The Cuban-American singer and songwriter Emily Estefan, daughter of Gloria and Emilio Estefan, will star alongside Cuban-born choreographer Patricia Delgado in the world premiere of Push the Buttons of the Civilized, the work with which the Miami City Ballet will kick off its 2026-2027 season this Friday.
Estefan, making her debut in dance composition, will perform live part of the music while Delgado presents her first choreographic creation for the prestigious company, according to reports Hoodline.
Miami City Ballet opens its 2026-2027 season with Push the Buttons of the Civilized, the first choreographic commission from Delgado for the company and the first foray of Emily Estefan into composition for dance.
Estefan not only signed the score: during each performance, she will be on stage singing and playing guitar and drums, while a band that she leads plays the music from the orchestra pit.
Most of the score comes from Take Whatever You Want (2017), the debut album that Estefan wrote at the age of 18, although the production will also include previously unpublished pieces. Gary Sheldon created the orchestration for the scene, and the very title of the ballet is taken from lyrics of that album.
The piece also includes a recording of a lullaby sung by Gloria Fajardo, Emily's maternal grandmother, who passed away in 2017, and it opens with a parental pas de deux that fuses classical technique with Latin social dance and Afro-Caribbean influences.
Patricia Delgado is the daughter of first-generation Cuban immigrants, born and raised in Miami, where she began studying dance at the age of five with teachers of Cuban origin. She was a principal dancer at the Miami City Ballet for about 17 years, from 2000 to 2017, before transitioning to choreography.
Her establishment in this new role came in June 2025, when she won the Tony Award for Best Choreography alongside Justin Peck for the Broadway musical Buena Vista Social Club, a work that also has deep Cuban roots.
Now she returns to the stage that witnessed her growth, but this time as a creator.
The collaboration between Delgado and Estefan began during the rehearsals for the musical Basura, which premiered at the Alliance Theatre in Atlanta in 2026, where Estefan co-wrote the music alongside her mother, Gloria Estefan, and Delgado served as the choreographer.
It was the artistic director of the Miami City Ballet, Gonzalo García, who proposed the collaboration between both artists at the start of his term, which officially began in August 2025.
Push the Buttons of the Civilized anchors the mixed program American Rhythms, which completes its lineup with two classics from the American repertoire: Allegro Brillante (1956) by George Balanchine, with music by Tchaikovsky, and N.Y. Export: Opus Jazz (1958) by Jerome Robbins.
For this production, designer Zac Posen created new costumes for the 16 dancers of Opus Jazz in collaboration with GapStudio, described as the first authorized redesign of the original costumes from the work, crafted with Infinity Stretch denim and modified construction techniques.
The program will be presented in Miami on October 16 and 17 at 7:30 p.m. and on October 18 at 1:00 p.m. at the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts (1300 Biscayne Blvd).
In Fort Lauderdale, the performances will take place on October 24 at 7:30 p.m. and on October 25 at 1:00 p.m. and 6:30 p.m., at the Broward Center for the Performing Arts (201 SW Fifth Ave).
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