Chronological milestones – graduations, weddings, retirements – are contemplative times, ideal for looking back at memories and accomplishments and forward to changes and new challenges. That’s what came to mind for Leymis Bolaños Wilmott when she began planning the upcoming 21^st season for Sarasota Contemporary Dance, which she’s dedicated to “honoring where we come from and embracing where we are going.”

“This is our 21^st season, so we are ‘legal’ in the eyes of whoever,” said SCD’s co-founder and artistic director. “My whole thing is about legacy and sustainability.  I’m constantly balancing those two things, history and evolving – as a human, as an artist and as an organization.”

So not only is the season appropriately titled “Raices y Vuelos” (“Roots and Flights”), the programming pays tribute to the company’s history while also “shaking things up” with new collaborations, boundary-pushing work and unprecedented venues as it moves into a future of continued growth and creativity.

“I don’t ever want to be put in a box,” Bolaños Wilmott said. “This felt like a time to take a leap of faith.”

This year, each of the company’s four mainstage productions will be held at a different venue, with just one at its usual “home” stage, the Jane B. Cook Theater at the FSU Center for the Performing Arts. The most unusual will be a travelling, outdoor, site-specific work. Another will be at the Manatee Performing Arts Center, “bringing dance to the people” by extending its typical geographical outreach – and the final mainstage program, a collaboration with ensembleNewSRQ — will take place on the Sarasota Opera House stage where SCD has previously only contributed to commissioned collaborations, representing a giant step up in size and prestige.

“We’ve never presented a work there, so this is huge for us,” Bolaños Wilmott said. “This is me saying, ‘OK, we’re adults now.’ And then there’s the history of the Opera House and the question of who is allowed in these spaces, which is also a part of it for me. It’s like you’ve arrived.”

The season kicks off October 2-3 at the Manatee Performing Arts Center with a reunion collaboration with bassist Johnnie Barker and his 10-piece band, The Barker Project, which has its roots in jazz, but incorporates elements of funk, rock, blues and gospel. The two groups previously joined forces in 2024, adding to the growing list of SCD’s collaborations with local musicians playing live on stage.

“Everyone loved the live music in all our shows last year, so I thought, ‘Let’s start this year as we ended last year, with a show that’s celebratory,” says Bolaños Wilmott. “It’s again a band that is grass roots, with local artists being built here and the music is super accessible.”

Barker, a Tampa Bay native and a graduate of the Berklee College of Music, taps the same kind of improvisational creativity in music that Bolaños Wilmott is known for with her choreography. He also provides opportunities to other local musicians, as SCD’s director does for emerging young dancers and choreographers.

“He’s an artist I respect, a phenomenal bassist, but he’s also an entrepreneur in the community, bringing young artists to his band and reminding us of the gems we have in our community,” she said. “And I’m really excited that he’s not getting up and leaving, but providing work for artists in the community.”

The second program, “Murals in Motion,” is the most innovative, breaking new ground while at the same time harkening back to SCD’s early days when the company had no studio or theater of its own and frequently performed in public spaces.  A “site responsive” series, it will involve three curated performances of contemporary dance and live music, welcoming more than 100 audience members per show, who will move between three murals in the Rosemary District created last year as part of the PINC festival founded by entrepreneur Anand Pallegar of DreamLarge and Sarasota Magazine. DreamLarge is helping to sponsor the series.

Each mural will serve as a living stage for choreographers, dancers and musicians to respond to the artwork’s imagery, backstory, surrounding and energy. The performances will be offered without charge (although donations are accepted and appreciated) and Sarasota residents and visitors of all generations are invited to help activate public art and the Rosemary District by joining the shared journey.

The balcony of SCD’s third floor home studio at the corner of Central Avenue and Boulevard of the Arts provides a bird’s eye view of the first of those murals, which is untitled. Located at Overtown Square (1390 Boulevard of the Arts), it was created by artist Joey Salamon, who arrived in Sarasota just in time for the 2025 PINCfest and reflects his perceptions of the community’s energy, his relationships with fellow artists and his evolving connection to Sarasota.

The visual energy of the abstract work will be interpreted by students in the SCD Kids program through choreography by Sabine Dimante and Elisha Byerly. Members of SCD’s
“junior” company, SCDE, will also perform, with choreography by company members Melissa Rummel and Xuan Yang Dancigers.

The second mural, located in a parking lot next to DreamLarge and across from the SCD studios (1413 Boulevard of the Arts), was also commissioned by DreamLarge for PINCfest 2025. Created by artist Chris Dyer in the Chinese Year of the Snake, “Shedding Old Versions of Self” explores transformation and the shedding of identities than no longer serve us to reveal a higher self. SCD company member Samantha Miller will create an original work inspired by these themes which will be interpreted by SCD company members accompanied by a live vocalist.

The final piece, “Creative Seeds,” on the wall of the Sarasota School of Arts and Sciences (717 Central Avenue), reflects the role young people play in shaping the future of an artistic community. Completed in 2026 through the City of Sarasota Public Art Program, the mural by Kaitlin Ramirez (better known as Swirly Painter) celebrates children’s imagination and creative potential.

Its seeds, flowers, books, musical instruments and other visual elements symbolizing creativity, learning, growth and possibility will be interpreted in movement by SCD company member and choreographer Jessica Obiedzinski and musically by a live guitarist.

“I had to pull myself back from choreographing this because I love it so much, but I’ll be directing and assessing,” Bolaños Wilmott said. “I really believe this is a seed of something that can grow and invite more people, artists and organizations to the palette, something that could be really build momentum and activate the Rosemary District and the businesses around here.”

In January, the company will return to the Cook Theatre for its signature annual showcase of new works by leading contemporary choreographers, “Dance Makers.” This year the choreographers include Orange Grove Dance, which incorporates technological and digital effects; Madison Pineda Bender; Gabriel Speiller; and Frank Chavez. Chavez will be setting a work he originally created for an all male cast but will re-stage for SCD’s female dancers.

“He saw the company four years ago and said, ‘Yours is the company to set it on all women,” Bolaños Wilmott said. “The dancers have loved working with him.”

The performances will also include a special guest appearance by REVolution Dance of Tampa, a physically integrated company led by Dwyane Scheuneman, who began dancing after becoming paralyzed in a diving accident in 1995. Scheuneman and Bolaños-Wilmott have been frequent collaborators over the past two decades and they will be reviving the dynamic all-male piece she created in 2013, “Propel.”

The season’s grand finale will be another reunion, this time with ensembleNEWSRQ, revising a collaboration between the two organizations that took place four years ago at the Cook Theater, but expanding it to fill the much larger Opera House stage.

The renewed partnership came about serendipitously, said violinist Samantha Bennett, co-founder in 2015 of enSRQ, a cutting edge contemporary chamber music ensemble, with percussionist George Nickson.

“We knew we wanted to do something with dance again,” said Bennett, “but before we’d formally talked about it and approached them, they approached us. We were on a symbiotic wavelength.  It was very fortuitous and it tells you that the first time was a good experience for both of us.”

In the previous series of performances, Bennett, Nickson and (for one piece) a trio played live on various parts of the stage as the dancers moved around them, something that was slightly constrained by the limited size of the Cook stage.

“It was a bit tricky in the other space,” Bennett said. “They’ll have the entirety of the opera house stage to work with this time and all its resources and I’m super excited about the possibilities of the whole range of things we can do.”

The 2022 collaboration marked the first and only time enSRQ had worked with dancers and Bennett said she and Nickson found the experience “almost surreal.”

“That feeling of being able to create something, almost like the wizard in ‘The Sorcerer’s Apprentice,’ with the music instilling this drive to move and swirl and come up with combinations. We’re creating something together, but it’s different than when you’re playing music with someone else. We’re both working toward a shared experience for the audience.”

One of the results, Bennett especially appreciated was that the cross-genre collaboration meant that every performance was difference.

“There were always those slightly differently interpreted moments,” she said. “It’s not going to be the same very time at all. It couldn’t be. And that’s what’s exciting about it.”

“Raices Y Vuelos,” Sarasota Contemporary Dance 21^st Season

SCD + The Barker Project

October 2, 7:30 p.m.; October 3, 2 and 7:30 p.m.

Manatee Center for the Performing Arts, 502 Third Ave. W., Bradenton

Murals in Motion

December 11-13, 6 p.m.

Rosemary District

Dance Makers

January 14-16, 7:30 p.m. January 17, 2 p.m.

Jane B. Cook Theater at the FSU Center for Performing Arts, 5555 N. Tamiami Trail, Sarasota

SCD + enSRQ

April 10, 2 and 7:30 p.m.

Sarasota Opera House, 61 N. Pineapple Avenue, Sarasota

Subscriptions $84-$184; single tickets $20-55. sarasotacontemporarydance.org; 941-260-8485

 In-Studio Series  

 All In-Studio performances are held at SCD’s Home Studio, 1400 Blvd of the Arts, Ste 300 Sarasota, FL 34236, elevator entrance from Blvd of the Arts, north side of the building. Virtual Ticket option available.