June 26, 2014
Tigertail will present its 2014 WordSpeak teen spoken word team in a free performance on Thursday, June 26, 2014, at the Miami Beach Botanical Garden, 2000 Convention Center Dr., Miami Beach. The hour-long event will begin at 6:30 pm and will be lead by Teo Castellanos, the WordSpeak team coach.
This year’s team is made up of six vibrant Miami-Dade youths: Maylin Enamorado, Christell Roach and Wesly Oviedo from Miami Arts Charter; Steffon Dixon from DASH; Celestelle Webster from Miami Lakes Senior; and Al Alexandre from North Miami Senior. Momo Manalang, from Miami Arts Charter, will participate as a Team Understudy.
Tigertail will send this team to Philadelphia from July 16 to 19, 2014, for the Brave New Voices national poetry competition. The Olympics of spoken word, BNV includes over 500 youth poets from 50 cities across the U. S. At BNV, Tigertail’s team will participate in workshops and readings with established poets and performers, in open mike events – and they will compete in the Poetry Slam itself. The Miami team, which includes a diverse range of some of South Florida’s best young writers, was chosen from a field of more than 1000 teenagers from local high schools who participated in the WordSpeak and SpeakOut programs sponsored by the noted arts not-for-profit Tigertail Productions.
Founded in Miami in 1979, Tigertail Productions is Florida’s pioneer of innovative cultural work, and produces a full season of contemporary performance, along with projects in the literary and visual arts. “This event at the Miami Beach Botanical Garden will provide the team with an opportunity to perform before a live audience prior to their Philadelphia competition,” said Mary Luft, Tigertail’s Executive Director. “We are very excited about hearing them all perform together for the first time.”
Tigertail’s WordSpeak and SpeakOut are ongoing life-changing spoken word programs for 1000 South Florida youth. WordSpeak and SpeakOut events provide Miami students from 13 to 19 years of age the opportunity to use poetry as a vehicle of self-expression in an appealing medium that blends poetry, theater and hip hop culture. In these programs, they develop their writing, speaking and performance skills and learn teamwork.
Each year WordSpeak and SpeakOut bring in prominent writers from outside Florida for residencies that include school and community-based workshops, readings, and student competitions. In 2014, these included two nationally recognized artists, each of whom returned from previous WordSpeak / SpeakOut residencies: Milwaukee-based writer and educator Dasha Kelly, and Washingon, DC-based writer and performer Regie Cabico.
Miami Beach Botanical Garden, 2000 Convention Center Dr., Miami Beach
Free. For more information call 305 324 4337 or online at www.tigertail.org
Tigertail Productions, Inc.
842 NW 9th Ct
Miami, FL 33136
www.tigertail.org
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