To keep the International Ballet Festival of Miami on course up to its present 29th edition, director Eriberto Jiménez has relied on a bifocal guiding vision with added telescopic range. Close at hand are his myriad day-to-day administrative duties. More generally, he never loses sight of the event’s mission to unite dance across borders. And, tending to his art’s past glories, he aims to invest in its productive future.
Complemented by other activities, the festival’s contemporary and classical performances can be seen at different South Florida locations beginning Friday, Aug. 2 through Sunday, Aug. 11. The events close with the Gala of the Stars at The Fillmore Miami Beach, where the yearly dance culture and criticism recognition will be given to Perfecto Uriel, from Spain’s Casa de la Danza and Danza en Escena magazine. And on the previous evening Valentina Kozlova, a Bolshoi and New York City Ballet principal emerita and more recently a sought-after educator, will receive the “A Life for Dance” award.
This year, there are eight participating companies from abroad ranging from Uruguay and Brazil to Serbia and Romania. Compañía Nacional de Danza de México, on the roster since the start of the festival, will also return.
Jiménez coordinates festival logistics, some of which are visa approvals, which he confides, can be a concern for participants from abroad.
“Visa denials or last-minute injuries may throw off the flow of a program,” says Jiménez. In such cases, he must race to make rearrangements and substitutions. But he emphasizes, “You just can’t let that sour the artistic experience. It’s part of who I am to find a solution whenever a problem pops up.”
Joining the Latin Americans and Europeans, this edition will bring members of troupes from Milwaukee (a long-time and frequent presence), Pittsburgh and Kansas City. Performances by Jimenez’s Cuban Classical Ballet of Miami and Dimensions Dance Theatre of Miami and Arts Ballet Theatre of Florida will round out the offerings from locals, for a total of eighteen troupes on the main programs.
Representing Milwaukee Ballet in the classical lineup, Cuban-born-and-trained ballerina Marize Fumero takes personal and professional pleasure in her decade of appearances here. “In these, I can see myself maturing both as an artist and a woman,” she says.
Upon her 2014 arrival in Miami, the festival opened to her the doors of its headquarters at the historic Warner House by the Miami River, easing Fumero’s way into a new life in the American dance arena. From then on, she’s taken to stages far and wide, but Miami still holds a special place in her heart. Applause here seems different—closer to the sounds of family, she feels—which makes her especially happy to come back as a fully confident artist, ready to regale audiences with a passionate scene from Kenneth MacMillan’s “Manon,” its music surging from Jules Massenet’s Romantic-era score.
While championing the bravura of the classical pas de deux—its exuberant spins and spring tradition-set—Jiménez has also secured a place for the shadows and shimmer of today’s ballet. An Imperial-to-Soviet Russian style informs his own company’s offers: a duet from “Raymonda”—its nineteenth-century Marius Petipa choreography to an Alexander Glazunov score variously staged throughout history—and “Diana and Acteon,” to the delight of die-hard balletomanes its grim myth transformed by literal leaps and bounds into a love fest between goddess and hunter.
But then Dimensions brings two sensitively paced pairings, their tenderness and tensions closer to the pulse of our own emotions. Ryan Jolicoeur-Nye’s “On the Sky” and Yanis Eric Pikieris’s “If” will put on view more of choreographers’ works whose premieres were warmly received at this year’s company-season finale.
“We love showing the audience a different side of ballet,” says DDTM’s artistic co-director Jennifer Kronenberg, underscoring how a relatable lyricism enhances variety at an event they’ve performed in since 2017. And she adds, “It’s important for us to return because this is home. We’re proud to contribute to a landscape we share with the festival.”
Kronenberg sums up the experience of appearing alongside international artists as “inspiring.” And that’s the effect Jiménez hoped to reinforce when he took over the festival after founder Pedro Pablo Peña died in 2018. The current director had assisted his predecessor from the beginning of this project, but his association with Peña stretched further back.
“I’ll be forever grateful to Pedro Pablo,” says the Bogotá, Colombia native. “When I first came to this country in 1989, he not only offered me a scholarship to study at his then-called Creation Ballet but even a place to stay in the studio. I soon saw he could use help with work around the office and reciprocated by doing that.”
Their partnership blossomed as the festival took shape and grew, with Peña forever the tenacious custodian of big ballet dreams and Jiménez his steadfast right-hand man keen on practicalities. “Luckily, I’d learned administrative assistance at school in Bogotá, and it came in handy with payrolls and budgets,” says Jiménez, who’d planned to study business administration until ballet won out. To the advantage of the festival, he’s the kind of artistic director whose knack for numbers goes beyond the counts in a dance phrase.
Although he’s given continuity to Peña’s achievements, Jiménez has also ushered the festival into newer territory. “We’ve evolved for the better throughout our history,” he judges, considering festival offerings from the initial single weekend to added activities now spread throughout three weeks, the last two dividing contemporary and classical programs.
The contemporary bill is about to reveal fresh faces from England’s Rambert School Ballet and France’s Arles Youth Ballet. And that focus on the next generation has become a priority for Jiménez.
“I’ve added a summer intensive course for ballet students, which lets them not only attend festival shows but, in some cases, also perform in them,” says the director. This educational initiative, he underscores, is also an aid to festival finances, which—as is the case with almost every cultural organization in Florida—have suffered from a gubernatorial veto of all state arts funds for the next fiscal year.
To encourage dancers who might very well someday return to the festival as representatives of notable companies, Jiménez has also instituted a young medalists show, a Dance Marathon, and Rising Stars on the Streets—free at Lincoln Road’s Euclid Circle—introducing these emerging talents to our community as prolog to the upcoming main events.
“I’ve always wanted to see more of that contact,” says Jiménez. “The promise of these young people’s success, after all, is inseparable from the future of the festival.”
WHAT: XXIX International Ballet Festival of Miami
WHEN: (Contemporary I and II) 8 p.m., Friday and Saturday, Aug. 2 and 3
(Contemporary III) 5 p.m., Sunday, Aug. 4
(Classical Galas) 8 p.m., Saturday, Aug. 10; 5 p.m., Sunday, Aug. 11
WHERE: (Contemporary I) Miami-Dade College, North Campus, Lehman Theater, 11380 NW 27th St., Miami
(Contemporary II) Dennis C. Moss Cultural Arts Center, 10950 SW 211 St., Cutler Bay
(Contemporary III) Amaturo Theater, Broward Center of the Performing Arts, 201 SW 5th Ave., Fort Lauderdale
(Classical Galas) Fillmore Miami Beach, 1700 Washington Ave., Miami Beach
COST: (Contemporary) $30, $35, $45; (Classical) $58.50, $70.50, $81.50, $91.50, $119.25, ticket prices vary based on time and location
INFORMATION: (786) 747-1877 or
