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 Florida offers a broad spectrum of arts, history and culture to stimulate the mind and soul. In additional to hosting numerous international festivals, high-profile traveling art exhibitions, well-known entertainers, and traveling Broadway shows, Florida is home to professional soloists and literary legends, as well as symphonies, ballet and modern dance companies, and a multitude of art, science and history museums.
Florida also features some of the oldest historical sites in the country, including St. Augustine, "The Nation's Oldest City". Filled with architectural masterpieces of Spanish Renaissance and Colonial Revival, antique shops, beautiful art galleries, and romantic bistros, St. Augustine serves as a perfect example of a seamless fusion between history and entertainment. Designated as the "Global Gateway to the Americas," Florida takes pride in its cultural diversity. From the preservation of historical artifacts to cuisine, music and the arts, it is apparent that Florida's multi-cultural community has helped mold it into the international melting pot that it is today. Florida Performing Arts Is opera your thing? Are you a fan of the ballet? Does an evening at the symphony make your weak? Can the theater capture your imagination? If you didn't already know, Florida's vibrant performing arts scene extends to every corner of the Sunshine State. So many local and regional performing arts groups exist in Florida that it would be impossible to discuss them all. Everywhere you turn, each city and town seems to have its community theater, its orchestra performances, its holiday specials. Florida, in fact, seems to be brimming over with these magical arts. So, let's look at a handful of the state's most notable companies, orchestra's and troops.
Opera! Opera!
Plié, Please.
Baton. Score. Symphony.
Act 1. Scene 1. Florida Culture We're one better than a melting pot. Cultures don't dissolve into one another here in Florida. They remain whole, creating a collage of ethnicity that represents the global community, with special emphasis on tropical latitudes and seaworthy heritage. And so it has become a land of fiery foods, sizzling music, salty temperament, colorful accents, striking architecture, and passionate arts. You will experience the diversity and influences in practically every city and town in the state, but in certain places different cultures have stamped a mark that persists in preserving a way of life carved from distant, exotic places. Here's where to best experience our brand of global warmth.
NORTH FLORIDA
CENTRAL FLORIDA
SOUTH FLORIDA
Key West: The Cubans immigrated first to this easily accessible island only 90 miles away to flee early oppression and revolution and to transplant their cigar factories. Their influence survives in architecture, art and cuisine, showcased at the San Carlos Institute.
Miami: Another living museum of culture, Miami has welcomed peoples of many origins to its safe haven and land of opportunity, most notably Cuban refugees. Their influence is city-wide, mingling with other Latin and Caribbean cultures to create a spicy stew of arts. Along Calle Ocho, Eighth Street, so-called Miami's Little Havana main thoroughfare, salsa music, the slap of dominoes, and strong cafe con leche transport visitors to a different place, a different time. Seminole and Miccosukee communities:The first Americans have since disappeared from Florida, but new Amerindian cultures later moved in and, threatened by removal and war, established communities throughout southern Florida. Many of the Seminole and Miccosukee tribe were forced into the raw wilderness of the Everglades, where today they welcome visitors to experience their nature-bound way-of-life.
Florida History Hop aboard the Florida "way-back" machine to visit rousing eras of wooly mammoths, Native Americans, brave conquistador's, pirates, pioneers, geniuses, millionaires, astronauts and heroes. 10,000-8,000 B.C. - Move over mastodons and gigantic armadillos, humans are afoot, heading from what is now Georgia to Florida. 8000 B.C.-1500 A.D. - Tribes from the Caribbean and Mexico join migrants from the north to settle, fish, trade and worship the sun. 1513- He came, he saw. . . he left. Juan Ponce de Leon makes the first European landfall somewhere in the vicinity of St. Augustine, claiming La Florida for Spain. 1516-1542- More Spanish explorers come to see what all the excitement is about. Ponce de Leon returns, this time to the West Coast where natives greet him with poisoned arrows. 1559- He came, he saw. . . he tried to stay. Tristan de Luna establishes Florida's first settlement at today's Pensacola Beach. Starvation ensues and de Luna departs. 1564- Frenchman Rene de Laudoniere comes, sees. . . and stays, also in the vicinity of St. Augustine at a settlement known as Fort Caroline. This makes the Spanish very nervous. 1565- He came, he fought, he stayed. Spain sends Pedro Menendez de Aviles to rid Florida of the French. He establishes the town of St. Augustine, America's first permanent European settlement. 1600-1700 - Spain is on a mission to "educate" (convert to Catholicism) Florida's native people. Its priests build more than 30 missions along the northeast coast and westward near Tallahassee and St. Marks. 1698-1723 - Spain sets up camp in Pensacola, which later gets ping-ponged from Spain to France, back to Spain, back to France, back to Spain. 1738 - Fort Mose, the nation's first black community, is established near St. Augustine in time to defend it against the British. 1763 - At the end of the Seven Years' War, England gives Cuba to Spain in exchange for St. Augustine, whose citizens pack up for Cuba. 1776-80 - Florida, now British, supports the Motherland during the American Revolution, providing a safe haven for thousands of Tories. 1783 - St. Augustine is again swapped, ending up once more in Spanish hands. 1785-1795 - Spain relinquishes St. Augustine and Pensacola to England. 1803 - The United States of America claims West Florida and its capital Pensacola as part of the Louisiana Purchase. 1813 - England is not so keen on giving up Pensacola and General Andrew Jackson arrives to drive the British out. 1818 - Jackson's actions spark the first of two skirmishes with the Seminole Indians. 1821-1823 - Jackson becomes Florida's provisional governor when the U.S. purchases Florida and its capital St. Augustine from Spain. Tallahassee becomes the new capital. 1830-1840 - Boom! Florida's first flush of settlers arrives by steamboat and the population grows from 15,000 to 34,000. 1835-1842 - Seminole Wars, the sequel. 1845 - It's official: Florida becomes the 27th state with 66,500 people. 1861-1865 - It's official: Florida becomes a non-state when it secedes from the Union. Florida provisions Confederate troops with salt, beef and bacon during the Civil War. 1878- Tourism dawns at Silver Springs when Hullam Jones glues a window to the bottom of a rowboat and invents the glass-bottom boat. 1883-85- Florida gets railroaded. Henry Plant lays tracks on the West Coast, Henry Flagler on the East Coast. Along with the railroads sprout luxury hotels and a new era for Florida travel. 1887- Eatonville becomes the first incorporated municipality in America governed by its own African-American population. 1898 - Florida prepares for the Spanish-American War with forts and army camps. 1904-1912- Flagler rides the rails to the end of the line, extending his tracks the 156 miles from Miami to Key West. 1908 - Jacksonville becomes Florida's Hollywood, where producers make early movies - years ahead of Hollywood, actually. 1928- Transportation makes another forward lurch with the opening of the Tamiami Trail from Tampa to Miami. 1946- Jackie Robinson scores a home run for his people in Daytona Beach as the first African-American to join an all-white team. 1947 - Score one for Mother Nature: President Truman dedicates Everglades National Park. 1959 - Fidel Castro's assumption of power results in the first influx of Cuban immigrants to Florida. 1961 - Transportation looks skyward as Cape Canaveral sends its first manned vessel into space. 1971 - The mouse is loose. Walt Disney World opens outside Orlando. 1980- Nearly 125,000 more Cuban immigrants arrive in the Mariel boatlift. 1982- President Reagan signs the Miccosukee Constitution, making Miccosukee Indian territory independent from the Bureau of Indian Affairs. 1984 - Florida returns to the rails: Miami debuts its $1 billion Metro rail system. 2000- Score one more for Mother Nature: President Clinton authorizes a massive project to restore the fragile eco-system of the Everglades, which have existed and nourished life since the beginning of time in Florida.
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Which ever part of the state you find yourself in, you can find a professional opera company to indulge your fancy. From the 
When you have a yen for lighter-than-air dance, when you yearn for the beauty of form-made-fluid, a night at the ballet, and nothing else, will satisfy. You could dance your way down the state, from the 
When the conductor and the scores of individual master musicians play together just that certain way, there is nothing as moving as a symphony performance. And with all the orchestras in Florida, there is a statewide symphony of classical music. The acclaimed 
Tarpon Springs: Greek divers came here to harvest sponge 100 years ago. The sponging industry continues to draw swarthy seamen and their families, making the neighborhood around the sponge docks a living museum. Dodecanese Boulevard smacks the senses with the aroma of fresh-baked Greek pastries, the chatter of the mother tongue, the busyness of the marketplace, and the salty scent of curing sponges. The sponge markets and Greek restaurants are easily accessible to visitors, who may also experience a deeper sense of the culture at services in St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Cathedral, site of the annual Epiphany festivities in January. 
Ybor City: Another Cuban settlement during the early cigar-making glory days, this Tampa neighborhood remembers its roots with Latin restaurants, period architecture, lively street festivals and traditional coffee-roasting and cigar-rolling industries. |
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