If I had my way, live theater and dance would be programmed throughout the day and night, all week long, just like the movies. Augusto Soledade did his part to make my dream come true by scheduling a Brazz Dance Theater performance at 2:30 last Saturday afternoon at the Area Stage Theater in Coral Gables (in a strip mall on US 1 where I used to watch movies back in the day).

Choreographer Soledade’s new piece, Kayala, featured explosive movement and lovely moments of contact among the dancers. This beautiful new piece tells the story of how the daughter of Yemanja, the Afro-Brazilian deity of the sea, came to an earth in eternal daylight, fell in love with a man, and summoned night for the first time to the human realm. Throughout the program, Soledade came on stage to give background on what we were about to see. His explanation of Kayala was helpful, since his piece does not literally represent these events. Instead, the movement is meant to convey divine curiosity and later passion for human kind and the power of the elements.

Yet a certain strip-mall-in-the-middle-of-day lethargy blunted the impact and gave the affair the air of a lecture demonstration. The dancers executed the steps with technical skill, especially Liony Garcia and Ilana Reynolds. Yet their emotional expression did not match the power of Soledade’s choreography. It was telling that the most expressive moment on stage was when the cast bowed at the end, when they dropped their intense concentration and simply connected with the audience. It made me wish they’d been there with us all along.