Tampa City Ballet brings immigrant Ybor to life on the Palladium stage

I’m very excited to welcome Tampa City Ballet to the Palladium family. This professional, collaborative, contemporary dance company, is presenting a new show on an old topic. The show, titled 7^th Ave & Ybor celebrates the history and spectacle of the early immigrant days of Tampa’s historic quarter.

The work premiers on Wednesday, May 29 at 7:30 p.m. in Hough Hall. For tickets and more information you can call our box office at 727-822-3590 or follow this link for on-line tickets.

I spoke with Marguerite Pinard, a company board member, who told me Tampa City Ballet’s professional company opened its first production last May, after developing first as a teaching company with outreach programs to the community.

Paula Nunez, an award-winning choreographer who is on the dance faculty at the University of South Florida, created the company as a place for graduating dancers and working dancers to continue their careers. Originally from Venezuela, Nunez started dancing at 14, rising to become a Principal dancer there and also at the Cleveland Ballet. The company’s resident choreographer, Elsa Valbuena, originally from Colombia, is one of my favorite Tampa Bay dancers and choreographers.

Marguerite told me the show was inspired by stories told by descendants of the Cuban, Spanish, Italian and Jewish settlers drawn to Ybor City around the early 19th century.”

“In the day and age where people are talking about building walls, Ybor was a place where people came together from so many different places to make a life, to be productive,” she said.

The performance will include scenes from many parts of Tampa’s immigrant history – a cigar factory, a bolita parlor, a police raid, a lector reading to the workers and many other personal and historic references. Paul Lewis, a recent graduate of USF, wrote music for this production, in addition to drawing from other musical sources.