BALAM Dance Theatre Performs Broadway Meets Baroque Today

BALAM Dance Theatre (BALAM), a New York City based ensemble dance company that has performed throughout the world, presents the new program, Broadway Meets Baroque in Washington Heights, today, October 18, 3:00 p.m., at Holyrood Episcopal Church-Iglesia Santa Cruz, located at 715 West 179th Street, in New York City. The performance is free and open to the public. Donations are welcome and appreciated.

This performance, inspired by Miguel de Cervantes' classic novel Don Quixote de la Mancha, celebrates Hispanic Heritage and National Arts & Humanities Months and is the culmination of BALAM's imaginative workshop A Don Quixote for the Washington Heights Choir School. The customized workshop series was launched in September free-of-charge for the children of the Washington Heights community attending Holyrood Episcopal Church-Iglesia Santa Cruz' nondenominational after school program. The school is under the direction of Loraine Enlow.

The children will perform a Spanish inspired minuet alongside BALAM's artists. They will enact a fencing academy and the masked fantasy characters of birds and wolves encountered on Don Quixote's journey.

Featured in the performance are BALAM's principal ballerina Robin Gilbert and artistic director Carlos Fittante in Folia: A Spanish Baroque Fantasy and Barbara Romero dancing a 19th century Spanish Escuela Bolera solo. Guest artists performing in the new program are Broadway actor and singer Mauricio Villalobos, as the bilingual English- and Spanish-language Don Quixote figure, and composer and musician Elias Guzman playing an assortment of classic favorites, ranging from the 17th century to Broadway tunes, on the guitar and keyboard.

The workshop series, A Don Quixote for Washington Heights Choir School, and the performance are made possible in part with public funds from the Fund for Creative Communities, supported by New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature and administered by Lower Manhattan Cultural Council.