![\"Justin](\"http:\/\/www.musicalamerica.com\/mablogs\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/holding-miami-city-ballet-shepard-fairey.jpg\")
<\/a>Justin Peck and Miami City Ballet dancers in Wynwood<\/p><\/div>\n
In the first moments of Ezra Hurwit and Peck\u2019s Heatscape<\/a>\u00a0video, Peck puts on his ear phones, we hear Martin\u016f\u2019s concerto, and we see the tall, boyish choreographer enter Wynwood Walls graffiti park, created by the late real estate mogul Tony Goldman. What follows is the appearance of Miami City Ballet dancers, sailing through the air like dolphins in front of various graffiti murals.<\/p>\n One wonders whether Peck, who is not a Miamian, knows the story behind Wynwood\u2019s recent and massive gentrification, and if he did know it, whether he would choose this place as the backdrop for his promo video.<\/p>\n The story of Wynwood begins in the 2000s. Looking for a place to invest his money, the real estate mogul Goldman took note of the creativity of area\u2019s graffiti muralists. They were illegally using the sides of Wynwood warehouses to showcase their art. Goldman decided to give them legal wall space for their work. And, so, Wynwood Walls were born. More recently, another real estate mogul named David Edelstein began buying up Wynwood\u2019s warehouse neighborhood. Thanks to Edelstein, the working class area has become a hipster mecca. Edelstein\u2019s approach is as follows: buy large swaths of a poor neighborhood, promote urban artists as the symbol of the neighborhood, rapidly gentrify the area into a playground for nightlife and the bourgeois consumption of art, and then kick out old residents. All of this is described in Camila \u00c1lvarez and Natalie Edgar\u2019s Right to Wynwood<\/a>, which won the Best Documentary Short at the 2014 Miami Film Festival.<\/p>\n With this in mind, Peck\u2019s decision to put ballet and Miami graffiti together is problematic. His joining of the two arts occurs not just in his promo video, but also in the soon-to-be-completed stage version of Heatscape<\/i>. Shepard Fairey, a former graffiti artist, known for his Barack Obama “Hope” poster, is creating the work\u2019s graffiti-esque set design.<\/p>\n Putting ballet and graffiti together is hardly new. The first graffiti ballet was Twyla Tharp\u2019s Deuce Coupe<\/i> (1973) for The Joffrey Ballet. Back in the 1970s, when Tharp was making Deuce Coupe, <\/i>graffiti was still considered anti-social. It illegally altered public spaces. By hiring graffiti artists to spray paint the stage backdrop, while Tharp\u2019s ballet-meets-social dance unfolded, she threw into question the notion of high and low art.<\/p>\n Peck, who is a classically trained ballet dancer, rightfully wants to mix the \u201chigh\u201d and the \u201clow\u201d; to blend sanctioned and rebellious art forms together. Unfortunately, graffiti is no longer a rebellious art. The establishment has embraced it. In the case of Wynwood, real estate moguls are using graffiti to gentrify the neighborhood. Consequently, Peck\u2019s Heatscape<\/i> video promo doesn\u2019t express bohemian culture as much as it reveals the corporatization of culture, marketed to young people in spaces owned by real estate titans. Let\u2019s hope Peck\u2019s actual ballet doesn\u2019t fumble so drastically into contested urban spaces, where art and big business are meeting. Let\u2019s hope Heatscape<\/i> is just a hot dance.<\/p>\n