waldstein Sonata and Isadora Duncan’s Ave Maria and The Harp Etude, to name a few. Most of these works, while sometimes new to Miami audiences, had been restaged regularly by larger and smaller companies throughout the years.
Hannah and I decided to start focusing on works that are at risk of extinction, works that for whatever reason have not been in the “circuit” and, because of time passing and lack of proper documentation, must be brought back to life NOW. We want to take advantage of the few remaining living dancers and costume and set designers who had either been part of the creation process or might still have lucid memories of it. Discussing this idea with Cameron, she brought to us The Relativity of Icarus, one of those Arpino works that was at risk of being forgotten. With a lot of forensic investigation, archival research and interviews with original cast members, we can proudly say we are bringing the work to its magnificent glory. We feel this is particularly important in the celebration of Arpino’s centennial, shining a light on a work that, though less known, has an important place in his creative history. Audiences will be astounded.
How would you describe the Arpino style? What are some distinctive elements of his choreography?
Diego: There is no denying the huge influence Arpino and The Joffrey Ballet had on the development of an American style of ballet. His group choreography is always very dynamic, intricate and musical, always surprising and unpredictable. Both men and women are always represented in a very stylized way, both as deeply human characters and somehow superhuman as well.
Hannah: I think one of the most important things that can be attributed to Arpino as a choreographer is his capacity to incorporate a range of movement that was not accepted as part of ballet vocabulary. Yet he seamlessly integrated what was considered off limits for ballet dancers: use of the torso, the floor, contractions, parallel. And musically, he challenged his dancers. The things he did were profoundly innovative and pioneering for their time. I think audiences may take some of this for granted, not realizing he was a risk-taker when they see something that is common now but at the time certainly was not.
How does dancing Arpino ballets prepare a dancer for other types of repertory?
Hannah and Diego: The opportunity to dance masterworks is always beneficial for professionals. Dancers today often have work created on them, or learn work that was created on a similar generation. By being thrust into another century, dancers are charged with maintaining the historical content of the work, but must also find a way to make it alive for today’s audiences. Particularly in the case of Arpino, because his work was so forward-thinking, it can be easier to translate to today’s dancers than other historical pieces, but it requires an endurance that not all dancers have. They come away understanding the importance of clarity of movement leading to a greater body awareness as well as the capacity to push beyond what they imagined their physical and technical limits to be.