Local efforts are under way to help Oklahoma tornado victims. Find out how you can help here.
AFTERNOON UPDATE: I’ve received more photos from the South Korean delegation’s visit to Local Colors, courtesy of photographer Bruce Muncey.
text color is white
Roanoke Valley Sister Cities representative Mike Liew sent along the photos below of a delegation from Wonju, Korea, one of Roanoke’s Sister Cities, performing at Local Colors this past Saturday.
“TAKING FLIGHT”
What: W&L Repertory Dance Company in an outdoor aerial performance
When: 5:30 p.m. Wednesday and Thursday
Where: Wilson Hall, Washington and Lee University, Lexington
How much: Free
Info: daviesj@wlu.edu; www.wlu.edu/x58321.xml
Washington and Lee University dance students will be bouncing off the walls on Wednesday and Thursday. They’ll swing, spin and flip, too.
Those with memories long enough to recall when W&L Artistic Director and Dance Professor Jenefer Davies was director of Roanoke Ballet Theatre might experience some deja vu at these outdoor performances by W&L Repertory Dance Company, called “Taking Flight.” Music and props will augment the artistic acrobatics.
Davies first experimented with aerial ballet in 2002 while she was with RBT. Her dance classes at W&L sometimes look more like courses on rappelling.
Davies has written articles and traveled to Europe to give lectures on her methods of training college students to handle aerial dance.
Over at their Twitter account, Fighting Gravity says:
If we reach $40,000 by Sunday at midnight, a new supporter will match the $10,000 to bring us home! kck.st/17vLWSF
— Fighting Gravity (@fgravity) May 14, 2013
The Blacksburg-based blacklight illusion group and former “America’s Got Talent” finalists are using Kickstarter to raise $50,000 to fund the workshopping of a full length New York stage show. Click here to read more about their campaign.
Composer Philip Glass and his orchestra, the Philip Glass Ensemble, will kick off the Center for the Arts’ first season held in its newly-built home.
The Center for the Arts at Virginia Tech will open its first full season in its new home with a performance by a legendary American composer, end with a multimedia theater performance for children by an Italian troupe, and in between will host professional dance companies, experimental plays, a popular NPR host, a bluegrass festival and even a Pops performance by the Roanoke Symphony Orchestra.
Executive director Ruth Waalkes has said one of the goals of the new $100 million institution with its state-of-the-art 1,260-seat performance hall has been to complement, not duplicate, the programming that already exists in the Roanoke and New River valleys . Sure enough, the lineup of 21 acts sports little overlap with the Jefferson Center’s jazz offerings or the Roanoke Performing Arts Theatre’s comedians and Broadway in Roanoke shows.
The acts are also chosen based on their potential to involve community members and create opportunities for educational programming, Waalkes said.
Southwest Virginia Ballet’s “Romeo & Juliet”
Where: Roanoke Performing Arts Theatre, Roanoke Civic Center
When: 7 p.m. Saturday; 3 p.m. Sunday
How much: $19-$45; children, $15-$25
Info: 387-3978; www.svballet.org/romeojuliet.html
Courtesy Southwest Virginia Ballet. Performers include Jonah Sunnen (“Romeo”), Nathan Nguyen (“Benvolio”) and Clayton Willis (“Mercutio”).
As Southwest Virginia Ballet prepares for its first performance of “Romeo and Juliet,” artistic director Pedro Szalay is experiencing a bit of deja vu. The set that the company is using is an exact duplicate of the one used by the Ballet National of Caracas in Venezuela when he was a dancer there.
It’s a large, complicated set that uses all the hanging lines in the Roanoke Performing Arts Theatre’s fly loft and accommodates the performance’s many scene changes, he said.
Szalay choreographed the classic Shakespeare story to the score by Russian composer Sergei Prokofiev, and has made some tweaks so all the Southwest Virginia Ballet dancers have parts. “I’m using everybody in the company.”
He advises, “Bring a tissue box.”
America’s Got Talent runner-ups Fighting Gravity’s Kickstarter campaign has passed $10,000 in its quest to raise $50,000. Today the troupe released a new 6-second video using the social media application Vine. Check it out below.
|
The black light illusion troupe Fighting Gravity, a group of Virginia Tech Pi Kappa Alpha brothers who finished 3rd overall on America’s Got Talent in 2010, have turned to Kickstarter.com in hopes of funding their first full-length stage show. Fighting Gravity member Rob Grimm writes, “We are unveiling our plans to create our very own full-length, theatrical show that is hopefully going to debut in New York City this fall.” You can view their Kickstarter page by clicking here. The troupe hasn’t made a major public appearance since their performance with Jennifer Lopez and will.i.am of the Black Eyed Peas in November 2011. (Click here to watch.) |
From my Inbox to you:
Renowned choreographer Bebe Miller’s Virginia Tech visit features public talk and performance of her latest work, ‘A History’
BLACKSBURG – The Center for the Arts at Virginia Tech (http://www.artscenter.vt.edu) will host a week-long visit by the Bebe Miller Company, which will include a master class with Radford University dance students and a public lecture led by company founder and choreographer Bebe Miller.
The visit will culminate with a performance of the company’s latest dance work, “A History,” in Squires Student Center’s Haymarket Theatre on Friday, April 26, at 8 p.m.“A History (http://www.bebemillercompany.org/history.asp)” is a duet performance directed by Miller that features longtime Bebe Miller Company collaborators Angie Hauser and Darrell Jones and draws upon the history of the group’s creative process, giving audiences a glimpse into how dance-making works. “A History” can be viewed as the evidence and performance of the creative conversation embedded in the last decade of the company’s work.
Hauser and Jones appear live and virtually, creating a dynamic theatre-based performance. Their nuanced dancing relationship under Miller’s direction, with dramaturgy by Talvin Wilks, video by Lily Skove, and a media installation by Maya Ciarrocchi, represents the thematic journey that has led the company to the present moment.
Miller will lead a public talk, “Bebe Miller: Dancing at the Boundaries of Art and Technology,” where she will discuss her creative practice and the intersection of art and new technologies in terms of both creating and archiving work, on Wed., April 24, at 5:30 p.m. in Theatre 101, room 201.
The talk, which is free and open to the public, is part of the ArtsFusion seminar series and is presented by the Institute for Creativity, Arts, and Technology(http://www.icat.vt.edu/) in partnership with the Center for the Arts, with support from the Virginia Tech Office of the Provost’s Women and Minority Artists and Scholars Lecture Series (http://www.provost.vt.edu/faculty_affairs/women_minority_artists_scholars/women_and_minority_artists_and_scholars.html). Read more »
Photographer Joel Hawksley walked with the 2013 Marginal Arts Parade this past Saturday. Click the photo below to go to his gallery of the parade.
Last year’s octopus float will be a giant sugar skull this year in the Roanoke Marginal Arts Festival Parade, which starts at noon on Saturday, March 30 at Community High School in downtown Roanoke. Anyone is welcome to join in.
MIKE ALLEN | The Roanoke Times. Marginal Arts Festival founder Brian Counihan demonstrates one of the Easter Egg masks he’s making for the festival parade on March 30.
The Roanoke Marginal Arts Festival decided not to take chances this year.
That doesn’t mean there won’t be odd, bizarre, cutting-edge art experiences mixed into the festivities. It’s the weather they don’t want to gamble on.
For the past four years, the festival has tied its schedule to Mardi Gras, which meant it sometimes has taken place in the heart of winter. Founder Brian Counihan counts his blessings that the colorful and strange Marginal Arts Parade through downtown Roanoke has never been snowed out.
“We dodged a bullet every year,” said Roanoke artist Ralph Eaton, another of the festival’s organizers. So the artists running the festival decided to move it back a few weeks. (Eaton joked that he wished it could be held April Fool’s Day.)
The lineup this year includes an appearance from the Society for Creative Anachronism, famous for wearing medieval garb and battling with rattan swords, a contest to write a novel in 48 hours, experimental poetry, experimental art, experimental theater, and workshops that might help you understand what all these experiments are getting at. “We have a lot of professional artists involved,” Counihan said.
Of course there’s the parade at noon March 30 and the absurdist street carnival that immediately follows. This year, the festival ends with Vaudeville Night, a performance at the June M. McBroom Theater in Community High School at 302 Campbell Ave. S.E. Themes for the festival include Easter eggs, the Mexican holiday Day of the Dead, and lucha libre, the sport of Mexican professional wrestling.
Click here to read the rest of the story.
Festival organizers could use help decorating this giant clown shoe. Click the image to go to the Marginal Arts Festival page on Facebook.
