Tampa City Ballet presents La Septima, a dance-theatre project about the multicultural history of Ybor City, featuring live music and film.
Tampa City Ballet brings La Septima to the Cuban Club on Saturday, October 17. It's a dance-theater project the company has been developing over the last six years, and it's built around the multicultural history of Ybor City. The title itself points right to the neighborhood's heart: Seventh Avenue, known in Spanish as La Septima.
On stage, the production recreates Seventh Avenue as it was in 1926, blending dance, live music, and film to follow the lives of Ybor City's tobacco workers. The movement isn't just imaginedāthe dancers spent time observing the actual gestures and motions of those workers as part of their research. Joining them for the performance is Colombian soprano Daniella Mass, who sings 'MalagueƱa.'
Behind the work is Paula NuƱez, who conceived and directed it. She founded America's Ballet School in 2002 and launched Tampa City Ballet in 2012. The production draws on Tampa: Impressions of an Emigrant, an 1897 memoir by Wenceslao GƔlvez y Delmonte, which was translated into English in 2020 by Noel Smith, now the curator of Latin American and Caribbean Art at USF. The company describes itself as a professional, creation-based contemporary dance company that aims to make Tampa a global hub for dance and champions collaborating with other art forms.
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La Septima is a dance-theater project that takes six years of development to bring to the stage, and it's performing at the Cuban Club on Saturday, October 17.
