En Pointe

A questionable method for pitching stories; plus, the Miami City Ballet turns 40, a very metal opera star, and Bjork.

Hello readers,

How has the first full week of 2026 treated you? I'll tell you how it has treated me: on Monday I discovered Nama chocolate, a Japanese style of chocolate with the consistency of ganache. If you can get your hands on some – just a few pieces will do – don't hesitate. Just trust me on this.

Thank you to those of you who reached out about Sid. That meant a lot, and made me feel like maybe you really do read this from week to week. So thank you again.

What follows is a long-promised magazine story that I wrote about the Miami City Ballet (MCB) for this month's issue of Aventura. But first, a behind-the-scenes look at how I developed and pitched this idea to my editor. A dancer with the ballet followed me on Instagram at some point last year, and the evil cynic in me began wondering why on earth she'd do a thing like that. I began clicking around, here and there, trying to see what her story was. In general, I found a bunch of interesting stories about various aspects of the ballet and people who worked for it. One of my ideas was that the ballet was celebrating its fortieth year on earth. Drawing from my own experience, I began thinking about how my own life certainly became exponentially more awesome after I turned 40, so I was wondering how turning 40 was working out for the MCB. I looked at my ideas and sent them all. As I suspected, my editor liked the anniversary story most.

And to think it all started because I wondered why a ballerina was following me online.

I would not call myself a ballet aficionado, though I've enjoyed the ones I have seen. I also enjoyed Apollo's Angels, a beautifully written cultural history of ballet by former dancer Jennifer Homans, who traces the dance from Renaissance Europe to the present. It was a bestseller for a very good reason. I just loved it. Finally, as I went to work on this story, I had such a good time talking to various dancers and administrators within the MCB that it was a challenge to whittle down all the really interesting stuff they said – their wonderful backstories of how they came to love ballet, and especially this particular ballet company – into a piece of this length. Talking to people who have such love for what they do, for better or for worse, is one of the many reasons why I love what I do. So I hope you enjoy reading the below piece (be sure to click through to the rest of it!), which is about a plucky ballet company and its imaginative new artistic director who has a bold plan for the group's future.

Got any bold plans of your own this year? Hit reply and let me know. Your secret is safe with me.

TGIF,

Paige

Taking Center Stage with the Miami City Ballet

Two weeks into his new role as Miami City Ballet’s new artistic director, Gonzalo Garcia sits in his office reflecting on what it means to lead the company in its fortieth year.

“Sometimes anniversaries are an opportunity to celebrate, but also to move forward,” says Garcia, a former principal dancer for the New York City Ballet and San Francisco Ballet. “We can’t forget how we got here, but we also want to be around for another 40 years.”

Garcia understands that new chapters require new narratives. Pretty ballets don’t always sell tickets. The Nutcracker is not the only family-friendly performance. Tradition is wonderful, but there are plenty of new, groundbreaking choreographers whose work needs to be seen.

“I want to explore stories like Sleeping Beauty, Swan Lake, and Don Quixote and see how new generations bring new life to them,” says the Spanish-born Garcia, who has devoted himself to studying both classical and contemporary choreography since his hyperactive youth. “But also, what are the other stories that new generations of choreographers want to tell, and what are the old stories that haven’t been told?”

In seeking out these stories, Garcia hopes to draw broader audiences and fresh financial support to Miami City Ballet (MCB), which has become one of the premier dance troupes in the country, if not the world. Plucky since its humble beginnings in 1985, MCB has done more with less funding than its counterparts in cities like New York, Moscow, or Paris, while weathering challenges such as economic downturns, changing audience demographics, and the COVID-19 pandemic.

“I’m not saying fundraising will be easy, especially right now,” Garcia notes. “But I know the potential is there, the money is there, if there is desire for culture. If there is no desire for culture, then how do we change that? Or what kind of culture is needed? I think Miami City Ballet has a big part to play in that.”

I truly enjoyed speaking with Gonzalo Garcia and others for this piece I did on Miami City Ballet's fortieth anniversary for the January issue of Aventura. For more on the vision and effort to make MCB a reality, and what the future holds for the company, please click here to read the rest of the piece.

Writing prompt: Think about a time you've done more with less. Write about what you did and how it made you feel when you were done.

Find meaning. Distinguish melancholy from sadness. Go out for a walk. It doesn’t have to be a romantic walk in the park, spring at its most spectacular moment, flowers and smells and outstanding poetical imagery smoothly transferring you into another world. It doesn’t have to be a walk during which you’ll have multiple life epiphanies and discover meanings no other brain ever managed to encounter. Do not be afraid of spending quality time by yourself. Find meaning or don’t find meaning but 'steal' some time and give it freely and exclusively to your own self. Opt for privacy and solitude. That doesn’t make you antisocial or cause you to reject the rest of the world. But you need to breathe. And you need to be.

-- Albert Camus

Endnotes

A Very Metal Opera Star

If you watched the Opening Ceremony of the Paris Olympics last year, you probably recall this really jaw-dropping moment when the metal band Gojira rocked out alongside some headless Marie Antoinette-type figures that stood in the windows of the Conciergerie. Granted, I'm an ardent Francophile, but when I saw this performance I got goosebumps and thought to myself "YES! THE REVOLUTION WAS DEFINITELY VERY METAL!" Then, as the rocking continued, an opera singer glided by on a boat, singing "Habanera" from Bizet's opera Carmen, which made me think "whoa...that tracks too." Anyway, this week The New York Times featured that chanteuse, Marina Viotti, a philosophy-major-turned-metal-singer-turned-mezzo-soprano who believes we should all do more than one thing in our lives. It's a great story, and you can find it here.

Bjork Has Some Ideas about Greenland

Let me go on record as saying Manifest Destiny is stupid. No one is divinely ordained to take things that don't belong to them, ok? Bjork, the Icelandic singer and wearer of interesting garments, agrees, having recently called upon Greenland to declare its independence from Denmark. “Colonialism has repeatedly given me horror chills up my back, and the chance that my fellow Greenlanders might go from one cruel colonizer to another is too brutal to even imagine,” Bjork said. For more on her mini foray into international affairs, click here.

A Farewell to Sidney

The first obituary I wrote for publication was about Clark Byers, the guy who painted all the "See Rock City" signs on barns. The second was about my stylist friend Sidney, who I also wrote about here last week. It was an honor to be asked to write about him, but my goodness it was a heartbreaking task, compounded by the fact I just realized I left out an "and" near the top of the piece. Here is that tribute, for anyone who might be curious.

If you get a minute, please consider...

...writing an old-school letter (ON PAPER) to someone you know and sending it to them via snail mail.