Amparo Immersion Theater Is More Effective Than you Expect
“High praise is due to Collado who has deftly molded this enterprise and led a team of designers whose attention to detail is impressive, including choreographer/assistant director Samantha Pazos; musical director Jose Elias; scenic designer Joe Rawda; costumes Jorge Noa and Pedro Balmaseda; lighting, Tyler Frank; sound, Abigail Bailey, and production stage manager Amy London who must coordinate a half-dozen parades at once.”
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‘Amparo Experience’ moves its audience in more ways than one
“Choreographer Samantha Pazos evokes Cuban style in the moves she gives dancers Emily Bender and Raul Martinez.”
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The Mezz with Brian Hersch - WSRQ Talk Radio, Interview on 12/02/2017
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review: Dark ‘Voices’ in Sarasota Contemporary Dance program
Pazos is clearly a little obsessed with Lorca’s “The House of Bernardo Alba,” and I don’t blame her; it’s a rich resource for her distinctive choreographic voice. Watching her develop this concept has been like watching a bud gradually bloom to full florescence. Which is exactly the idea behind SCD director Leymis Bolanos Wilmott’s effort to provide this all-too-rare opportunity to choreographers just getting their start. She’s to be commended for her ongoing commitment to developing the dance makers of tomorrow.
-Carrie Siedman, Columnist
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Dance review: Emerging Choreographers' 'Voices' show Promise
The piece I was most enamored of in the summer showcase, Miami choreographer Samantha Pazos' "Lorca, Leave the Balcony Open," was also significantly altered, perhaps because of the re-casting on company members rather than workshop students. Inspired by the Federico Garcia Lorca play, "The House of Bernarda Alba," it explores the world of gender, sexuality and the roles and limitations placed on women.
The live cante flamenco of the summer iteration was replaced with recordings or silence and Jahrel Thompson, who took over the role of the Lorca-esque figure seated at a desk in front of a typewriter, projected none of the gender ambiguity of the previous performer. But while this - and the changes in the female chorus (Sperber, Hull and Rightmire), who rhythmically clapped and stomped, embellished with fans and spoke or sang lines in English or Spanish - gave the work an altered flavor, it still evidenced a choreographer with developed intentions, a distinctive voice and a style that clearly draws on her cultural roots.
-Carrie Seidman, Herald-Tribune
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(From left) Claudia-Lynn Rightmire, Melissa Coleman Sperber, Melissa Hull, Jahrel Thompson and Natalie Robinson in Samantha Pazos' "Lorca, leave the balcony open." / Photo by Cliff Roles
Emerging Choreographer draws on her roots for Sarasota Contemporary Dance Program
Last summer, on Samantha Pazos' second trip to Spain, she visited Huerta de San Vincente near Granada, the former home of Federico Garcia Lorca, now a museum honoring the Spanish writer. An antique desk in the museum pays tribute to the place where he wrote much of his best known trilogy of plays, "Blood Wedding," "Yerma" and "The House of Bernarda Alba," all of which rebelled against the constraints of bourgeois Spanish society. Pazos could not get that desk out of her head.
"I knew as soon as I saw it that I had to have it in my own piece," says the 29-year-old, Miami-based choreographer. "That's where all these ideas started to come into play and formed into something substantial."
-Carrie Seidman, Herald-Tribune
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Hits and misses 'in the round'
It’s not often audiences get to see the early stages of a new choreographer’s work. Sarasota Contemporary Dance’s “In the Round,” which features works-in-progress by emerging dance makers, provides just that, as well as a “safe” place for beginning dance makers to test the waters. In the third year of this annual summer production at the New College of Florida Black Box Theatre, audience members were again invited to share impressions and suggestions after each work giving choreographers feedback, while choreographers rewarded viewers with insight into their intentions.
-Carrie Seidman, Herald-Tribune
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Focus: Local Dance on Film at ScreenDance Miami
This week Tigertail Productions presents its second ScreenDance Miami festival, which will highlight mostly local choreographers and filmmakers who are working with movement and dance on film, and dance on camera. Many dance makers are experienced with using video and film to record and preserve dance compositions and performances, or to use video and film as a notation tool to restage a piece.But these festival artists are exploring new concepts and techniques combining the visual and movement attributes of dance with cinematic expression and essentially broadening the look, tone and location of dance.
-Miguel Angel Estefan Jr.
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ARTBURST MIAMI:Cuban roots and dance, 'Que Pasa, USA?'
Influenced politically, aesthetically, and socially by their Cuban heritage [the title is a nod to the old Spanglish TV classic), Ana Miranda, Belaxis Buil, Samantha Pazos, and Jennifer Bermudez will each contribute a piece born of their Cuban-American roots.
-Miguel Angel Estefan Jr.
- See more at: http://www.artburstmiami.com/dance-articles/cuban-roots-and-dance-que-pasa-usa#sthash.gESBiBJN.dpuf
