March 15, 2013.
Rising Stars, a professionally staged, energy-packed, one-of-a-kind performance, presents the extraordinary talent of high school and college students from New World School of the Arts, Florida’s premier arts institution.
The showcase begins at the New World Gallery with a juried visual arts exhibition featuring extraordinary student artworks. Curated by Grela Orihuela, of Wet Heat Project, the show is as diverse as the school population and includes painting, drawing, design, sculpture, digital media and installations.
The evening continues just a few blocks away at the historic Gusman Center for the Performing Arts, in downtown Miami, with a pre-performance VIP Reception to welcome guests to this artistic landmark.
Following the VIP reception, the performance opens with a striking number from the Tony award-winning musical Cabaret, and continues with excerpts from works performed during the school year. Among the choreography to be presented are Tuxedo Park (Excerpt), choreographed by NWSA’s Gerard Ebitz. This dance features fifteen ballerinas in white tutus and pointe shoes, swirling in space and bringing to life a soaring electronic score while combining new age music with the classical ballet idiom. Adorations, created in 1974 by Martha Graham, reconstructed by NWSA’s Peter London, brings the Graham technique alive onstage by dancers clad in gold.
Under the baton of Maestro Alfred Gershfeld, the music division will showcase the NWSA Symphony Orchestra with an excerpt of the recently presented Symphony No. 8 in G Major by Dvorak while the NWSA Jazz Band, led by Jim Gasior, will infuse the evening with the exhilarating sounds of Duke Ellington’s Second Line. Directed by NWSA dean of theater Patrice Bailey, John Kander and Fred Ebb’s Cabaret demonstrates the acting versatility of the college theater students as they explore the world of 1930’s Berlin, where the political rhetoric was much more than smoke and mirrors. Presented by the high school music theater students, Leonard Bernstein’s Wonderful Town brings the plot much closer to home as the young actors discover that life in the Big Apple is not as simple as it seems but it is as alluring as they dream.
Rising Stars Visual Arts Exhibition
Friday, March 15, 5:00 pm – 7:30 pm
NEW WORLD GALLERY
25 NE 2nd Street, Miami, FL
Exhibition is Free and open to the public
Rising Stars Pre-Performance VIP Reception
Friday, March 15, 6:30 pm – 7:30 pm
GUSMAN CENTER FOR THE PERFORMING ARTS
174 E. Flagler Street, downtown Miami
Tickets: $125 – $250 – VIP tickets: 305.237.3753 or by emailing: [email protected]
Rising Stars Performing Arts Showcase
Friday, March 15, 8:00 pm
GUSMAN CENTER FOR THE PERFORMING ARTS
174 E. Flagler Street, downtown Miami
Performance Tickets are $20 – $50. Performance tickets available at Gusman Center for the Performing Arts. VIP Tickets are $125 – $250, includes VIP Reception and Performance, and can be purchased by calling 305.237.3753 or emailing [email protected].
NWSA Rising Stars Alumnus Award: The NWSA Rising Stars Alumnus Award is presented each year to a high school or college graduate from New World School of the Arts, who is successfully contributing to his or her art form. In selecting candidates for this prestigious recognition, the NWSA administration and deans of the four arts divisions convene and evaluate each nominee’s artistic achievements, as well as their growth and development as artists. One alumnus is then selected to represent one of the divisions. Renowned visual artist Michael Vazquez will take center stage as he comes back to his alma mater to receive this honor from the hands of his former dean, Maggy Cuesta.
Michael Vasquez was born in 1983 in St.Petersburg, Florida and graduated Cum Laude with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 2005 from New World School of the Arts. His work, which highlights his own life as he explores the allure of a neighborhood street gang through the perspective of a boy growing up without a father figure, has been exhibited in Miami’s Snitzer Gallery and at The Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art in Kansas City, Missouri. It has also been shown internationally as it was included, in 2010, in “Franks – Suss Collection” at the Saatchi Gallery in London, England. Most recently, Vazquez has integrated his photographs – a retrospective of his career as an artist – to fashion aggressive, large-scale, relief photo sculptures that narrate a neighborhood street gang’s convergence while highlighted the experiences of a teen undergoing a ritualistic initiation into the gang, or rite of passage, while in search of ideals of masculinity and community. Vasquez’s involvement with the community, both in South Florida and throughout the states, targets at-risk youth through a series of lectures about his work and his life journey. “Interpreting Michael Vasquez’s paintings include acknowledging their intrinsic paradox. These portraits of street gang members, in the end, underscore the same value system that shapes the traditional, nuclear family – one that honors justice, freedom, peace, truth, love, and ultimately, respect for authority figures,” wrote Christopher Cook, Curator Authority Figures, The Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art in Kansas City.
New World School of the Arts
25 NE 2nd Street
Miami, FL 33132
Ph: 305.237.3753
nwsa.mdc.edu
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