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 As
early as 1979, choreographer Mary Luft, founder of Tigertail
Productions, was a powerhouse on Miami’s artistic scene. As the
late Miami Herald dance critic Laurie Horn once wrote:
“To a small, self-selecting group of Miami arts fanatics,
missing one of Mary’s ‘things’ was tantamount to a football fan
missing a playoff game. Even if you didn’t like what might
happen, you had to be there.”
Back then, Luft and Tigertail
focused on “importing” art into the virtually nonexistent
Greater Miami art scene. But after Hurricane Andrew in 1992,
Tigertail focused on what they called “bringing the new.”
“Our focus is still on the
new — work that reflects current directions and thinking in
art,” Luft said. “We bring in artists from outside of Miami, but
they are woven into our ‘made in Miami’ approach.”
And so
Tigertail’s mission and scope evolved. With Luft at the helm,
the organization doesn’t merely produce cutting-edge dance
performances, concerts, poetry readings and visual performance
art; it also creates educational and literary programs. For
example, Tigertail now publishes an annual collection of poetry
written by those “in our community and beyond” within a 72-page
Tigertail, A
South Florida Poetry Annual
book. Tigertail’s Wordspeak program educates 1,000 teenagers
plucked from Miami-Dade schools in art and spoken-word forms. It
also administers Artist Access, a program run by the Miami-Dade
County Department of Cultural Affairs that hands out small
grants to individual local artists.
Miami-Dade
has changed since Luft founded Tigertail. Other arts groups have
come and gone in the last 28 years, but Luft and her
organization have evolved and developed a solid reputation. The
“small, self-selecting group of Miami arts fanatics” is not so
small anymore.
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