30th anniversary Archives | Miami City Ballet

MCB Celebrates 30th Anniversary

As Miami City Ballet celebrates its new season – and 30th anniversary – founder Toby Lerner Ansin keeps dancers on their toes

Miami City Ballet founder Toby Lerner Ansin was thrilled to win the prestigious Dance/USA Champion Award earlier this year at Pérez Art Museum Miami. But she got an even bigger kick out of her daughter Stephanie’s introductory speech.

“It was really phenomenal,” says Lerner, 74, a cultural pioneer whose MCB launched 30 years ago. “Everyone was complimenting me on what a beautiful job she’d done.”

For Ansin, ballet and family are intertwined. Stephanie Ansin is following in her mother’s cultural footsteps as founder/artistic director of the Miami Theater Center, and Ansin’s granddaughter studies ballet at the Miami Conservatory – the same place Toby did.

George Balanchine’s ‘Dream’ highlights Miami City Ballet’s 30th season

Miami City Ballet has announced an ambitious slate of programming for its 30th anniversary season in 2015-2016. It features four company premieres, highlighted by the most significant George Balanchine work the troupe has done in years: the choreographer’s evening-length version of William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. A host of major and popular dances from the company’s repertoire are also featured.

Dream, on Program Four, promises to be one of MCB’s most ambitious productions ever. Balanchine choreographed the original 1962 ballet with MCB founding artistic director Edward Villella as the fairy king Oberon, and the cast includes 24 children and six vocalists. MCB will bring in two collaborators to help re-imagine the work in a South Florida context: acclaimed Miami playwright and director Tarell Alvin McCraney, who will do the dramatic direction, with renowned Miami Beach-born visual artist Michele Oka Doner creating new costumes and sets.