A Show of Strength: Wild theatrics come to Miami in Fuerza Bruta
When you get your ticket for Fuerza Bruta, the show coming to the Arsht Center in Miami beginning June 9, don’t worry about getting a good seat. You won’t be getting a seat at all. You also won’t have to dress up. And you won’t have to bother with the lobby; you’ll be entering through the loading dock.
As you might have guessed, Fuerza Bruta is not your run of the mill show.
Breakthrough: a man crashes through a wall in Fuerza Bruta, the show which will take over the Arsht Center for for a month beginning June 9.
Fuerza Bruta is a theatrical experience, a show that defies description. There are dancers, men running through walls and women cavorting in an aquatic wonderland suspended above the audience’s heads.
“The audience will experience an emotional trip through an extrodinary world with different rules,” says Diqui James, who created Fuerza Bruta. “It’s a celebration. A caotic exploration, brutally happy. A new experience that will ruffle your hair off. From inside.”
The international hit has wowed audiences in New York, London, Argentina, Colombia and Brazil. And now it’s coming to Miami the headliner of the Arsht Center summer season.
Arsht has done very well with these kinds of shows. Last summer, Miami Libre, which turned the Knight Concert Hall into a Latin club, played packed houses. And Slava’s Snow Show, in which Russian clowns performed wordless scenes and made it snow inside the Ballet and Opera House, was a huge success. (The New York production of Slava garnered a Tony nomination for Best Theatrical Experience.)
“More than 130,000 people enjoyed a performance at the center last summer” said M. John Richard, president of the Adrienne Arsht Center. “With the presentation of Fuerza Bruta, the Adrienne Arsht Center brings to Miami a show that will rock South Florida—a cutting-edge performance that has been a hit all over the world.”
Fuerza Bruta is in a class by itself. The action takes place over the audience’s heads. Not figuratively, but literally. You’ll have to look up to see the action.
The show takes place completely on the stage and begins the moment audiences walk in through the loading dock (dubbed the Media Dock) into the Fuerza Bruta lounge—a hip urban space alive with heart-pounding club music directed by Miami’s best DJs, multimedia art installations created by local artists, and a signature Barton G. restaurant inspired by the show.
After entering the theatre through the loading dock, the audience will be ushered onto the main stage where they will be engulfed in a 360 degree visual feast, featuring mind-blowing visual effects just inches above the audience—a man running full throttle on a giant treadmill, bursting through a series of moving walls; performers suspended in mid-air surrounded by a vast sea of mylar; and gorgeous women twisting ethereally in a lucite pool above the audience.
The audience gets up close and personal with mylar at Fuerza Bruta.
“The audience is part of the show. They form a part of it. Like people in the street when something extraordinary happens like an accident or a celebration,” says James. “You can participate or just stand and look, but you are part of it, whether you like it or not, because your attitude is part of what’s going on. There is no boundaries between the show and the audience. There is no stage, no seats. You can be very close to the action, dance or just be standing close to the door.”
As the performance winds down, the visual and aural party continues in the Fuerza Bruta lounge. The pre- and post-party lounge is open to the general public.
“The audience experience will be unlike any other presentation at the Adrienne Arsht Center,” says M. John Richard, president and CEO of the Adrienne Arsht Center. “From the unique entrance through the loading dock and onstage experience to the interactive pre- and after-party components, Fuerza Bruta will be the talk of the town this summer.”