EDGE Miami

When people think of Miami, the image of sandy beaches and non-stop nightlife immediately springs to mind, but few realize that the city of sun and fun is in the midst of an arts revolution. Long criticized for being a cultural wasteland, in recent years Miami has begun cultivating a burgeoning arts scene that’s causing critics and naysayers alike to start looking at the city in a whole new light.

Among those paving the way and causing stirs locally and across the globe is performance artist Octavio Campos. Miami born, Cuban-American, Campos’ unique blend of dance and theater have earned him the reputation of being (according to the Miami Herald) a "cultural mischief maker," and it’s this very sense of avant-garde originality that led to Cirque de Soleil to contract Campos to direct their pre-Super Bowl show in 2007.

Campos left Miami to study dance and composition in New York (State University of New York at Purchase, as well as the Martha Graham School and Lincoln Center Directors Lab). Upon graduatin he was offered a job that took him to Germany where he established a successful career as a dancer, choreographer and teacher. After an absence of over 10 years, Campos returned to South Florida to form his own performance troop, Camposition, and began creating works that have garnered acclaim at every turn, each speaking to important social issues. In Blue LIVE it’s the ravages of AIDS set to Derek Jarman’s film, Blue. In Kitchen Monkey it’s domestic violence that is tackled, and in Luna del Penguino its religious fanatacism and war.

With his most recent work The Bugchasers, which plays at Carnival Centers’ Studio Theater October 25th to 27th, he explores those who seek to be infected with HIV in a self-destructive attempt at finding love and acceptance.

When not inside his studio collaborating on new works, Campos serves as choreographer with Circ X and the Playground Theater, as well as being on the faculty of the New World School of the Arts, where he is honing new generations of Miami-bred talent.


EDGE: Where did the idea for Bugchasers come?

Octavio Campos: BugChasers came as an inspiration to me from a real life encounter with a "bugchaser" in Miami Beach about 3 years ago.


EDGE: Music is an important aspect to dance, often it’s muse, what kind of music can we expect to accompany this production?

Octavio Campos: A super ecclectic mix, from Bjorks harpist, Zeena Parkins,Livio Tragtenberg, Barry White, Electric Six, Roberta Flack and Non.


EDGE: Tell us of your experience working with the Carnival Center in this co-commission?

Octavio Campos: I love working with the Carnival Center especially with Justin Macdonnel, Artistic Director, he is like my fairy godfather. I love the idea of doing out of the box work with such major institutions. Many find large places scary, I embrace them.


EDGE: What dancers or choreographers have most influenced your style?

Octavio Campos: Pina Bausch, William Forsythe and Jan Fabre


EDGE: Your performance troupe is creating some exciting work, Tell us a little bit about the work you do at Camposition.

Octavio Campos: Camposition Inc. (founded July 2006) is a 501 (c) 3 - non-profit multidisciplinary collaborative that pushes the boundary between contemporary performance and activism. Camposition’s professional and student artists take creative risks by crafting innovative, artistically demanding live performances, interactive outreach programs, public health interventions and professional development trainings through the creation of socially conscious physical and visual theater to challenge both artists and audiences with new ways of seeing, representing and responding to contemporary life.


EDGE: Aside from your own performace career you teach, What advice do you offer kids out of high school who want to pursue a career in dance?

Octavio Campos: If you wanna dance or perform you have to truly love it. It has to be everything in your. Be prepared to give up everything, family, friends and money. Performance is like a drug and once you’ve truly experienced it, that fleeting moment of true freedom, abandon, there is no turning back.


EDGE: You have participated in the creation of many fantastic dance and performance events, what is your most memorable experiences.

Octavio Campos: Where do I begin. I think the most amazing experience to date was collaborating with William Burroughs, Tom Waits and Robert Wilson in creation phase one of the Black Rider in Hamburg, Germany. I was involved in a real time creation process with Burroughs throwing texts at my feet, while Tom Waits played harmonica all inspired by a dance improvisation I was given to decipher by theater illusionist Robert Wilson. The experience was so intense. So theatrical, although very few people were in the space where this happened the experience stands for me as one of the great moments of my theater career.


EDGE: You left a successful career in Berlin to return to Miami. What led to that decision and what are your thoughts on Miami’s burgeoning art scene and the
direction it’s heading?
Octavio Campos: I totally believe in this community and leaving Berlin was hard; but Miami is just as fantastic in other ways. Berlin had the Wall we have the Water.


EDGE: In many ways you can single handedly be credited with revitalizing Miami’s modern and experimental dance scene. Where do you see yourself in the landscape of Miami’s cultural environment in the next 10 years?

Octavio Campos: I believe in taking risks with my dance theater projects. In the scope of world theater I am often considered daring but still a classic experimental artist. The work I make here is happening in NYC, San Francisco, Paris and Berlin. There is just a lot more of it in these cities. I often feel alone in this town. But I believe in Miami and love being back here and creating a "scene". Slowly I see myself turning into a performance alchemist. Other artist’s are starting to claim this "other" space, like Natasha Tsakos, Heather Maloney and Rudi Goblen. By taking these types of theatrical risks I widen the scope for others. In ten years I hope to be the Artistic Director of the Miami International Center of the Arts, a fully operational multidisciplinary art house which invites international artist’s to come to Miami and collaborate with local artist’s to produce and create hybrid theater that will be made in Miami and travel abroad to the most important and cutting edge performance venues worldwide.


EDGE: What is your dream collaboration?

Octavio Campos: To make a multidisciplinary music theater project with film maker, John Cameron Mitchel, sets and costumes by Marcel Dzama and music by Goran Bregovic and the No Smoking Orchestra.


EDGE: What other projects do you have in the works?

Octavio Campos: After Bugchasers, I am going to produce Michael Yawney’s new play, 1000 Homosexuals, a play based on Anita Bryant and her gay crusade here in Dade County and then my next big work a mass spectacle and ballet called SPEED FREAK, a motorcycle ballet and symphony with original music by Alfredo Triff.