MDC Live Arts Lab

The MDC Live Arts Lab is a professional development laboratory for locally-based working artists in dance, music, moving image, performance, visual and literary arts. The program seeks to foster and nurture Miami’s performing arts community through intensive summer training alongside Master level practitioners and an inter/national creative discourse. MDC Live Arts Lab culminates in a public workshop performance. The 2014 guest artist is multidisciplinary performer Baba Israel – the program is offered at the New World School of The Arts at 25 NE 2nd Street in Miami, Florida 33132. The upcoming lab is scheduled from August 5 – 30, 2014. More information about the program and how to apply can be found here.

Baba Israel was raised in New York by theatre parents who were core members of the famous Living Theatre, Baba Israel had proximity to theatre on the edge from early in his life. As a young artist he began exploring spoken word, Hip Hop, and experimental performance. Later he lived in Australia where he co-founded the group Meta Bass ‘n Breath and worked on major community theatre projects, Hip Hop festivals. He has toured as MC, beatboxer, and theatre artist across North and South America, Europe, Africa, Australia and Asia.

In the LIVE Arts Lab with Baba Israel, he’ll explore personal narrative and how a performer brings their own life on stage. Israel will delve into how a performer can consciously bring their deeper artistic impulses out into the world and how that can influence and generate the content of their work. The course will explore writing, spoken word, verse, as well as creating text through improvisation, recording, and collaboration. Israel will also shed light on sampling and remixing archive material to animate and dialogue with the past. He will explore how technology can aid in this process and how to best integrate it into your work.

Miami Dade College (MDC) is proud to be the home of MDC Live Arts – an initiative of MDC’s Cultural Affairs Department created in 1990 as Cultura del Lobo. MDC Live Arts has a celebrated history of bringing exceptional national and international performing artists to the region. Annually, it produces a diverse series of stellar performances, presenting today’s most exciting artists while creating meaningful encounters between these artists, the students of MDC, and the community through workshops and residency activities. The program seeks artists from across the globe who represent a diverse range of voices and forms which push boundaries; honor traditions relevant to Miami’s multi-cultural, multi-lingual community; and introduce voices from beyond the region.