6 May 11-17, 2023 miaminewtimes.com | browardpalmbeach.com New Times | music | cafe | culture | Night+Day | News | letters | coNteNts | IN THE MOMENT South Florida artists explore what it feels like to be here now. BY TYLER FRANCISCHINE W hen artists capture the community’s attention with their creative prowess, they’re encouraged to spread their wings and decamp to cities like New York City or Los Angeles. Thankfully, for Miami Light Project, local artists have started to recognize that leaving South Florida is no longer necessary. The area is not only a wellspring of inspiration but the site of a flourishing, supportive community for the arts. This year, Miami Light Project celebrates the 25th year of Here & Now, its signature commissioning program for South Florida- based performance and multimedia artists that proves the artistic talent contained within Miami-Dade and Broward counties is near limitless. Here & Now 2023 perfor- mances will be held May 11-13 at the Miami Theater Center in Miami Shores. Miami Light Project is a cultural organiza- tion that commissions and presents contempo- rary performance art across disciplines. The five artists chosen to premiere new dance and theater short-form works for this year’s Here & Now offer performances at once profoundly personal and political, espousing universal mes- sages in unique forms only they could produce. When Miamian poet and spoken-word artist Arsimmer McCoy (pictured on the cover of this issue) bought a copy of Missis- sippi Records’ True Story of Abner Jay at Sweat Records and dropped the needle on vi- nyl, she felt she had found parts of herself that had been lost while navigating the disso- lution of her marriage, isolation compounded by pandemic-necessitated distance from her family, community and artistic practice as a teaching artist, cultural worker, and collabor- ative artist. Her new poetry-driven stage play I’m So Depressed chronicles her journey of re- gaining her sense of self — but don’t expect a neat, Disney-esque happy ending. “This show is about how this album helped me to finally put the pieces together of what I went through. This is a show about resolve, not necessarily about resolution. We’re always trying to put a nice bow on things and package them up nicely, but sometimes, you have to be OK with the fact that you got through it,” McCoy explains. “However, you need to get over, to find peace, to find resolve — even if it’s anger — let that be. Fall into that, and don’t let anybody tell you that’s not enough.” For McCoy, whose artistic practice ex- ceeds a decade and has reached international levels, the positive impact of performing live and interacting with audiences is two-fold. “Being raised in the church, the call and re- sponse are life. When somebody hears some- thing you’re saying and responds with a noise, a grunt, a hand in the air, a ‘You better,’ it lets you know you’re in the company of your tribe,” she says. “I also like that performing al- lows me to be still, in a moment, and only wor- rying about that moment. We’re always constantly moving, so when you take the time to go to the event and just listen, we’re each giving each other a moment to just be still.” Artist, choreographer, and director Letty Bassart, who will debut the improvisational duet Here, Now, says live performances hold power to connect people, be they intimate partners or complete strangers. “It’s my hope that within the room in which I’m performing, I’m holding the kind of space where those heart-to-hearts are hap- pening, even if they’re silent or they’re de- layed,” Bassart says. For each unique, site-specific perfor- mance of Here, Now, Bassart will move in re- sponse to recorded music by Daniel Bernard Roumain, sounds Bassart will not have heard until each performance begins. Bassart’s work challenges America’s consumer culture, marked by values of marketing, replication, and distribution, and instead offers renew- able performances whose meanings and im- pacts unfold in real-time. “Performance is often described as being ephemeral; it can be new every time. I wanted to take that one step further. Even if the same people are there in the theater participating Letty Bassart will debut the improvisational duet Here, Now. Darius V. Daughtry's Reverie in Black utilizes theater, spoken-word poetry, and music to exemplify the duality of life experienced by many Americans. Photo by Keaton Larson Darius V. Daughtry/Miami Light Project photo
