Metro Arts March 1

The Balloon Museum at Pullman Yards in Atlanta is showcasing inflatable art installations from international artists. The immersive experience explores gravity and contrasts light and darkness. Tickets cost $39 for adults and $29 for children. The museum also provides tips for visitors, such as arriving early, wearing comfortable shoes, and embracing the interactive exhibits. In another article, the rise of independent artists in Atlanta is discussed. The city's art scene is characterized by the tenacity and independence of its artists. The article calls for more support for independently produced art and highlights various upcoming exhibitions, plays, and concerts in the city. This program is intended for a print-impaired audience and is brought to you by the Georgia Radio Reading Service, GARS. Welcome to Metro Arts for Friday, March 1st. I am Kristen Moody for the Georgia Radio Reading Service. Metro Arts is brought to you by the Fulton County Board of Commissioners. For our first article, we go to the Atlanta Magazine Online for The Balloon Museum at Pullman Yards will blow you away. What to know before you go? The immersive experience runs now through April 14th by Carly Cooper. Balloons are symbols of joy, reminiscent of birthdays, parties, and trips to the amusement park. At the new Balloon Museum at Pullman Yards, balloons are used as art. The Let's Fly exhibition opened February 17th with inflatable installations from 17 international artists exploring gravity and contrasting light and darkness. The primarily indoor experience comes to Atlanta from New York with limited time showings also planned for Rome, Paris, Milan, Madrid, Naples, and London. Designed to be immersive, the family-friendly museum takes about an hour and a half to fully Each exhibit is different, with art ranging from backlit, anime-style punching bags, to bubbles that emit smoke when they pop, to humongous suspended inner tubes that change height. It's a series of captivating displays that use sound and movement, as well as texture and color, to garner attention. Tickets cost $39 for adults and $29 for children and are available online as well as at the door. The experience will stay in Atlanta through April 14th. Here's what else you need to know. Arrive early. On-site parking costs $20 and you may have to circle the lot a few times. Use the restroom before getting in line, as once you begin exploring the museum, you won't be able to break out easily. Entry lines are color-coded based on your ticketed time. Matching umbrellas are available in case of rain. Leave the heels at home. Upon entry, guests are asked to don provided shoe covers to protect the art. You'll be on your feet the whole time, so sneakers are highly recommended. Part of the museum can get hot, so dress appropriately and leave your jacket in the car. You'll want your hands free to fully immerse yourself in the experience. Hold tight to your loved ones. Many of the installations prey on your senses, using mirrors, lights, and moving images to throw off your sense of balance. It's a fun trip, just be careful not to walk into anything. Embrace your inner child. One of the highlights is a swimming pool-sized ball pit. Guests can fall into the pool, wading or swimming their way across. Though the ball's only reached my thigh, my five-year-old struggled to keep her head afloat, but loved it nonetheless. Getting out is a real test of your upper arm strength, too. Be prepared to get dirty. The ADA exhibit features a massive, inflated ball with charcoal crayons sticking out of it. Guests can run under it and push it around the room. As it moves, it draws on the walls, ceiling, and floor. As you might imagine, this can get messy. My children, who could have stayed and played with that ball all day, had gray hands and faces afterward. Luckily, there's a cleaning station. Tip, if you don't need the sink, feel free to go around the line and on to the next exhibit. Bring your patience. Between the bigger exhibits, guests can find themselves in line for whatever's next. Look up and around to take in the scenery. At one point, my seven-year-old created his own fun, sliding-down-a-slightly-slippery hallway in his shoe covers. Get your camera ready. One of the final rooms features multiple Instagrammable, life-sized boxes with balloon art. There's an open mouth you can sit in, a giant gummy bear, a cloud, and more. Need some of your own? A flower bar sells floral-shaped balloons at the exit. That was The Balloon Museum at Pullman Yards Will Blow You Away. What to Know Before You Go by Carly Cooper. Next, 2024 marks the rise of the independent Atlanta artist. The most exciting work in Atlanta is being produced by artists who are betting on themselves by Kalundra Smith. Artlanta is a quarterly column dedicated to celebrating the artists, creatives, and designers who give Atlanta its flavor. One of my favorite things about the art scene in Atlanta is the tenacity of the artists who call this place home. On any given day in the city, you'll see students shooting a music video in a parking garage or an aspiring director bringing their vision to life in an empty storefront. I've walked into galleries that were once factories and seen plays performed in the back room of office buildings. I'm not sure who created the term art-turpreneur, but it characterizes the Atlanta art scene very well. I am declaring 2024 the year the rise of the independent, self-producing artist. There has always been an independent spirit to artists in Atlanta. When I say independent, I'm not referring to a selfish go-it-alone mentality, but more of the idea that you don't have to wait for a producer. One of my favorite quotes from author Marianne Williamson is, stop waiting for a producer, produce yourself. Atlanta artists have had this approach to art-making and creative collaboration for years. Part of that independence is necessitated by the culture around charitable giving in the arts, which desperately needs to change. People are more willing to fund institutions than they are independent artists. After all, when it comes to per capita spending on the arts, Georgia ranks near last in the country. When we look at public, private, and large individual gifts, they typically go to institutions that have six and seven-figure operating budgets and sit on seven and eight-figure real estate. These arts institutions pump blood into the heart of our city, and they are valuable, but institutions are made up of individuals, and not all individuals are going to get into every institution. There has to be healthy support for experimental, independent art-making, too. After all, the best whiskey is distilled at least three times. I want to see the Atlanta philanthropic community and others with the financial power to make decisions put more emphasis on supporting independently produced art. I want to see more funding go to making a lifelong career in the arts possible in our city. In Atlanta, I see dogged determination from artists who believe in a vision for this city's artistic future. They are building the Atlanta aesthetic brick by brick, repurposing and upcycling their way to innovation, and it's working. Turn on the radio, and you'll hear top 40 songs by Atlanta artists, such as Victoria Monet, who started off as indie songwriters. Look at off-Broadway and Broadway theater listings, and you'll see a plethora of plays developed in Atlanta and or starring Atlanta talent. Go to the movies, and you'll see the Georgia landscape in Oscar-nominated films, such as The Color Purple. However, all of that starts with independent artists who had an idea and accepted the invitation, as author Elizabeth Gilbert puts it. In this edition of Artlanta, you'll find a mix of independent and major exhibitions, plays, and musicals that will be keeping me busy over the next few months. First Fridays at Underground Atlanta are a celebration of Atlanta's independent art scene. Be sure to check out the work at Future Dead Artists Gallery, founded by painter Eugene B. Byrd III, and featuring his original paintings, as well as work by other local artists. Night of Ideas returns on March 1st from 5 to 11 p.m. at the Atlanta History Center. The event features performances and discussions with artists, public officials, academics, and everyday people reflecting on the future of the city. This year's theme, Behold the Land, takes inspiration from a speech by W.E.B. Du Bois and a series of photographs by Atlanta-based artist Sheila Pree Bright. Director Jade Lambert-Smith is producing the Tony Award-winning musical, Fela, with a talented guest of local singers and performers on stage through March 3rd at the Southwest Art Center. Set in 1977 and featuring the music of revolutionary Nigerian artist Fela Kuti, the show celebrates the father of modern Afro beats. Atlanta rapper and singer Cody Shane, who was featured in Atlanta Magazine's September 2021 issue dedicated to the women changing the face of Southern hip-hop, will be in concert at Aisle 5 in Little Five Points, featuring new music and underground favorites. Modern Mystic at Ponce City Market offers incense, crystals, and new comedy. Hosted by comedian Lissandra Vasquez, each month hear from up-and-coming comedians who share the same astrological sign. Tickets for the April Aries and Taurus shows are on sale now. Much has been written about how the state's film industry explosion can open up more opportunities for locals. Kevin Gillies, former artistic director of Dad's Garage, independently produced How to Ruin the Holidays, written, filmed, and shot in Georgia with an almost entirely Atlanta-based cast. The film is available for streaming on Prime Video and Vudu. Bronx rapper Kemba traveled to Atlanta to see how rap lyrics are used in court cases for his independently produced documentary, As We Speak, Rap Music on Trial, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January. Kemba interviews lawyers and hip-hop artists, including Killer Mike, to make connections between the outlawing of drums during chattel slavery to the siege of Black people's First Amendment rights. The documentary is now streaming on Paramount+. Who's making waves in your neighborhood? Tell us what you're creating or seeing using hashtag Artlanta on Facebook, Instagram, and X, formerly known as Twitter. About Kalundra Smith. I grew up in Stone Mountain in Loganville where my parents and teachers got me into the arts early because that's where energetic girls who talk a lot go. I'm a theater critic, journalist, playwright, and lifelong arts lover. My articles about Southern art and artists have been published in the New York Times. ESPN, American Theater, Garden and Gun, Oxford American, Bitter Southerner, Arts ATL, and elsewhere. As a playwright, my scripts focus on lesser known historical events in Georgia history. That was 2024 Marks the Rise of the Independent Atlanta Artist by Kalundra Smith. Next, we move to the Burnaway publication for In the Studio with Erin Hamm by Jennifer Dudley. Craving a consolidated community and a shift in perspective, artist Erin Palovic left Atlanta in 2021 to pursue an MFA in studio art at the University of Illinois at Chicago's School of Art and Art History. She returned to Atlanta in 2023 as Erin Hamm. Hamm's new studio is in the lower level of a 1920s farmhouse in East Atlanta. With gardens, walking trails, and three additional studios on the 2.6 acre Flat Shoals Farm, a small artist community thrives in the woods. Inside the farmhouse, after moving through a few small, dim, low-ceilinged antechambers, her studio opens up brightly with works on paper and clay sculptures, bags of powders, and shelves of inks. Deep window ledges house pants and books. Over tea and pastries, we talk about identity's relationship to practice, choreography as collage, and how to actually listen. The following conversation was edited for length and publication. Jennifer Dudley, you haven't created an alter ego or adopted a nom de plume yet, but by means of social convention, you've been given this opportunity to use a new name or second name. Erin Hamm, yeah, I had always thought about playing with the two names because my practice followed two separate paths. Like one path is material focused and the other kind of like in between material focused. When I got married, I suddenly had this other name available. At first, I couldn't decide which to use for which practice, but I realized that both practices are speaking to each other and I'm learning from the two of them. They're interconnected. Not having a clear this is labeling this and this is labeling that, I can appreciate the slippery nature of having those two practices and those two identities. There was only one other occasion when I went by a different name. It was a collective, so it wasn't just me, but we called ourselves Queersar and called ourselves by our names within that structure. J.D., I wanted to know more about your relationship to dance and choreography. E.H., I'll start by saying my relationship to it as a medium is untrained and curious and I admire dancers and choreographers, the way that they communicate their ideas, not only through dance, but through their language around dance. It's a type of intelligence that is formed through something that is here and then not here very quickly. Things live and die in the same breath. I can connect it back to sound and listening. To wrap that back into this dance with a material, I think it's helped make sense of my work on paper. I'm thinking about those works in the same language that I'm thinking about collaboration. What I'm learning through collaboration is that it's never ending, that it's not really like a start or a finish. I think I'm trying to pull that into my paintings. There aren't super defined edges, which is something I'm also trying to pull in visually. It's like play with boundaries. Dance makes me think about a collage of experience, multiple happenings going on at the same time, which also happens on paper for me. It's not perfect, which can give me a lot of heartache. J.D., some of the systems that you have been engaging in your work come from the composer Pauline Oliveros, who conceptualized deep listening. You've also been able to study with Salome Vallanguin, who's written about the ethics of listening and was a visiting critic when you were at UIC. How did you originally become engaged to those concepts of sonic awareness and deep listening? E.H. I think this was another part of my grad school journey that really surprised me. I had been thinking about listening, maybe silence specifically, and what happens in silence, and I took this course with Deborah Stratman called Radical Listening, and the name alone just felt like everything to me. It was through her course that I discovered both Pauline Oliveros and Salome Vallanguin. The process of truly listening, to step back, it's different than hearing. Listening is more of an awareness. Hearing is something that we just kind of do automatically. It's not something that we can turn off. On a primal level, it's like an alert system for us, but often what it is that we hear, we don't really make sense of, it is until we look at the thing. Deep listening is a practice of trying to make predictions, to try and not define or dissect what I'm hearing, to just for a moment close your eyes and tune into the soundscape. J.D., your interest in deep listening correlates to your use of abstraction in your works on paper, where there is a temporality of collage and a fluidity, a liquidity of marks, and the non-rigid boundaries of the rectangle. Do you find that relationship in your works on paper? E.H., yes, thank you for making that connection, really tapping into my process. There's such a parallel to this practice of deep listening for me. It's more action-oriented, of course. I think it's tricky for me to talk about these abstract works as finished. It feels like some kind of dance between me and the material and the surface. But then there's kind of like the privilege of this mark that's left. It reminds me, then, of working with clay, something that also holds memory and action. That was In the Studio with Aaron Hamm by Jennifer Dudley from the Burnaway publication. Next, we move to the Arts ATL publication for Q&A. Opera star Suzanne Burgess comes home to Atlanta in more ways than one by Mark Thomas Ketterson. An alumnus of Atlanta Opera's Glynn Studio Artist Program and now a principal artist at the Metropolitan Opera, Suzanne Burgess returns to the stage of Cobb Energy Performing Arts Center on March 2nd as the besotted lover Helena in Benjamin Britten's magical operatic confection, A Midsummer Night's Dream. Based on Shakespeare's delightful classic, Atlanta Opera's production will enjoy a four-night performance run through March 10th. Beyond her estimable contribution to the city's musical fabric and despite the fact that she has ventured across much of the planet already, the enchanting young soprano has happily become an Atlanta resident. A true citizen of the world, Burgess was born in Geneva, Switzerland to a British mother and a Scottish father. She was raised in five different countries before the family settled in Austin, Texas when Burgess was 14. Her household was not particularly musical. They are all shocked that this has become my career, Burgess says. My mom is tone-deaf. In high school, she had to choose between orchestra or choir and admits she chose the latter because she didn't want to practice an instrument in her free time, which she observes is pretty ironic in hindsight. Her unusual vocal gift quickly became apparent and the choir director recommended serious voice training. Before long, Burgess was acing competitions and won a full ride to the University of Nevada. After college, Burgess hit New York and worked as a temp while pursuing music gigs. She soon landed spots in the Young Artist Summer Programs at Des Moines Metro Opera and Opera Theater of St. Louis, then joined Glyndon Studio in 2020, where she remained for two years. She has since returned to Atlanta Opera as a principal artist, scoring notable success with Mabel's Coloratura Riffs and the Pirates of Penzance. Burgess snatched a moment between rehearsals to speak with Arts ATL about her career and experiences in Atlanta. Arts ATL, tell us about your time with the Glyndon Studio Program. Suzanne Burgess. It was rather unique because I was there from 2020 through 2022, right in the heart of the pandemic. We had this tight bubble. It was in our contract that we could not go out and eat at restaurants, but because they could not bring in outside singers, I got so many performance opportunities. I did leading roles that I otherwise would not have probably only covered because they couldn't bring in stars, so I'm grateful in a way. The program was amazing to begin with, but because of these circumstances, I felt I was almost in a fest while I was in Atlanta. I also loved doing the Big Tent series. Those tent shows were extraordinary. We were in this pressure cooker, so we had to think outside the box and become really creative to make a show work. The product of all that was so unique. Arts ATL. How did it feel to go straight from Atlanta to the Metropolitan Opera? Burgess. It was incredibly vindicating. Atlanta was proud of me, and I was ready for the challenge because of the work I did here. My road to the Met was through the Metropolitan National Council auditions, but not because I won. I got to the Met because I didn't win. It was a bit of revenge casting. I was in the regionals, and two of the judges wanted someone else, so I didn't move forward. But the third judge happened to be on the casting team at the Met. I got an email telling me that despite my not moving forward in the competition, I was invited to give a stage audition at the Met. So I made my debut at the Metropolitan Opera because I didn't win the council auditions. I like to tell this story because I hope it might inspire others. You just never know. Arts ATL. You won great acclaim for the role of Helena in Des Moines. What are your thoughts on this character? Burgess. I often play characters who are plot keystones of love and purity. Helena is not that. I love that about her, and she is not far from some people we all know. I think of Helena as one of those women who loves Pride and Prejudice and romance novels and thinks that if a man is cruel to you, it's because he just can't come to terms with how much he really loves you. She really believes that and believes that Demetrius just needs one more push. Playing her as a real person is important to me. I don't want to play her as a caricature of a clingy, annoying ex-girlfriend. Something challenging about her vocally is most of my lines begin on an F-sharp. It's right in the passaggio of the voice, and they begin in forte. She comes in with great strength and then decrescendos as she loses steam. You can feel her waning in her strength to follow Demetrius. This is why I love Britain. There are so many little examples of that kind of thing. Just genius. My biggest challenge is the need to sometimes go with my pretty vocal choices. I like to get the drama across, so I'll go for the bite and the sound and don't necessarily go for the more beautiful choice. Arts ATL. You've been involved with Atlanta Opera during a period of major growth for the company. Tell us about that. Burgess. It's pretty exciting. Atlanta is now one of the top ten opera companies in the country. I have such pride in having been part of that young artist's studio and to be returning. But there is also a bit of pressure associated with it. I wouldn't call it fear, but there is a sense that you have to prove you deserve that higher status. So there is excitement, but also more pressure to perform to the level that is expected now. So many opera singers who live in Atlanta, some of the best singers I know, that speaks to the excellence of the musical community, but also to the quality of life you can have here and still have such quality arts organizations. My fiancé and I just bought a house here. Arts ATL. What do you love most about being an opera singer? Burgess. There are moments where there is nothing moving in the room. The orchestra, you, and the audience are all sharing that moment. Everybody's heartbeats are kind of synced. It feels like an amazing togetherness. I love that. I love creating those moments, and I love being in an audience when they happen. I also love meeting new colleagues. I get to meet new, interesting people from all over the world. Working with these amazing people is my favorite thing. Arts ATL. What is special about a Midsummer Night's Dream? Burgess. This piece has something for everyone. There's comedy, love, and magic. The costumes are insane. It's a great opera to bring first-timers to. You will have a chance to see artists like Liston Davies, who is probably the best oberon in the world, but also some young, hungry performers who are really upping their own game. There is something cool about that. Arts ATL. Is there anything you want audiences to know about you? Burgess. I love for people to say hello after performances. It's important for audiences to have access to the performers. We aren't untouchable. We are real people. That was Q and A. Opera star Suzanne Burgess comes home to Atlanta in more ways than one by Mark Thomas Katterson. Next, news. Sinkay Hicks joins Arts ATL as Editor-in-Chief, effective March 1st, by Arts ATL staff. Sinkay Hicks has been named Editor-in-Chief of ArtsATL.org. Starting March 1st, he will be responsible for the nonprofit website's editorial vision and will work with the executive director and the board on strategic planning. He will also coordinate partnerships with other media such as the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. I'm delighted that Sinkay will be joining us as Editor-in-Chief, says Arts ATL Executive Director Patty Siegel. His 25 years of experience as an editor and arts journalist, both locally and nationally, will be a real asset to Arts ATL. I'm excited about this next chapter. A Harvard graduate with a Master's in Digital Media from Georgia Tech, Hicks is a recipient of the Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writer Grant for his long and short form reviews, analyses, and essays for local and international arts publications, including Art Forum, Sculpture and Art in America. He served briefly as Interim Editor-in-Chief at Art Papers. Hicks was a founding creative director of the organization Atlanta Art Now from 2010 to 2011, where he managed and produced a visual art program exploring risky contemporary visual art created by Atlanta artists. In that role, he oversaw and co-authored the book No Placeness, Art in a Post-Urban Landscape with Katherine Fox, award-winning art critic and co-founder of Arts ATL, and Jerry Cullum, whose reviews appear regularly in Arts ATL. The book explored Atlanta's contemporary art scene in historical and critical contexts through the work of more than 30 artists. One thing I'm most eager to do is to create an ongoing document of what makes Atlanta unique in the arts, states Hicks. I want to help readers understand Atlanta in a regional and national context and give a clear sense of the city's specific contributions to culture. From 2008 to 2011, Hicks wrote the Frame of Mind column for Creative Loafing, exploring important issues in Atlanta's arts ecology. In 2005, he founded and directed Code Z, a web-based news daily about global black visual culture. And in 2008, he was a co-founder of Idea Capital, an innovative new funding mechanism that directly supports artists outside of typical institutional models. Hicks also has a 30-year background in the publishing industry, working in the design, development, and production of books for organizations such as the New Press, Rutledge, the Carter Center, and Macmillan Publishers. That was news. Sincay Hicks joins ArtsATL as Editor-in-Chief, effective March 1st, by ArtsATL staff. Next, Vernal and Sary's Glass Essay transforms poem, shows reading, is a mirror, by Benjamin Carr. For Vernal and Sary Theater's 10th production, The Glass Essay, founding company member Sawyer Estes issued himself a unique challenge as a playwright. He wouldn't actually write a line of dialogue within it. Instead, the work, inspired by Canadian poet and essayist Anne Carson, will present Carson's poem of the same title, Verbatim, delivered by five performers on stage telling a story conceived by Estes with multiple characters. The play will run at Windmill Arts Center in East Point from March 1st through March 17th. It's a peculiar thing, Estes said. When I was thinking about staging this, I would read the poem once, and I could see it in my head, the way the lines break down. Then I would read it again on another day, and it would be a wash, and I couldn't see anything dramatic. I went back and forth on whether it was really possible, and I decided to take the leap and figure it out. The resulting work features performers Kate Brown, Kaylee Keppel, Erin O'Connor, Lindsay Sharpless, and Mustafa Slack. It tells the story of a woman going through a breakup who returns home to visit her mother, and she tries to analyze the works, including Wuthering Heights, as a means of understanding the author and rediscovering herself. So it's her life in relation to the work of Emily and the dark, Byronic characters of Emily's world, Estes said. Often when we discover books that resonate, our connection to them emerges because of what they reveal within us. Reading is not a one-way street, he said. The book or the object is like a mirror or pane of glass that is reflecting yourself back onto you. It reads you while you are reading it, and wherever you are in life changes how you look at a work. Vernal and Siri specialize in experimental, abstract theater, and Estes views the glass essay, which includes elements of music, dance, film, photography, and lecture, as the culmination of all their efforts. With my work, I feel like this is everything I've been working toward in a piece of theater for the past 20 years of my life, he said. He discovered the poem over a decade ago and connected with it. About 10 years ago, I fell in love with Ann Carson, and I fell in love with the glass essay, he said. When my sister got divorced, I gave it to her to help her through her difficult time. Because of the emotional connection they both had with the work, Estes considered the challenge of presenting a nontraditional text as a work of theater. I wanted to be true to the power of the poem itself, and that power is in language, he said. And I wondered if I could convey that without changing a word of it. It's all word for word. The process of adaptation was taking the poem from its single voice, that single perspective, and breaking that down into dramatic characters. It was about breaking it down line by line, determining that this line was spoken by this character, or this line is in response to this character. Estes said the performers have worked hard to discover their characters within the work, wondering how to deliver certain lines because the poem is only from Carson's perspective and in her voice. Bernal and Siri, though, has a fluidity in the way it presents characters within its work. In previous shows, such as The Exterminating Angel or Hurricane Season, characters would often speak collective thoughts or echo each other's sentiments. If you've seen our work and seen how a character can be both very fixed and totally in flux, you'll be familiar, he said. If you're not, it could be tricky. But I feel confident that it will be successful, even to audiences new to our work. The scenic design by Josh Oberlander is very special, Estes said. The entire play will be staged within a large metal box in the center of the stage, like a diorama, surrounded by scrim that will have images and video created by Haley James projected upon it. We're coming to view and to analyze these figures just as we would in a zoo or a museum, he said. Audiences will connect to the emotion of the work and the power of Carson's words. I like to think the best of my audience, Estes explained, that if I get it, then they'll get it. And if they don't, they'll see it again and won't just dismiss it. That was Bernal and Siri's Glass Essay Transforms Poem Shows Reading is a Mirror by Benjamin Carr. Next up, 2024 Spring Preview, Atlanta's music, art, theater and dance continue to bloom by the arts ATL staff. Dance. New York-based Parsons Dance will take the stage at the Rialto Center for the Arts for one night only on March 10th. The internationally renowned contemporary company was founded in 1985 by choreographer David Parsons and Tony Award-winning lighting designer Howell Binkley. Known for its lively athletic movement style and acrobatics, the ensemble will perform Nascimento, sent to the lilting compositions of Brazil's Milton Nascimento, The Road set to music by Cat Stevens, and Parsons' iconic solo, Caught, still an audience favorite after 40 years in the repertoire. Carson Mason. Terminus Modern Ballet Theater kicks off its spring season with a collection of new works at the KSU Dance Theater from March 1st through March 3rd. The program includes the premiere of Body and Myth, a world premiere from emerging choreographer Nadine Barton, if only the first live performance of a duet originally created as a film by Frank Chavez, and Under the Olive Tree, a nine-dancer performance set to Baroque music from resident choreographer Tara Lee. Terminus' spring season continues with Peter and the Wolf, March 16th and 17th, on the Plaza at the Woodruff Art Center, and a program of its most popular works, April 16th and April 17th, at the White Box Theater in Buckhead. Atlanta Ballet brings the works of three choreographers to the Cobb Energy Performing Arts Center in its Kaleidoscope program, March 22nd through 24th. Company dancer Sergio Macero will present the world premiere of his neoclassical, Karencia. Garrett Smith, whose many choreography credits include Netflix's Tiny Pretty Things, will premiere his new ballet for the company. Rounding out the bill is Mark Morris' playful Sandpaper Ballet. The company's season culminates May 10th through May 12th with Liquid Motion, an evening of new works by choreographer-in-residence Claudia Schreier and Brazilian dancemaker Juliano Nunez. Schreier's ballet, set to Wynton Marsalis' The Jungle Symphony No. 4, features set-in costume designs by Atlanta muralist Charity Hamadula. More dance highlights. Floridius Dance's new work, Saint, will begin at Seven Stages Theater Main Stage, March 8th through March 10th. India's Nirvigam Dance Ensemble, in collaboration with Chitra Sena Dance Company, based in Sri Lanka, will perform Ahuti at the First Center for the Arts on March 29th. Grand Kiev Ballet brings its Giselle to Atlanta Symphony Hall on March 15th as part of a 60-city tour. Dance Canvas' 2024 performance series will be at the First Center for the Arts March 22nd and March 23rd. Three new contemporary dance works comprise Beacon Dance's program March 29th through March 31st at B Complex. The annual MADD, Modern Atlanta Dance Festival, will take place June 7th and June 8th at the Emory Performing Arts Studio. May 17th through May 19th in Woodruff Park, Jimmy Joiner will premiere Red Tethers, a solo performance born from his research into the lives of Atlantans lost to HIV-AIDS. Atlanta choreographer Megan Nivoa will premiere her full-length In This House at Theatrical Outfits' Balzar Theater June 14th and 15th. Art and Design. The Michael C. Carlos Museum presents Recasting Antiquity, Whistler, Tanagra, and the Female Form, comprising 30 works from American artist James McNeill Whistler, alongside works of ancient art. On display through May 13th, the exhibition juxtaposes Whistler's 1880s prints and drawings with recently excavated Hellenistic Greek terracotta Tanagra figurines on loan from the Louvre Museum. The show considers what the taste for Tanagras at the turn of the 20th century reveals about changing attitudes to classical antiquity and conventional Western notions of femininity. The High Museum of Art will exhibit an exploration of Dutch fine art through the lens of global trade and colonization. Presenting more than 100 paintings, prints, and maps created by leading Dutch artists in the 17th and 18th centuries, the exhibit Dutch Art in a Global Age, Masterpieces from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, explores how Dutch preeminence in maritime trade influenced life in the Netherlands and international culture. To reflect a complex history, the exhibit includes art with the positive image the Dutch wish to project, along with the works that depict the toll of colonialism. The exhibit runs April 19th through July 14th. The Sandler Hudson Gallery hosts William Downe's second solo exhibition, A Wave Touched a Cloud, a multi-sensory and immersive presentation of his work. The artist explores the intersection between nature and human intervention with new materials and structures that serve as a matrix for his drawings. The exhibit opening March 9th includes site-specific sculptural installations and large-scale drawings that extend beyond the confines of the gallery's walls as Downe seeks to challenge viewers' perceptions of the surreal and of landscapes. More art and design highlights. The contemporary photography exhibit Truth Told Slant opens at the High Museum of Art on March 1st. Also at the High, Hear Me Now, the Black Potters of Old Edgefield, South Carolina, is open now and runs through May 12th. Mocha George's exhibit of the late Larry Walker's work continues through March 16th. Threaded at the Spelman College Museum of Fine Art runs through May 24th. He's had exhibits the world over. Now painter William Steger's work will be at the Marsha Wood Gallery March 16th through April 13th. At the Marietta Cobb Museum of Art through June 16th, The Magic of Modern Art, How to Love Modern and Contemporary Art, is based on artist Robin Jameson's book of the same name. Painter Susanna Coffey will have a show at White Space in June and July. Painters Tim Short and Alex Wagner and multimedia artists Petey Parker and Sarah Nathaniel have an exhibit opening May 15th at Echo Contemporary Art. The Swan Coach House Gallery will work Edge Award winner Aniki Traverso March 28th through May 2nd. Music. The Atlanta Opera continues its multi-season performance of Richard Wagner's Ring Cycle with the Epic Trilogy's second installment, Die Valkyrie, premiering April 27th at the Cobb Energy Performing Arts Center. World-renowned Wagnerian singer Greer Grimsley will reprise his role as Wotan in an epic tale of power and intrigue in the realm of the gods. The Atlanta Opera has thrived in recent years owing to the leadership of general manager and artistic director Tomer Zivulin, and Die Valkyrie promises to uphold the same majestically high standards set forth in the previous season's run of Das Rheingold. The fifth season of Atlanta's Ensemble Vim, Very Interesting Music, offers free concerts of new music performed by some of the region's best young classical musicians. True to its name, the ensemble seeks out compelling voices and delivers with verve. Women for Women is the group's March 12th show at St. Luke's Church on Peachtree Street, with music by six composers from the celebrated veterans Tanya Leone and Paola Prestini, to the fast-rising Sarah Gibson, a former member of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. There's also a world premiere, Notch, by Atlanta composer Alice Hong. Now in its thirteenth year, the Bluesberry and Beer Festival features local blues talent and blueberry-themed promotions from historic downtown Norcross merchants. A musician in his own right, founder and CEO Mike Holley, has been scouting the Atlanta scene for years, curating the best in new talent while balancing the roster with more established performers. Although this year's lineup has not yet been finalized, you can count on Holley to do it right. It's really about keeping the blues alive, right? Holley said. Because that's what we try to do. The festival takes place June 15th from 3 p.m. till 10 p.m. More music highlights. The new Friday night series Jazz Nights at Serenbee kicks off March 15th, with two more shows following on May 3rd and September 13th. Atlanta-formed rock band The Black Crows play the Fox Theater on April 5th as part of a 35-date tour. The Atlanta Jazz Festival returns to Piedmont Park on May 25th, including headliners Rhonda Ross and husband Rodney Kendrick. Atlanta-formed metal band Mastodon will play a Marisbank amphitheater on July 25th, with accompanying metal band Lamb of God. And Atlanta's own Zac Brown Band will perform with Kenny Chesney, Megan Maroney, and Uncle Cracker at the Mercedes-Benz Stadium on May 18th. Theater. From the Penn of Pulitzer Prize-winning Lynn Nottage, Sweat, comes the comedy-drama Clydes, in stage March 13th through April 7th at Theatrical Outfit. Nominated for five Tony Awards, the play brings together a group of cooks who were previously incarcerated in the kitchen of a Pennsylvania truck stop diner, under pressure to make a flawless meal. The Broadway run starred Emmy winner Uzo Adobo, and this Theatrical Outfit production boasts Tanya Jackson and more. To me, Clydes is a play about freedom. What are the things that imprison us mentally, physically, emotionally, and how do we truly get free, said director January Lavoie. But it's also a play about sandwiches, sublime, magnificent sandwiches. Mercury, a bloody revenge comedy-thriller set in Portland, Oregon, runs April 6th through April 28th at Actors Express, and any new production from Atlanta native Steve Yockey, now best known for his Emmy-nominated writing on HBO's The Flight Attendant and Netflix's Dead Boy Detectives, is a reason for excitement. It's sure to be a thrill when he returns to Actors Express, which last staged his play, Reykjavik, in 2018. I'm most excited about working with director Melissa Folger again and being back at the Express, Yockey told ArtsATL. It's like going home. Journalist and playwright Kalundra Smith will explore Atlanta's history with the world premiere of The Wash, a co-production between Synchronicity Theatre and Impact Theatre Atlanta, beginning June 7th. The play, developed through Hush Harbor Lab, centers around women involved in the Washerwoman strike of 1881, one of the largest and most successful organized labor strikes of the post-Civil War era. Smith, a former editor at large with ArtsATL and the managing editor of American Theatre Magazine, calls her play restorative narrative. I am the daughter of black Southern parents who are the children of black Southern parents who are the children of black Southern parents, Smith said in the statement. The geography and culture of the South form my being and inform my work. This is my American experience. More theater highlights. The Golf and Psycho Beach Party are on stage at Outfront Theatre March 14th through March 30th and May 2nd through May 18th. True North is at Seven Stages Theatre March 14th through March 31st. The Glass Essay with Vernal and Sary Theatre opens March 1st. Fat Ham and the Preacher's Wife are on stage at Alliance Theatre April 3rd through May 12th and May 11th through June 9th. Sister Act is at Aurora Theatre May 23rd through June 23rd. Actors Express will stage Pearl Cleege's Blues for an Alabama Sky May 30th through June 23rd. Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf is at Theatrical Outfit May 15th through June 9th. The Center for Puppetry Arts presents Stellaluna March 26th through May 19th. And Theatre Emery presents Little Shop of Horrors April 11th through April 21st. That was 2024 Spring Preview. Atlanta's music, art, theater and dance continue to bloom by Arts ETL staff. Next, 2024 Spring Preview for Atlanta Creatives to Watch This Arts Season by Arts ETL staff. Dance Tulani Vareen. Nearly a decade after sneaking into dance classes at Spelman College while studying computer science, Tulani Vareen fuses the two. Her research centers on the use of computer science methodologies to create movement vocabulary, physical algorithmic thinking and inform arts innovations. The foundation of computer science is an algorithm, a step-by-step process to accomplish an objective, she says. In dance, that's how technique is created. A Microsoft engineer by day, Vareen teaches at City Dance and Music. Her previous award-winning research resulted in an LED light suit that corresponds with the choreography and music of a dance piece, physical computing, she calls it. The former Atlanta Contemporary Artist-in-Residence with Dance Canvas is also an IDEA Capital grant winner and a 2023 Excuse the Art artist. Excuse the Art is a fly-on-a-wall works-in-progress series. Vareen is also co-creator of Code House, which helps black teens explore STEM careers. She's taking an architectural approach to her new dance piece, Masaka's Travel, about her mother's fleeing from apartheid South Africa for the promise of hope in the United States. It will debut at 7.30 p.m. on April 17th at Synchronicity Theater as part of the theater's Stripped Bare Arts Incubator Initiative. Each dance move is its own little piece of code, Vareen says. I'm always thinking, what's the best architecture for these pieces to come together to create a fully working software, a fully working dance? Art and Design. Kelly Taylor Mitchell. Rememory, Toni Morrison's notion of recalling the forgotten, largely guides the practice of Kelly Taylor Mitchell, artist and assistant professor of art and visual culture at Spelman College. The origin of Mitchell's practice is the memories and work of her grandfather, Millard C. Mitchell. She received his personal slide archive when he died in 2016. His longtime research about their family and black folks living in his native Garyburg, North Carolina, and her native Bucks County, Pennsylvania, catalyzed her intrigue with maroon communities and how African spirituality carried over. These bits and pieces of information also allow me to imagine the things that aren't written or spoken, but embodied, she says. My practice isn't just about researching these stories, it is a type of ancestor worship. It's my offering to them. Her artworks are spiritually utilitarian and reflect the meticulousness of hand-making and passing down skills. She uses materials such as logs from the Great Dismal Swamp, hammered kitchenware, and ancestral technologies like sewing and beading, honoring the power and significance in the lives and survival of her forebears. Mitchell recently received the African Diaspora Art Museum of Atlanta's Nellie Mae Rowe Award alongside Arturo Lindsay. Their works comprise the museum's Through Lines exhibit and the lobby of the Nia Building in Pittsburgh Yards through March 30th. Mitchell is getting noticed by other organizations, too. She is a 2023-24 Midtown Alliance Artist in Residence, a 2023-24 Arts and Social Justice Fellow at Emory University, and a 2023-24 BIPOC Linden House Arts Foundation Fellow. Music, Xavier Dubois Foley. Last season, composer-performer Xavier Dubois Foley was the hero of his own music. With the Atlanta Symphony, he was a virtuosic soloist for the world premiere of his Soul Bass, a concerto for bass and orchestra. The music was inspired by the 70s TV dance party Soul Train, and Foley's concerto was at once sexy, snazzy, and swinging good fun. His aim was to infuse a more traditional form of writing with a taste of soul. Charismatic and pitch-perfect, his playing was alive with emotion. The audience gave the soloist-composer a euphoric ovation. Soul Bass was an ASO commission. Now it's Spivey Hall's turn. A Marietta native, Foley started with the ASO's Talent Development Program, which was aimed at nurturing diverse young musicians. Now in his late 20s, he's traveled far in a hurry, with commissions stacked up from Carnegie Hall and with orchestras from Miami to Chicago to Portland. Spivey's project pairs Foley as composer and bassist with the esteemed Ying Quartet. All five musicians will be making their Spivey debut. When the Ying's agent proposed a co-commission with Xavier, I jumped on board in a heartbeat, says Katie Lehman, Spivey's executive and artistic director. For music that speaks to us right here, she says, there is no better way than Xavier's work for the people of Atlanta. In this April 21st concert, Foley's new piece will sit on the program with an old chestnut, Dvorak's beloved string quintet, NG. That's all the time we have for this piece, which is entitled 2024 Spring Preview, for Atlanta creatives to watch this art season by Arts ATL staff. That concludes today's Metro Arts program, which is brought to you by the Fulton County Board of Commissioners. This has been Kristen Moody for GARS, the Georgia Radio Reading Service. Thank you for listening to GARS.