Gwendolyn Lai (left) and Kim Ehly mix it up in “The Hour of the Tiger”

Why do I love Miami? Because this weekend I stayed home on Friday night, and still managed to dance to live rara and zouk music at the Haiti Mizik Relief benefit on Saturday afternoon; flip out to contemporary Finnish spectral music played by the New World Symphony on Saturday evening; then on Sunday afternoon watch the world premiere of Sandra Riley’s The Hour of the Tiger, a play about queer romance in Japan, at New Theatre.

Rain kept the crowds away from Haiti Mizik, nestled at the southern end of Bayfront Park near the fountain, but the clouds lifted as Papa Loko and Loray Mistik called to the gods and donors to relieve Haiti’s suffering. By the time Suénalo! took the stage, in one of the tightest sets I’ve heard the band play in years, the dance floor was filling up and hopefully the donation boxes too. The salsa-afro-pop-funk was so sweet I did not want to leave, but Finland was calling.

Miami Heat game traffic, a raised drawbridge, and a parking structure filled by comedy fans conspired to keep me from the first piece on NWS’s Finnish program, but I settled into my seat just in time to hear a piece composed by the “father of spectralism,” Tristan Murail (wait, he’s French; how did he sneak into Finnish night?). Guest conductor Susanna Malkki should be commended just for being able to manipulate the manuscript of Murail’s score. Yet somehow, between flipping enormous pages, she managed to draw out the warp and woof of Murail’s “Godwana,” immersing us all up in a thick tapestry of sound.

After all that, New Theatre’s production of “The Hour of the Tiger” seemed like a little light music. Though the play offers not one but two cross-cultural, cross-racial queer love affairs in 1970s Tokyo, complete with swordplay and an impaling on a decorative fan, the tone and dialogue of Sandra Riley’s show was oddly casual. I complained a few years back when New Theatre presented “Just a Kiss” (Catherina Bush) that a simple smooch between two chicks was hardly the dramatic stuff of an entire play. Yet Riley somehow both ups the stakes in same-gender necking (The fate of love is sealed by a first kiss, a putative ancient Japanese saying tells us) and plays it out on stage as no big deal. There’s talk of “ying and yang” as the American characters explore Japanese culture, but the productions mixing of easy banter with melodramatic sentiment comes off as confusing. Think Madame Butterfly meets The L Word.

Ah, but what was I saying? Cultural contradiction is what I love about Miami.

New World Symphony joins forces with the Cleveland Orchestra to offer Musicians for Haiti on Wednesday, January 27 at 8pm at the Lincoln Theatre, 541 Lincoln Rd, Miami Beach; $35; www.nws.edu. “The Hour of the Tiger” runs through February 14 Thursday – Saturday at 8 pm, Sunday at 1 pm at New Theatre, 4120 Laguna Street, Coral Gables, 33146; $35-$40; 305-443-5909; www.new-theatre.org.