An appreciation for dance has always required some form of discipline. Whether it's attendance by the observer or practice by the performer, it takes a certain degree of dedication to commit to a work made up entirely of energy and movement. More »

Miami New Times' Mastermind Awards honors the city's most inspiring creatives. This year, we received more than 100 submissions, which our staff narrowed to an elite group of 30. We'll be profiling those honorable mentions, and eventually the finalists, in the weeks to come. This year's three Mastermind Award winners will be announced February 28 at Artopia, our annual soiree celebrating Miami culture. For tickets and more information, visit the website.

Film and dance? Miami native Pioneer Winter manages to combine two art forms not commonly coupled. The conceptual choreographer and filmmaker graduated from FIU Honors College with a BS in psychology and a master's in epidemiology and biostatistics, going on to wow the art world with his work. Winter has presented his work at the Fringe Arts Festival in Scotland, the Bass Museum of Art, the San Francisco Transgender Film Festival, and the Deering Estate, just to name a few.

Winter is also the only choreographer to be accepted into the Cannonball Miami/LegalArt 2012-2013 residency program for Miami-based artists, and will be a resident artist at Miami Theater Center/The Sandbox this year. Plus, Winter also helms Project LEAP, a free program for teaching teens how to change the world through art, a theme that runs through his work.

"My work utilizes social and cultural narratives -- my Miami-made underpinnings -- to recall and develop a sense of geo-social identity. Creating dance on film and collaborating with visual artists and other arts presenters, I provide opportunities for accessing dance without needing to worry about barriers like schedule or ticket price. I believe in promoting awareness by discussing topics ranging from HIV and health disparities to gender, ageism, and identity."

Read on for our Q&A with Winters, mad scientists, parties, and Pina Bausch.

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Karime Arabia

From Pioneer Winter's "Mother-Son(days). "

It was a sunny, hot, and extremely humid Saturday afternoon, Labor Day weekend, and a crowd had started to gather at the Euclid oval on Lincoln Road in Miami Beach. There were a few people who may have been there from previous word-of-mouth knowledge, but the majority of the ever-increasing crowd was just trying to see what the fuss was all about.

In the raised ground with fake turf, "center stage" was four chairs facing west. A conductor in a silver-grey suit came out and stood on the block, then lifted his baton to the applause of the audience now eager for what was to come next. An orchestra of strings, brass and woodwinds chimed in, playing Beethoven's Ode to Joy while dancers performed around the oval. The performance also included choral singers, a gospel choir, and a musical arrangement, and the piece itself combined jazz, gospel, and African drum beats. At the climax, the performers shot confetti strings, followed by young men with signs that read, "You have just experienced a Random Act of Culture."

The event -- sponsored by The Knight Foundation -- was the last official act of its kind in Miami, celebrating the more than 1,000 surprise performances in two years that have appeared in cities across the nation. In the midst of this organized chaos was a young man dressed in jean shorts and t-shirt, darting between the performers and giving directions. He is Pioneer Winter, who served as the dance coordinator for this event and choreographer for the contemporary dancers, the AileyCamp Miami alumni.

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David Zambrano is the kind of choreographer who inspires his audiences to trade their day jobs for a life of dancing. His acclaimed workshops and performances have been presented around the world. Along the way, he has collected an international group of performers from Mozambique, Slovenia, Greece, Slovakia, the U.S., and Venezuela. Soul Project, his newest work, draws out the diverse cultures imprinted on their bodies.

On May 17 and 18, Miami Light Project will be hosting Zambrano at the Light Box. It's a perfect space for Soul Project, which dissolves the line between artist and audience. As Miami Light's Rebekah Lengel put it, "You can have an interactive piece, but with someone like David, people kind of explode into it -- it becomes an all-consuming experience."

We recently caught up with Zambrano to find out more.

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Joseph R. Cotter

The Heat's super-old dancers put Weezy in a great mood.

Most Miami Heat fans left last night's losing game against the Boston Celtics in disappointment.

But Lil Wayne isn't most fans.

The rapper watched most of the game quietly, looking away to text or talk to friends. He barely batted an eye when the Miami Heat dancers strutted across the court. He didn't even respond to most of the nearby fans who shouted at him, trying to get his attention.

Still, there was one part of the night Weezy definitely enjoyed: the gyrating moves of the Golden Oldies, the Miami Heat's dance team for fans age 62 and up.

Check out the video after the jump.

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MCB's new director, Lourdes Lopez.

Last week, Miami City Ballet announced its new artistic director: Lourdes Lopez, former principal dancer with the New York City Ballet and current director of the New York-based dance company Morphoses, who will take the post on May 1, 2013. Following a five-month search, an 11-member committee chose Lopez from among 35 candidates considered to replace outgoing artistic director Edward Villella, who co-founded Miami City Ballet in 1985 and who will stay on through the company's 2012-2013 season. Following MCB's successful first Paris tour last summer, some say Villella, 75, was pushed out unexpectedly by the company's board of directors in November.

The founding director and some members of his company were not happy about the move. And in the end, the replacement decision was not unanimous -- Lopez was awarded the position after a vote of 9-2 in her favor. The other finalist, Jennifer Kronenberg, 35, a principal dancer with MCB, received the votes of Villella and one of the two MCB dancer representatives on the committee, as the dancers were split between the candidates.

We spoke with Lopez about the dancing, the drama, and the future.

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dancemagazine.com

Lourdes Lopez, Miami City Ballet's new director.

You'd think that giving the job of the Miami City Ballet director to a Cuban-born, Miami-raised, seasoned dance pro would be just about the least controversial move a South Florida arts organization could make. But you'd be wrong.

Miami City Ballet named Lourdes Lopez as the successor to Edward Villella, company founder and director who will leave the company at the end of this season amid rumors that he'd been forced out by board members and donors. Villella is also on record in support of Jennifer Kronenberg, an MCB-bred dancer who's spent her entire career in Miami, as his successor.

That means Lopez already has a lot of work to do -- both in preparing herself for her new position, and for the inevitable pushback from Villella loyalists at the company.

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She's a real doll.

​Long before Julie "Catwoman" Newmar played a robot in the short-lived '60s TV sitcom My Living Doll (episodes of which have just been released on DVD, if you're into that sort of thing), another, different kind of mechanized gal was breaking somebody's heart. Her name? Coppélia.

She was the creation of one toymaker/mad scientist (aren't they all?), Dr. Coppélius. Both characters originated in an 1870 romantic comic ballet titled Coppélia, written by maestro Arthur Saint-Léon (who also did the choreography) and Charles Nuitter, with music by Léo Delibes.

This weekend, the beautiful automaton that Saint-Léon and Nuitter built comes back to life in the Miami City Ballet's revival of Coppélia, which caps the company's 26th season.

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​Here are a few signs you're a dance/music/acrobatic company superfan: You can't wait for the next Cirque du Soleil tent to go up in downtown Miami, despite the hellish traffic it creates on Biscayne Boulevard. When you visit Orlando, you stop to "ohh" and "ahh" one more time at the Blue Man Group. You've been digging the multimedia experiences of Momix for the past 30 years.

But here's something you might not know. As with everything from which life germinates, there is an origin, a seed beneath it all. Or, in this case, a fungus: Pilobolus. Like the spore vessel from which it starts, sometimes traveling a great distance (for a bunch of spores, at least) to survive, Pilobolus Dance Theatre began in 1971 as an experimental dance company at Dartmouth College.

Since then, the propagation of its success has reached far and beyond. On Friday and Saturday, Pilobolus will land once again in Miami and, for the first time, at the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts, as part of the Knight Masterworks Season.

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​"Dancer" is a loaded word. It brings to mind images of borderline anorexic women with great posture and mutilated toes, or hyper-sexual booty-licious music video girls, or strippers.

But Pina, German director Wim Wenders' Oscar-nominated tribute to daring choreographer Pina Bausch, undermines all the stereotypes. And it opens at the Coral Gables Art Cinema this week.

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