Four choreographers with careers spanning Broadway, Miami City Ballet and contemporary dance will bring their distinct approaches to the same group of performers Saturday at Sanctuary of the Arts in Coral Gables.
Richard Amaro, Hannah Baumgarten, Durante Verzola and Nathalia Arja are the featured artists in 4×4: Building the Future of Dance, a program that gives each choreographer an opportunity to create work with the venue’s Choreographic Ensemble.
The performance begins at 7:30 p.m. Nov. 7 at Sanctuary of the Arts, 410 Andalusia Ave., across from City Hall. Tickets start at $18.
The premise is straightforward: Four choreographers work with one ensemble, challenging the dancers to adapt to different creative approaches and giving audiences an opportunity to see contrasting visions presented side by side.
Four choreographers, four perspectives
The four featured artists bring experience from different corners of the dance world.
Richard Amaro, a Miami native, began his professional career with Alvin Ailey’s second company, Ailey II, before moving into Broadway and commercial productions. His stage credits include Jerome Robbins’ Broadway and Chita Rivera: The Dancer’s Life. He has also choreographed for Miami City Ballet and taught at the Ailey School, American Ballet Theatre and New World School of the Arts, according to his Sanctuary faculty biography.
Hannah Baumgarten is a founding co-artistic director of Dance NOW! Miami, the contemporary dance company she established with Diego Salterini in 2000. A Juilliard graduate, she has presented choreography internationally and helped bring contemporary dance to audiences throughout South Florida. Her experience spans performance, teaching and the reconstruction of works by influential modern choreographers.
Durante Verzola represents a younger generation of ballet choreographers. His commissions include works for Miami City Ballet, Kansas City Ballet and Philadelphia Ballet II. He is also a faculty member and resident choreographer at Miami City Ballet School. Dance Magazine named him among its 25 to Watch for 2026, recognition of his growing presence in the field.
Nathalia Arja, born in Rio de Janeiro, rose through the ranks of Miami City Ballet after joining its school in 2008. She became a principal dancer in 2020 and has since expanded her work into choreography. Her creations have been presented by Miami City Ballet and other dance organizations in the United States and South America, according to her New World Symphony biography.
Their collective experience spans classical ballet, modern dance, musical theater and contemporary choreography. What those backgrounds produce when applied to the same ensemble is the central attraction of Saturday’s performance.
A format built on creative differences
In most dance performances, the audience sees the completed choreography with little sense of the decisions made during rehearsal.
4×4 places those decisions at the center of its artistic premise.
Each choreographer works with dancers from the Sanctuary of the Arts Choreographic Ensemble to develop a separate piece. The venue describes the program as an exploration of how movement develops from an initial idea into structure, texture and emotional expression.
The challenge falls as much on the dancers as on the choreographers. Movement that suits one choreographer’s vocabulary may require a different approach from the performers when working with another.
A dancer must absorb not only the physical demands of a sequence but also the timing, relationships and expressive qualities a choreographer wants to convey.
By presenting four works in a single program, 4×4 invites the audience to compare those choices without needing to understand the technical vocabulary of dance.
The format has become part of Sanctuary’s programming, with previous editions involving different groups of choreographers. A May 2025 presentation featured Alice Arja, Emily Bronberg, Stephano Candreva and Randolph Ward.
A former church devoted to performance
The setting adds another dimension to the evening.
Sanctuary of the Arts occupies the former First Church of Christ, Scientist, a landmark property across from Coral Gables City Hall. Its neoclassical buildings were designed by Phineas Paist, whose work helped shape the city’s architectural identity.
The larger sanctuary, completed in the early 1940s, now serves as a performance theater, while another former church building houses dance studios and rehearsal facilities.
Coral Gables lawyer and arts patron Lewis S. “Mike” Eidson and his wife, Margaret, founded the nonprofit in 2019 and secured a long-term lease on the historic campus.
Following renovations, Sanctuary presented its first performance in April 2022. The project preserved the buildings while creating spaces for dance, music and other performing arts, as WLRN reported when the institution opened.
Rafi Maldonado-Lopez, Sanctuary’s principal managing director, has made dance training and choreography central to the institution’s mission. A former dancer, teacher and arts administrator, he founded the Inter-American Choreographic Institute in 2014.
The institute and Sanctuary’s ensemble programs provide training, rehearsal opportunities and professional experience for dancers preparing to enter the field.
That connection between education and performance is particularly evident in 4×4. The dancers work directly with established choreographers, gaining experience in the collaborative process while preparing work for a public audience.
An opportunity to compare
Dance performances built around new choreography carry a particular uncertainty. Audiences have fewer familiar references than they would at a performance of a classical ballet, and the finished works may vary considerably in style and impact.
That variability is part of what distinguishes 4×4.
Rather than following a single artistic vision for an entire evening, audiences encounter four approaches to movement, shaped by choreographers whose careers have taken different paths.
The program also offers a relatively inexpensive introduction to contemporary dance in a city where opportunities to see newly created choreography have expanded since Sanctuary opened.
If you go…
4×4: Building the Future of Dance begins at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 7, at Sanctuary of the Arts, 410 Andalusia Ave., Coral Gables.
Tickets start at $18 and can be purchased through the official ticketing page. The venue has not published a confirmed running time or announced whether the performance will include a discussion with the choreographers.
The theater is across from City Hall, with metered street parking and public garages in the surrounding downtown area.
The evening offers a chance to see four choreographers’ ideas tested on the same stage and by the same dancers. Each brings a different body of experience. The ensemble must find a way to make all four work.
Author: Coral Gables Gazette News Staff
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