The Ringling’s Art of Performance is one of the most unique offerings, year to year, in Sarasota’s artistic landscape. Bringing an eclectic mix of musical, dance, theatrical and interdisciplinary performances to The Ringling—often times in the Historic Asolo Theater (HAT)—the Art of Performance series embodies the living legacy of John Ringling: a town where artists, of all disciplines, come together to perform, bring joy and show the best parts of themselves to audiences. Elizabeth Doud, The Ringling’s Currie-Kohlman Curator of Performance, is the one tasked with piecing together each season. Below is a behind the scenes look at the various performances this year at The Ringling, filled in with detail from Doud herself. The Art of Performance season kicks off with a bang—literally. The conclusion of The Ringling’s Wonder Symposium is the Night of Wonder, featuring most prominently Grammy-nominated artist Jose “Pepito” Gomez and his ensemble, La Royal Orquesta. Held outside on The Ringling’s grounds, Gomez, who works in the realm of Cuban popular music, will perform his signature retro sound. “He harkens back to the 1950’s big band sound of salsa, rumba, cha-cha-cha—those kinds of you know big ballroom event sounds from Havana—and he’s a great vocalist,” says Doud. “He’s also a well regarded researcher, in that he’ll do covers of well known standards in the genre, but with his own twist.”

That retro sound continues when jazz vocalist Georgia Heers comes to town. Heers, an artist in her twenties who Doud discovered in New York City’s Winter Jazzfest under two years ago, has quickly risen to the top of the jazz scene. Much like Gomez, Heers, a graduate of the Juilliard School who has performed at esteemed venues such as the Kennedy Center, is an innovator. Well known classics are brought into the 21st century—when Heers sings, time seems to slow, even move backwards. A performance of Heers makes the audience feel as if they slipped into an absinthe bar in the French Quarter, the tinkle of piano keys and brass of the trumpet pouring out into the cobbled streets, beckoning one inside. “She’s a very soulful performer, but also has this elegant lightness to her. There is a lot of innovation and reframing of works from the jazz cannon,” says Doud. “It’s the right size for the HAT and one of the things that I love about Georgia is that she’s an up and coming artist, she’s somebody that we’re going to be hearing a lot about in the future.”

Heers’ performance this season is emblematic of why it’s critical for Doud to see the artists that she brings to The Ringling live. It is only then, that she can truly gauge what they bring to the table and how they will be additive to Sarasota’s bustling arts scene. In just 20 minutes at Winter Jazzfest two years ago, Doud could sense that Heers was a force to be reckoned with. 

The final of The Ringling’s strictly musical acts this season is another Grammy-nominated artist, Valerie June. June, who has written a string of best-selling solo albums, is not an artist easily penned in. While June has visibility within popular music, she does not work in the sound of “pop.” The singer-songwriter multi-instrumentalist is perhaps as American as an American artist can be. The Tennessee native draws from Appalachian folk, soul, blues, gospel and psychedelic rock to create her own, distinctive, banjo-wielding sound. “She’s this cross-genre artist out of Tennessee working in this space of Appalachian-rock-neo-folk if you will. She’s a guitarist, she plays the banjo and as a frontwoman, her ability to command the mastery over that instrument is amazing,” says Doud.  All of the season’s musical offerings take place between October and mid-December. For Doud, this allows her the flexibility of staging the acts in different areas across The Ringling’s campus. Where Heers’ performance will be set in the more intimate HAT, June’s concert will take place outside at the Bolger Campiello, a waterfront venue adjacent to the Ca’ d’Zan. “The HAT is a great venue and it’s wonderful for many different things—for something that requires complicated lighting or a certain amount of sound isolation, we can’t do that outside,” says Doud. 

Where one thread of The Ringling’s Art of Performance season ends, another one joyfully picks up. Doud curates the season to be mult-disciplinary, not just for the sake of it, but to truly bring an eclectic and inspiring mix of artists to Sarasota. Dance, be it contemporary or classical or from the far corners of the world, such as last year’s standout performance from Odissi master Bijayini Satpathy, is always in play. French choreographer and dancer Leila Ka brings a trilogy of three contemporary choreographies to the HAT with Bouffées, You’re the one we love, and Pode Ser. “It’s a solo, a duet and a quintet. While I usually don’t go for a kind of rep program with three different pieces put together for one evening, this has an extremely satisfying, well-defined choreographic language,” says Doud. “Using an all-female cast, Ka talks a lot about bodily autonomy, feminine identities and feminine expression. It’s arresting and highly visceral.” Ka, who began her dance career as a hip-hop and urban street performer at 16, is known for an emotionally charged dance language, featuring exhibitions of strength. In Bouffées, You’re the one we love and Pode Ser, Ka injects that language with intimate moments of vulnerability, creating a truly distinct body of works.

In February, Sarasota-native and Artist-in-Residence at The Ringling, LaMichael Leonard Jr. will present SKIN NOISE. Leonard, an internationally recognized dancer, choreographer and instructor, showcased the first iteration of SKIN NOISE last February at the HAT. One year later, Leonard’s full creation will be staged in Galleries 1 and 2 at the The Ringling Museum of Art. “The work is made for the galleries themselves,” says Doud. “It’ll be performed there in conversation with the space itself.”

The season’s interdisciplinary offerings also begin in February with Agrupacion Senor Serrano’s performance of Birdie. The internationally-acclaimed theater collective from Barcelona comes to Sarasota for the very first time, with a performance that Doud affectionately refers to as, “a wild collage of something that I would call a mix of live cinema and object theater.” Birdie draws from Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds, creating a multi-media performance that is both playful and pointed. The group employs over 2,000 miniature figures onto a green carpet, then mixes a live camera feed of their own acting and manipulation of the figures with clippings from The Birds, newspaper headlines and images of birds in flight and descent. “The script starts to take you through different ideas—when you look at something, are you seeing everything that is really there? Birdie is about what is perceived versus what is real and how those two concepts form our opinions about reality,” says Doud. 

In March, the Art of Performance season heads off-campus with Robin Frohardt’s Shopping Center of the Universe, at the Sarasota Opera House. Produced in collaboration with the Science and Environmental Council for EcoSummit 2027, Universe creates a commentary on consumer culture through the use of puppetry, film, prose and music. Frohardt, a puppet artist and animator, has recreated a replica of a big box store and parking lot using repurposed card board cutouts. Performers manipulate this miniature set, their actions projected onto a live-video feed, accompanied by narration and an original score. “The projection acts as a conduit for us to see the world she’s created, and then she does this very interesting live animating of it on stage. It becomes a meditation on consumer culture—what is the shopping mall? There’s an ecological emptiness in these shopping malls and giant parking lots because we’ve paved over everything that was there before it,” says Doud. 

In April, the Art of Performance’s season rounds out with Returns Department, a theatrical circus performance from real-life twin sisters, the Kif-Kif Sisters, before giving way to MicroWIP 2027, excerpts of performances from artists from Manatee and Sarasota Counties. Through it all, Doud hopes to bring a level of excellence and artistic integrity to the community that she serves. “I’m always trying to make sure that there are new artists, new inputs and that we’re filling a gap that is not being filled by another peer organization. We want to bring in artists from beyond our borders, who are touring internationally as well those from within,” says Doud. “I think about what our duty is as a museum and an educational institution. We want the performances shown to be a service to the community and relate to the legacy of John and Mable Ringling.” SRQ The Ringling, ringling.org,  5401 Bay Shore Rd, Sarasota