Sarasota Contemporary Dance Presents Tribute to Muriel G. Mayers

April 16, 2021 – Sarasota

For the final performance of its 2020-2021 season, Sarasota Contemporary Dance is paying tribute to its founding board member, Muriel G. Mayers, April 29^th – May 2^nd. SCD’s 15^th season finale features some of Muriel’s favorites from SCD’s repertoire, available both in-person (socially distanced, limited capacity seating) and online via a professional multi-angle immersive experience. There will be six performances: Thursday and Friday at 7:00 PM, and Saturday and Sunday at 2:00 PM and 7:00 PM. While the choreography and programming stay the same for every performance, there are two different casts of dancers who will be alternating each night. For more information or to purchase tickets, please visit sarasotacontemporarydance.org or call the box office at 941-260-8485. All ticket sales close 30 minutes before each performance, and all tickets must be purchased in advance.

Tribute features three popular pieces from SCD’s past, all choreographed by Artistic Director Leymis Bolaños Wilmott and brought back by Muriel’s request. These performances, ranging in premieres from 2007 to 2019, show a breadth of Leymis’s body of work and its evolution through the years. Now revisited, expanded upon, and revised for our current times, the works featured in Tribute to Muriel bring a well-earned and celebratory close to SCD’s Quinceañera season.

Muriel G. Mayers has been with the company since its inception, guiding Leymis as SCD (then Fuzión Dance) was forming its first board of directors. Since, she has served as the Board’s Treasurer and President, and still resides as a member to this day. Growing up as a dancer herself, Muriel often sits with Leymis in dress rehearsals and gives constructive feedback, always an administrative and artistic force for the Artistic Director and company.

About the Pieces

 I GOT THIS FEELING by James Brown 1968
Inspired by:  My videos of James Brown, the performers capability and personality, and December 2019 live music collaboration with Reverend Barry & The Funk
Performers for Program A & B: Monessa Salley and Rachel Lambright
Costumes Concept: Leymis Bolaños Wilmott 

As part of SCD Artistic Director’s passion and interest to collaborate with local musicians, SCD joined forces in 2019 with Reverend Barry & The Funk, an 8-pc funk band featuring a 3-pc horn section, and one of the fastest-rising “buzzworthy” acts in the state Florida. From this critically acclaimed performance, SCD is bringing back its high-energy tap duet by dancers Monessa Salley and Rachel Lambright to Reverend Barry & The Funk’s cover of I Got This Feeling by James Brown.

“Once I realized I had strong tappers in the company, I wanted to explore the call and response and explosiveness of their unique personalities in this work,” says Leymis Bolaños Wilmott on the piece. “I believe that Funk allowed for individualism to shine, and the music was rooted in such a soulful explosion that it made sense to explore choreography that starts from the feet up through the spine. Once that music starts you just have to get up and start moving your feet. I am excited that Muriel requested this piece to open her tribute because of its pure joy, which reminds us why we started dancing and have stuck with it so long. Especially during the end of our 15^th season and pushing through and surviving during the pandemic, we have a lot to be thankful for but also a lot to celebrate. Joy can sustain us for the next decade and I hope that the joy of this piece activates laughter and hope for all watching. Tap sometimes may seem like a lost art form, but it is so alive in music and dance. It brings the old and new together, which is something I treasure. We cannot forget our history and those that paved the way for us, so reflecting on the past and then choosing to bring it to the present with being sensitive to the new nuance of this time, is what makes this piece and our program contemporary. It’s an eclectic collection of styles and artists.”

Three Soles (2007): partially supported by the Historic Asolo Theater, Fall 2007 Lecture Series.
Inspired by: Yoan Capote, Matromonio (Matrimony), Leather
Choreographer: Leymis Bolaños Wilmott
Original music: Edward Cosla
Costumes Coordinator: Alexandria Anderson 
Costumes Concept: Leymis Bolaños Wilmott
Performers Program A: Melissa Rummel, Sea Lee, and Zoe Austin
Performers Program B: Jessica Obiedzinski, Juliana Christina, and Monessa Salley 

From SCD’s collaboration with the Historic Asolo Theater in conversation with the exhibition “Cuban Avant-Garde: Contemporary Cuban Art” on view at the Ringling Museum in 2007, Tribute revives a potent work: Three Soles. “I saw [Leymis] do a performance based on the Cuban art exhibit that they had at the Ringling,” reflects Muriel, thinking back to the 2007 performance. “It just blew me away, what she did and how she managed to pull out something from [the art exhibit] as an inspiration for dance. And I would see one piece she would do after another piece, and I was just completely blown away by it.”

As a woman of Cuban heritage, Leymis invests in the creative process to make dances that redefine her place in this society. “I create work that explores ideas, experiments with movement vocabulary, and engages group problem solving,” she explains. “Creating work inspired by “Cuban Avant-Garde: Contemporary Cuban Art” exhibit was a dream come true for me. As a dance maker and Cuban-American, I felt privileged to have visual stimulation of this caliber to aid in creating art on a deeper, and more personal level. This creative endeavor enabled me to merge performance with visual art through a live process in order to gain another way in which to connect the community to art.”

Hot List (2008)
Choreographer: Leymis Bolaños Wilmott
Original Music: Eduard Cosla
Performers: 

In 2008, SQR Magazine commissioned Sarasota Contemporary Dance’s (then Fuzión Dance Artists) Artistic Director Leymis Bolaños Wilmott to create a new dance piece based on 6 current social topics that are the “talk of the town” in our community. Then titled Hot List: Comprimise, In-Tuned, NIMBY, Consensus, the piece poked fun at the wheeling and dealing that goes on behind our local social and political scene. In 2021, Hot List gets to be re-imagined for our complex times (to say the least), performed for a new era. “What impressed me about the piece,” comments Muriel, “is I didn’t know how many dancers there are, or how Leymis did it, but it looks like there were lots and lots more people than there were. That was the most impressive part about it.”