Whether hauntingly strange, surreal, or sublime, true art, when it happens to us, reinvigorates and challenges our preconceived notions of the contemporary world. It confronts us and offers us more than just cheap entertainment, unlike the flippant antics carried out by today’s reality television ‘stars’. True artistry is…never supposed to leave us. It marks us.

On October 2^nd, 2010, mark your calendar because the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts and Miami Dade College’s Cultura del Lobo Performance Series hosts the Miami debut of Mexico’s premier contemporary dance company, Tania Pérez-Salas Compañia de Danza. Celebrating Mexico’s 200^th anniversary, Pérez-Salas’ innovative choreography promises to illuminate the stage with poetry that is literally written into the company’s DNA.

Born in Mexico City, Tania Pérez-Salas is an award-winning dancer and choreographer whose work has been called “visually arresting…unabashedly sensual, subliminally erotic, and achingly human” by the Boston Globe. I’m sure the Globe is a great paper, but I wanted to know more. So, I contacted Elizabeth Doud, Artistic Director of Miami Dade’s Cultura de Lobo Performance Series, and asked her why Tania Pérez-Salas. She said that “this company’s work is an example of some of the incredible dance that’s coming out of Latin America. Its freshness, and its sensual and highly dramatized style hits chords that reminds us how much this form is evolving in the Americas and how much it has to offer to dance all over the world.”

The program includes “Fourteen Sixteen ,” which, in Pérez-Salas’ words, was spawned from her gut. The work follows a circular arc that is sexual and evocative. Officially, it’s called a “sweeping abstract ballet vocabulary and set to a musical collage”. In other words, it’s simply scorching. (View clip here.) “EX-STASIS,” Pérez-Salas latest work, connects the mind, body, and spirit through an exploration of dreams and sensuality. The program closes with Pérez-Salas’ H2O inspired signature work, “The Waters of Forgetfullness,” flooding the stage with water–symbolizing its vital role in transforming human history

October 2, 2010 at 8 p.m., Tickets $25 – $90, Special $5 ticket offer for Miami Dade College students and staff! Sanford and Dolores Ziff Ballet Opera House. For reservations, visit www.arshtcenter.org or call the box office at (305) 949-6722. This performance contains partial nudity.