Despite the enormous pressures of being the new artistic director of Miami City Ballet, Lourdes Lopez found time recently to promote a new era of artistic collegiality and openness to the community. New World School of the Arts and Miami Dade College hosted a reception at the Freedom Tower, providing a forum for more than 200 members of Miami’s dance world, from local independent artists to leaders of longstanding companies and presenters, to welcome and meet Lopez.

She was gracious and eloquent in her remarks, which included sharing that the last time she was in the Freedom Tower was to collect public aid as a child. Most remarkably, she promised a new spirit of community from Miami City Ballet and spent two hours meeting and talking to almost everyone in attendance. Lopez has said that she wants to ride the momentum of Miami’s cultural explosion — and initiate it, if possible. She is off to a very good start.

-- Dennis Edwards, chair, New World School of the Arts Foundation Board, Miami