Ballet with a hip aesthetic? Yes, when it’s Heatscape, the new ballet designed for the Miami City Ballet by New York-based dancer/choreographer Justin Peck. At the Miami premiere last week, dancers summoned the beach, the sun, and the heat, channeling the bright young energy that pulses through Miami these days. The glowing backdrop, an enormous mandala image by artist Shephard Fairey, inspired movements within three elegant vignettes that ended in the dancers’ exuberant rush to the brink of the stage.

In this video that Justin created with the dancers a few months ago, you’ll see them in their natural habitat. Their individual and collective verve lights up the Wynwood Walls.

HEATSCAPE
New Ballet by Justin Peck
New Designs by Shepard Fairey
Music by Bohslav Martinu
Concerto for Piano and Orchestra No. 1, H149
Used by arrangement with European American Music Distributors Company, Sole U.S. and Canadian Agent for Schott Music GmBH & Co. KG, publisher and copyright owner.

Performed by: Emily Leichner, piano; Jiri Belohlavek, conductor; Czech Philharmonic Orchestra, Courtesy of Naxos of America, Inc.