Of Flowers and Tears
When: Saturday March 1 @ 7 PM
Where: Teatro Latea @ The Clemente
Director: Carole Alexis
As part of the 2025 eMeLeK Festival, join us for the ballet performance Of Flowers and Tears! The ballet is composed of 11 tableaux, where director Carole Alexis creates a poetic fresco of the tropical flowers of her native Martinique.
One of the ballet’s pieces is entitled “La Mazurka de l’Hibiscus.” The brightly colored hibiscus flower appears strong when alive on the stem but fades quickly when cut, suggesting the uprooting of a people. In contrast and complementarity, the Balisier flower, equally bright but pointed, remains robust for a long time, even when cut. For Aimée Césaire, it “tears the heart” and is associated with the woundedness of the world of people of African descent.
Another piece depicts the sugar cane plantation with its spectacular fields of flowers. The sugar cane represents revolt and harvest, sweetness and bitterness, and the suffering of enslaved people. Sugar cane, with its economic, social, cultural, and historical universe, is still symbolic of resistance, and the shared expression of Caribbean identity.
About the Company:
Founded in 2011 by director-choreographer Carole Alexis, a Créole woman, Ballet des Amériques/Carole Alexis Ballet Theatre is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization operating a professional multicultural dance company – now based in both New York City and White Plains – as well as a pre-professional ballet conservatory.
In its first thirteen years, the dance company, composed of dancers of multicultural backgrounds, has performed Carole Alexis’ choreographic work in hundreds of productions throughout the greater New York City area as well as internationally.
Ballet des Amériques is the first-ever resident dance Company of Latin American Theater Experiment Associates, Inc.(Teatro LATEA) Directed by Miguel Trelles, located at The Clemente.
Carole Alexis and the company have received numerous accolades for Alexis’s innovative work, including government proclamations honoring Ballet des Amériques as the “Premier Dance Company” and regular press coverage.
About the Director:
Carole Alexis, is an internationally recognized dance choreographer, director, and pedagogue, who was bestowed one of the highest honors by the French Republic, the grade of Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (induction into the “Knighthood of Arts and Letters”).
Carole Alexis is shattering the barriers of societal stereotypes and prejudices as an indomitable female choreographer, director, and master teacher of mixed ethnic and multicultural backgrounds specific to the people of Martinique and the Caribbean. It has been clear for quite some time now that Alexis created and developed her signature in dance choreography. Alexis’ artistic work has philosophical depth, emotion, breadth, and worldliness, but is also comprehensive in the way it impacts the community from very young to very old in all kinds of venues and circumstances. Last but not least, this breadth and comprehensiveness also extends to the diversity of our cultural experience, as her work is based on classical ballet, African and Afro-Caribbean traditional dances fully embrace and draw on her own story and DNA..
More info HERE!
Tickets are $35, RSVP HERE!
* Attendance is limited, and registration is required to confirm your place. Only registered guests will be admitted.