Metro Arts Oct 6

This program is brought to you by the Georgia Radio Reading Service and discusses various topics related to literature, writing, and Atlanta. It features an interview with author Tayari Jones, who talks about her upbringing in post-civil rights Atlanta and her writing process. Jones also discusses the influence of her time at Spelman College and the importance of black women writers. The program also explores the DIY art scene in underground Atlanta and the challenges it faces with impending redevelopment. Overall, it highlights the rich literary and artistic culture in Atlanta. 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, October 6th. 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 Tayari Jones and her literary lineage and choosing Atlanta. The acclaimed author talks about growing up in post-civil rights Atlanta, why black women are important literary communities, and the reverse migration back south by Regina N. Bradley. Tayari Jones, author, professor, and griot of the American South, has a lot on her plate. She teaches a creative writing class at Emory University. She has book blurbs due and forwards to file. And she has words in a just-released craft book, How We Do It, where her Emory colleague Jericho Brown gathered black writers to explain how they go about making what they make. I know I have a novel, Jones writes, when I have a question to which I don't know the moral ethical answer. She is also putting the finishing touches on her fifth and forthcoming novel, Old Fourth Ward, which is set squarely in black Atlanta's centers of gravity, the historic neighborhood adjacent to downtown Atlanta and the book's namesake, and Cascade Heights, her old stomping grounds. It's been five years since her last novel, An American Marriage, a story about wrongful incarceration and its repercussions, was selected for Oprah's Book Club. She penned three more novels before that, Leaving Atlanta, 2002, The Untelling, 2005, and Silver Sparrow, 2011, and edited Atlanta Noir, 2017. All of Jones's work focuses on southern black life after the formal civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, and it's her embrace of flawed but humane black characters that keeps her novels and writing on my bookshelf and in my classroom. I teach Leaving Atlanta regularly as part of my southern hip-hop courses to add depth and nuance to our discussions of Atlanta child murders and the ensuing fallout in Atlanta's black communities. In the following conversation, Jones talks about growing up in post-civil rights Atlanta, why black women are important literary communities, and the reverse migration back south. Talk about your childhood growing up in Atlanta. What influence did it have on your writing? Well, I love to tell people I was born in downtown Atlanta. I was born in 1970 in Hughes Spalding Hospital, which is an annex of Grady. I was born right after the civil rights movement when there was this optimism that the children are the future, and when I think about it, it's one reason I like to write child characters. No child is walking around feeling like the future. You feel like yourself, and that was one of the things I really had to lean on, particularly in my first novel, Leaving Atlanta, about growing up during the Atlanta child murders. When I was a child, I did not understand myself as having a historically significant experience. I understood myself as a child, wanting to go to school, wanting to be invited to parties, and being frustrated that we were so surveilled by our parents during that time of the murders. Parents were more worried than we were because parents have historical memory. They looked at these child murders happening, and they were connecting it to Emmett Till and other anti-black violence, but as children, we didn't know any of that. We felt like we were the only people to whom this had ever happened. How did attending Spelman College influence your development as a writer? I went to Spelman College when I was 16 years old. Going to Spelman College was the greatest gift of my life, and I cannot overstate what Spelman College did for my worldview and my understanding of who I was. When I went to Spelman College, two things happened to me. One, I met Dr. Johnetta B. Cole. She was the first black woman president of Spelman College in 1987. Spelman had been in existence 106 years and did not have a black woman president, but there she was. I met her, and she says, what are you interested in? I said, I want to be a writer. I don't know where it came from, just the sight of her made me reach higher. I thought of writing like singing. Some people could, some people couldn't. I signed up for a creative writing class. I did not know creative writing could be a class. I feel tearful just thinking of that moment. My teacher was Pearl Cleach. She took me up under her wing, and I've been under there ever since. She modeled for me what it looks like to be a writer. Who do you feel is part of your genealogy as a southern black woman writer? You want to hear something crazy? I feel like I discovered my long lost literary auntie recently. Her name is Diane Oliver. She's passed away, but she went to the University of Iowa in the 1960s. She wrote a couple stories and was given an O. Henry prize. She died when she was hit by a car while riding her bike. Her stories are collected in a book called Neighbors. I'm writing the introduction to it now. I cannot believe the profundity of her work and the way she fits in with the tradition even though she didn't know she was fitting in with the tradition. I was like, how could I be influenced by this lady even though I'm just reading her today? She was so far ahead of me that I feel like she was paving the way. I think of myself as a descendant of Alice Walker. I feel like Alice Walker changed the game for black women's writing. I think she was more influential than Toni Morrison even, though Toni Morrison is a once in a generation talent, but the reason I think Walker was more influential is that Alice Walker made it acceptable for black women to admit that patriarchy existed. It totally changed what black women were writing about and how they endured. Pearl Cleage taught me that black women's everyday experiences are worthy of literature. She taught me that you don't have to write your book about the effect of white people on yourself, that white people are not the only factor in your life to write about. There is a lot of pressure, I think, for black people to write books about racism and every now and then a plot about racism like an American marriage will cross my mind, but it's not what I think about all the time. Zora Neale Hurston taught us all how to write people the way they talk in a way that is not condescending. Her writing feels like she witnessed it and that she is part of that community. That is so important to me. I say that the greatest compliment you can ever get as a writer is for someone that has experienced what you're writing about to say they recognize themselves. That's the gift. That's the point. If people who experienced it say what you're writing is, pardon my French, bullshit, then it is. The people you're talking about have the right to veto that and you just apologize and start over. Why do you think that people have a problem with recognizing black women as readers and writers? I think that people judge writers by your readership. Say you're a white man and you have a very small but influential group of readers. They will say, oh, that's impressive. I just think people don't respect black women's intellectual work. And I mean that as readers too, not just as writers. It's very important to me to always give respect to black women. When my first book was first published, black women came out to hear me read. They bought my book. They wrote me letters and they supported me because it took a long time for my career to take hold. I mean, it wasn't until An American Marriage that I was even reviewed in the New York Times. Nikki Giovanni said to me, take care of your black women readers. They will nurture you. They will care for you. She said, the women in this room are going to come to your funeral. That was one of the best pieces of advice she has given me. When I was writing Silver Sparrow, my publisher had kicked me to the curb. My poor little other books were taken out of print. I was working on my book and was like, what am I doing? Why am I doing this? I'm not going to be able to publish this. A box came to my office. I opened it and inside was a crocheted blanket from a reader who said, I saw on Facebook that you have moved to New Jersey and it is cold up there. She said, put this over your lap when you write. I put that blanket on my lap all the time. It stirred my spirit and let me know that someone out there wants to read what I write. A lot of people have been talking about a reverse great migration of black folks coming back south. How, if at all, does this idea of the reverse migration influence your writing? I'm in favor of this reverse migration. Come on back home. I like it. And I like that so many people are choosing Atlanta. I love people asking me, where are you from? And I love saying, right here. I think it's worth saying that stories from the urban south are still southern stories. There's a hunger in the world for a kind of idea that the south is the part of the country that time left behind. One of the things important to me are modern, urban, but deeply southern stories. In writing about Atlanta, I have had to confront stereotypes about southern life. And there are people who don't think that you can be southern and a city person at the same time. Atlanta is changing. We're a more cosmopolitan city, but we're still the city we are. They can't change us. They can join us, but they can't change us. That was Tayari Jones on her literary lineage in choosing Atlanta, by Regina N. Bradley. Next, from the Atlanta Magazine Online, notes from underground Atlanta's DIY art scene. The city's long-neglected subterranean corridor is having yet another renaissance, this time as a DIY arts destination. But as redevelopment looms, the creative community wonders, how long can it last? By Ollie Turner. In downtown Atlanta, something hums in the grit and grime of the city's basement. Someone has plugged in an amp. Artists responding to beats from below are headed to underground Atlanta, the subterranean corridor that housed speakeasies during Prohibition, a rollicking bar district during the early 70s, and then chain retailers in the 90s and 2000s. Today, Atlanta's city beneath the city is having another go-around, now as a DIY art space. Across from the Five Points Marta Station, a flight of stone steps leads down to this creative renaissance. On underground's lower level, the storefront of an old geoshop has been stripped back to its foundation and redecorated with found objects to become an eclectic performance space called No Tomorrow. Next door, a former Victoria's Secret, now gutted to the studs, is home to hardcore hip-hop and visual art under the name Mom Said It's Fine. Three other studios complete the row of storefront-turned-galleries, Innerspace, MCD Gallery, and Itch. Nearly everything, every evening, someone reads poetry or dances to an atmospheric soundscape in the studios. We'll have four different shows next to each other, so people can come and explore each one, said Carl James, who runs Innerspace. In a single evening at Underground, No Tomorrow features performance artists holding experimental improvisation workshops, Itch hosts an open mic, a metal band plays at Mom Said It's Fine, MCD Gallery hosts an art exhibition, and Innerspace offers more live music, all side-by-side. It's almost like a multi-stage event every night, said James, and the community is growing. Tyree Smith's Artlanta Gallery joins the lineup at Upper Alabama Street late last year. Underground Atlanta's current owner is Shanil Lalani, a 34-year-old entrepreneur who immigrated to Atlanta from Mumbai when he was a child, and has already made a fortune in gas stations and video gaming. In 2020, he paid $31.6 million for the ailing subterranean district, created in the 1920s when the city built viaducts over old Alabama and old prior streets to accommodate railroads. Lalani believes a little polish will restore the gleam of history trapped beneath the grime, but some members of the nascent arts community worry that scrubbing too hard will chip it all away. In 2020, Lalani Ventures hired artist and placemaker Chris Pilcher as creative director. When I first got access to the property, it was in a really dilapidated state, Pilcher said. There was trash piled up on the streets. All the storefronts were abandoned and disrepair. Pilcher tapped seven local artists for short-term residencies to revitalize the property as Lalani Ventures planned redevelopment. The artists, Carl Janes, George Long, Maria McDowell, Priscilla Smith, Mike Stansney, Eugene Byrd, and Miriam Robinson moved into abandoned storefronts in the lower Alabama Street corridor. They have changed the public perception of the area, at least among the more creative demographic of Atlanta, Pilcher said. Know Tomorrow, the performance venue run by artist-in-residence Priscilla Smith, hosts a free workshop called Laboratorium every Thursday. The improvisational performance concocts noise and movement. It's as weird as weird gets, unbridled music, motion, and sound using instruments like pots and pans, tinfoil, and child's toys. My shorthand for it is, we bang on a pot and roll on the floor, she explained. Know Tomorrow also hosts intimate indie rock concerts, raves, and film showcases. There is often more mainstream fare, too. In 2021, within the first six months of Underground's latest reopening, 40,000 people visited the Art of Banksy, Without Limits, an exhibition of the British street artist. On First Fridays, the unofficial after party for the High Museum of Art's High Frequency Fridays, the line to enter Underground often stretches a block down Peachtree Street, as far as the Coca-Cola sign above the Walgreens. All of the studios are open to browse. The event draws over 3,000 people each month, said Underground Atlanta's Director of Events and Activations, Lyle Baldus. Maria McDowell prides her venue, MCD Gallery, on its versatility and flexibility. Exhibitions, spoken word, dance, birthday parties, symphonies, children's shake and paint, entrepreneurial events, comedy, hip-hop, R&B shows, the freedom is a quintessential element of the do-it-yourself vibe the artists have brought to the space. Underground's new life embodies the essence of DIY. The artists and residents rent their spaces, advertise by word of mouth, live stream performances on Instagram, and post hand-drawn flyers on social media. The beautiful thing about the DIY scene is you can have an absolutely amazing show in a basement with zero resources that rivals something you would see at the High Museum, Pilcher said. While free-form, these nights of DIY art aren't random. At Innerspace, Carl Janes is a puppet master, pulling the strings so creative communities overlap. Within the punk scene, I realized that Atlanta is so vast that we have at least five different parallel punk scenes that aren't even aware of each other, Janes said. I'm able to take similar projects from the different scenes and then create a show that introduces everybody to each other. Movement and loss are integral parts of being an Atlanta creative. iDrum Art Gallery started in a downtown loft in 1998, then moved to its first official location in Castleberry Hill, then to three different spaces throughout the 2000s, and most recently to a warehouse on Ralph David Abernathy Boulevard in 2021. In the 2010s, the Goat Farm, an arts organization, led an initiative to fill abandoned spaces on South Broad Street downtown with artists with the goal of developing a permanent creative community, Pilcher said. When German conglomerate Newport purchased the buildings that housed the spaces five years later, that arts community basically shut down overnight, he remembered. In July 2023, Newport announced it was selling its downtown holdings to local developer Braden Fellman Group. Before Interspace, from 2009 to 2018, Carl Janes ran a gallery and studio called The Secret Spot in East Atlanta Village. Bands played shows on the flat roof of the building, Janes shot fireworks, and crowds gathered in the parking lot below. It turned into this exciting creative space where people were really just kind of unbridled and lawless and having great fun, Janes said. Its demise was sudden. One day I showed up, and there was a for sale sign in front of my door, and that was kind of the beginning of the end, Janes said, and now there are townhomes plopped down from outer space on top of it. In 2017, Janes stood on a rooftop with a microphone, gazing down at a block packed with hundreds of regulars. There's a war going on. It's a culture war, and the battlefront is our collective conscious, Janes told the crowd. A lot of us culture makers are losing very important spaces to all of us. The Secret Spot was a difficult loss. The best thing for me was just to get to see the other side of the world from it, Janes said. He was in China for an artist's residency when the building was demolished. Less than five years later, Janes moved his art underground. But there's no illusion of permanence in today's underground Atlanta either, with galleries tucked into the district's exposed foundation. This is obviously a delicate space to operate, said Mike Stanthe, who runs Mom Said It's Fine. And there's a salacious nature of deserved victimhood that happens to artists, where you move into a space, and then it gets built up, and then we kind of get kicked out. But I've always liked that adventure. Still, the art scene is surviving in spite of this game of real estate back-a-mole. With centrifugation, you lose some of the authenticity of grit and the cobwebs of the past, which are beautiful in and of themselves. I want to keep those cobwebs to a certain degree in CTV Gallery's Maria McAllison. The little bit of spit dine, you can make it a little bit better, but keep the original feeling down here. Although the talk of centrifugation hangs heavily over the space, Stasny is open to a little tidying up. Centrifugation is literally to make more polite, which sounds somewhat terrifying, Stasny said. But I am curious about what the more polite version of a DIY space would be. Development and preservation are often at odds. Unfortunately, commercial real estate is all about generating profit, Pilcher said, considering the future of Underground's artist residencies. I don't believe that it would be possible to create a really long-term, homegrown artist's community there without implicit support from the owner, which will also require significant investment in that community. Pilcher left Leilani Ventures in 2022 after a year and a half as creative director of Underground Atlanta, citing inconsolable creative differences. He believes owner Leilani's long-term vision is to build a completely commercialized real estate development, while his own was a permanent, sustainable creative community. However, for now, Leilani Ventures continues to invest in Underground's art community. In January 2023, the company launched First Fridays, which showcased the artists as a crown jewel of future development. Today, thousands flock to Underground on the first Friday of every month for art, music, poetry, food, and drink. Underground Atlanta's Lyle Baldess refers to the series as a party. The artists definitely benefit downtown by making it more colorful, making it more beautiful, getting people excited about it, Baldess says. For his part, Leilani says he plans to build vertically, without disturbing the artists on Lower Alabama Street. Our goal is to incorporate them into our long-term strategy. Leilani also says he is steering Underground in a direction that he hopes will be more sustainable. By 2026, he plans to construct a tower for market-priced housing, affordable housing, and Georgia State University student housing in Peachtree Fountains Plaza. This is not just a city within a city back in the 1960s, where it was just an Underground destination or a nightlife district, Leilani says. Right now, even though we're focusing toward nightlife destinations, our long-term plan is to have people living here, and this is what I think is going to be a game-changer. Masquerade, a legendary, decades-old independent music venue, moved to Underground in 2016, and beloved dance club MJQ Concourse is slated to relocate there by the end of the year. Leilani Ventures joins a movement aiming to revitalize downtown with mixed-use development. In April, the city of Atlanta began converting two office buildings, 2 Peachtree Street and 14 Marietta Street, each less than a block from Underground Atlanta, into mixed-use residential. But development and increased traffic could lead to increased rent and endanger an art scene that just found its footing. The artists and residents appeal to a diverse community at a widely accessible price point, which is possible because their rent is still relatively low. The price of admission to most shows is $10 to $15 via Venmo or Cash App. McDowell charges $100 per hour to book MCD Gallery, plus a $75 cleaning fee. Other studios in Underground are similarly priced. Although we could probably charge more, I don't want to, because I want young people to be able to come here and do their thing and not be intimidated by the price, McDowell said. Financial accessibility is key. As Atlanta's grown, the DIY scene has become much more diverse, and I've observed that it's a lot more queer-friendly and queer-driven, said Pilcher, and there are more people of color on the scene who have made amazing contributions. In 2017, Jayden stood on the roof of his East Atlanta studio, The Secret Spot, and watched the crowd cheer from the ground for one last time. In 2023, a crowd surrounds him again, gathering along the walls of his Underground studio, Inner Space. The spinning disco ball on the ceiling refracts bits of color onto the scene. Jayden stands on the sidelines, beneath the array of handwritten set lists he's collected and hung on the wall. A hand-painted sign above him reads, Punks Only, but it's tongue-in-cheek. Everyone is welcome. Millennials in leather blazers and lace-up shoes, grown-up punks with dyed hair and tattoos, garage rock-loving dad types, high schoolers eager to see their favorite Riot Grrrl revival band, all mingling together at the same four-set show. Their current scene is so impressive to me in that they're post-everything, post-eco, they're post-gender, they're post-race. They've been able to explore all these different genres, and they kind of blow them apart and bring them back together in different pieces, and so it's evolving. That was Notes from Underground Atlanta's DIY Art Scene, by Ollie Turner, from the Atlanta magazine online. Next, we move to the Arts ATL publication for First Atlanta Art Fair to Take Place in October 2024 in Conjunction with Art Week, by Jillian Ann Renaud. Atlanta's art community has been invigorated by Atlanta Art Week, the second iteration of which is happening this week through Sunday. Giving the city's visual arts another major boost is the announcement today of Atlanta's first art fair, which will take place in October 2024 at Pullman Yards. Timed to coincide with the third edition of Atlanta Art Week, the four-day Atlanta Art Fair is being promoted as a regionally driven show and a new inclusive meeting point for contemporary art in the American South. Atlanta Art Fair will be produced by Art Market Productions in collaboration with Intersect Art and Design. Art Market Productions is known for creating successful art fairs in Seattle and San Francisco, and for New York's Art on Paper event. The company already has a presence in Atlanta. It is a division of A21, which produces the Atlanta Food and Wine Festival each September. Intersect Art and Design produces cultural events that build community by connecting galleries with art lovers and collectors. Kelly Freeman, director of Art Market Productions, says she is in awe of the way Kendra Walker, founder and director of Atlanta Art Week, has developed the annual event. My plan is to be another facet of what she's already built, Freeman said recently in a phone call. I had already planned to do an art fair in Atlanta with the hope that we'd coordinate with Kendra in Atlanta Art Week. It's anticipated that the two events will overlap and feed off one another. Both are looking to showcase the city's rich history and bring national and global attention to Atlanta's galleries and art institutions. More than 50 galleries are expected to participate, most from the southern states. A complete list of participating entities will be announced in spring 2024. Atlanta Art Fair will feature exhibitor booths, public programming, and large-scale projects organized by Art Market Artistic Director, Nato Thompson, in partnership with local curators. In a press release, Freeman stated, our priority is to engage the local community and really listen to what it needs to help support its expansion. We want to help build something that will grow as the city grows. That was first Atlanta Art Fair to take place in October 2024 in conjunction with Art Week by Jillian Ann Renaud. Next up, Partners in the Arts, Ballet Ethnic Dances, Nina Gilrafe and Waverly T. Lucas by Cynthia Bond-Perry. Editors note, this is the first of a new monthly series that profiles couples with each partner working in the arts. Nina Gilrafe and Waverly T. Lucas, co-founders of Ballet Ethnic Dance Company, often break the ice at presentations by asking audience members, how many of you would like to take your spouse to work? In a lot of rooms, said Gilrafe, few people raised their hands. During 33 years co-directing one of the few black-led ballet companies in the United States, the married couple have had their share of conflicts. But because they are committed to Ballet Ethnic's mission, their very differences are what have made the company resilient. In an interview at their East Point headquarters, the co-directors were called with forthright honesty and plenty of laughter. Some of the differences in the ways they've thought and worked and how those differences enabled them to survive crises that could have destroyed them. The couple founded Ballet Ethnic in 1990 in the spirit of their alma mater, Dance Theater of Harlem, and with the cultural richness of Atlanta. Like their mentor, Arthur Mitchell, who co-founded Dance Theater of Harlem with Carol Shook, Gilrafe and Lucas have shown that black dancers and dancers of other ethnicities could demonstrate excellence in ballet as well as anyone who's primarily of European descent. Both have sacrificed to create a safe space where classical dancers from all backgrounds can develop and create without the pressures of existing within predominantly white organizations. Working on a relatively small budget, they've multitasked as artists, teachers, mentors, and administrators. Both worked extra jobs during the company's early years. Self-taught in local schools, Lucas often guested in a Nutcracker production run in his home city of Detroit. When he returned home, his paycheck went straight toward the payroll for dancers in Ballet Ethnic's own Urban Nutcracker, Lucas's adaption of the holiday classic set on Atlanta's sweet Auburn Avenue. Ballet Ethnic is celebrating the production's 30th anniversary with performances in early December. Gilrafe and Lucas have always lived under their means to support the community they've helped to build. Both our checks together would have been the salary for one person, Gilrafe said. People would say, you could have a bigger house, but we just did not want that. Working together since their early 20s, they've had to set boundaries. They used to share one large office space, but arguments about choreography and partning frequently erupted. If he tried to change a step and he was wrong, Gilrafe said, then I was mad the rest of the day. Their company administrator moved her desk between theirs and refereed. As a choreographer, Lucas generally prefers an exploratory creative process. Gilrafe would rather have choreography set early on so she can then practice to a level of mastery. I'm very structured, she said, whereas he has all these ebbs and flows. Lucas agreed. She wants to put it in a bottle and label it, he said. At times, that's a very good quality, but at times, it can be stifling to creativity. They've butted heads over finances, as Lucas's artistic vision often has outsized the budget Gilrafe manages. She maintains checklists and documents, procedures for future replication. Lucas prefers embodied knowledge, which he passes on to others through teamwork and mentoring. Most of the time and money has gone into the company, so they've taken few vacations. The work has taken them to Africa and, most recently, to London. Gilrafe once told Lucas he'd have to cancel a trip he'd booked to Disney World because paperwork for the upcoming season wasn't finished. Lucas got angry and went to the theme park anyway. Oh, that, said Lucas ironically. I didn't even call that a vacation. Nonetheless, the two have struck a balance in their relationship and the way they run Balethnic. This balance was thrown off kilter in 2015 when Lucas ruptured his Achilles tendon and suffered a post-operative infection that put him in an orthopedic boot for three years. The ordeal could have destroyed Gilrafe and Lucas and the company they'd sacrificed so much to build. The injury and infections ripped away Lucas' identity as a strong dancer and representative of Balethnic. You realize that what you've done is easily erased, said Lucas. Gilrafe carried the burden as caregiver and head of company in school. Both had always done substantial work for free. Suddenly, the company budget was paying people to do jobs Lucas had always done. Medical bills piled up. It was humbling, said Gilrafe. It made us understand that we had to change or we weren't going to get out of this. Fallout from Lucas' injury pushed each of them to develop new skills and make new connections outside of Balethnic while bolstering the organization's internal strength. Gilrafe took a full-time position as facility and program supervisor at the East Athens Educational Dance Center. She began teaching part-time at the University of Georgia, which expanded her community of artists and researchers. She started an artist pipeline between Balethnic, the university, and the East Athens Dance Center. The resulting cross-pollination between young students, college dance majors, and Balethnic's professionals renewed Gilrafe's passion for the company mission. While the orthopedic boot left Lucas unable to dance, he adapted while choreographing the musical Memphis, a co-production of Theatrical Outfit and the Aurora Theater. Past experience working with choreographer Agnes DeMille inspired him to research black social dances of the musical's 1950s era, which increased the production's authenticity and relevance. Lucas had long wanted to document Balethnic's unique fusion of classical pointe work and African dance, so he went back to school, earning a graduate degree in ethno-choreology at the University of Limerick in Ireland. He is now working with Dr. Shady Radical, an Atlanta-based writer, curator, and archivist who specializes in the preservation of black performance. Together, they are archiving the company's urban nutcracker for future generations. With Gilrafe in a full-time teaching position, the couple could have slipped away from the pressures of running Balethnic, moving into a life of relative ease. But in 2018, the dance world became focused on the Equity Project, an initiative to advance racial equity in the ballet field, the very mission that the couple had pursued selflessly for three decades. Twenty-one large budget companies signed up, Gilrafe and Lucas realized that if they didn't ride this wave of change, their life work would be swept under the tide. They joined a cohort within the International Association of Blacks in Dance, an Equity Project partner. Just being in the rooms where people could hear firsthand our story and not create their own version of what they think we've been doing, said Gilrafe. Their decades of experience in many facets of running a black ballet company have since added value to the national conversation, and Balethnic has garnered recognition from Dance USA, South Arts, and Assemblée Internationale 2023. The company has made such a mark on its local community that on September 18th, the East Point City Council and Mayor Deanna Holliday Ingram approved a request to change the name of Balethnic's portion of Cheney Street to Balethnic Way. Lucas said people sometimes think the couple's differences are a sign of weakness. On the contrary, he said, their different perspectives fortify both marriage and company and have given them the strength to continue. If you've only dealt with good times, then you haven't been challenged, Lucas said. But if you want to know the value of something, you put it under the stress test. Have they ever been pushed the work completely aside and focused on each other? Not really, Gilrafe said, because the whole mission has been about building something bigger than ourselves. That was Partners in the Arts, Balethnic Dances, Naina Gilrafe and Waverly T. Lucas by Cynthia Bond Perry. Next up, What to See, Do, and Hear, ASO Poetry vs. Hip Hop, Little Amal, and More by Arts ATL staff. Music. The Kai Lin Gallery will host the Emory Chamber Music Society of Atlanta for a free concert Saturday that will feature a four-hand piano performance of Debussy's Petite Suite by gallery owner Yu Kai Lin and William Ransom, the Society's founder and artistic director. Also on the program is a performance by the Vega Quartet. The 8 p.m. concert is free, but registration is required. The Atlanta Symphony Orchestra opens its 2023-24 season Thursday and Saturday. Music director Natalie Stutzman returns to the Symphony Hall stage for her second season with the ASO following a summer stint at the prestigious Beirut Festival in Germany. She will conduct a program of Tchaikovsky, featuring his Symphony No. 4. Artist-harpist Xavier De Maestri will join the orchestra for Masalov's Harp Concerto. Tickets start at $38. The City Winery will host the eight-year anniversary show of Poetry vs. Hip Hop that celebrates 50 years of the music genre. The show will feature live music by Philippia Williams, a hip hop feature by Tranz Lee, and comedy by B-Tuck. Then comes a contest hosted by Queen Sheba Between Poets and MCs for a $1,500 prize. Tickets start at $25. Theater Based on the water crisis in Flint, Michigan, Kulid Wada on stage at Actors Express gives audiences a personal look at the high price one black family is forced to pay. Arts ATL reviewer Rachel Garbus wrote, The stellar cast is well-directed by Amanda Washington, who never lets the tragedy leash the humor that bursts through irrevocably at every turn, keeping the pacing fresh and the emotions vivid. Through October 15, tickets start at $40. Passing Strange kicks off the Theatrical Outfits 23-24 season. Directed by Thomas W. Jones II with words and music by Stu, the Tony Award-winning musical is about sex, drugs, and rock and roll, and an artist in search of meaning. Arts ATL reviewer Alexis Hawk praises Christian Magbie in their main role for his leaps, swoops, and swirls across the stage, seamlessly shifting from one phase of this developing artist's identity and adopted persona to another. Through October 22, tickets start at $50. Dad's Garage is putting a twist on Spooky Season Sunday starting at 1 p.m. by inviting kids to scare monsters during an interactive special event called Halloween Spooktacular. The afternoon will include live music, crafts, games, a magician, and two showings of Dad's Garage kid-friendly improv show Wowie Zowie. Atlanta's gateway drug to the arts will convert the main stage theater into a reverse haunted house. Tickets are $10. Walk with Little Amal, the 12-foot Syrian puppet, at the Woodruff Art Center Sunday at 3 p.m. The event includes We Have a Dream, a skit that features Atlanta activist and author Yolanda Renee King sharing a message of hope with Little Amal, inspired by her grandfather, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. This event is free. Art and Design. The Georgia Tech Arts visual art exhibit Knee Doe 2 was scheduled to open in the first center for the arts lobby the same night that the dance work Out of the Dust was performed in the theater. But the lobby flooded, remember that huge rainstorm? And the visual art part of the event was washed out. Now everything is dry and visitors can see Knee Doe 2. It consists of four works of art in mixed reality, classical, and digital interactive technology and visual art as well. The presentation offers reflective activities addressing xenophobic and racist polities with an emphasis on the Japanese internment camp established in California during World War II. If you missed the dance performance, a film of Out of the Dust is also showing in the lobby. That's Tuesdays through Saturdays, 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. through October 27th. It will be closed on October 21st. And that's free. Deep Art in America is one of the local galleries not participating in Atlanta Art Week. But it launched a new exhibit this weekend, Give Us the Sun, a solo exhibit of works by multimedia artist Tracy Mims opens Friday. The reception will be on Saturday from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. and it's free. As part of its renaissance as an art and culture destination, Underground Atlanta has collaborated with Living Walls and Atlanta Fashion Week on a mural that will be unveiled on Friday. It was created as part of the third annual Living Walls Abroad exchange program between Atlanta and Ciudad Satellite, Mexico. Atlanta artist Jasmine Nicole Williams painted a mural with satellite raised Daniel Villallega in August in Mexico. Villallega came in Atlanta to create a second mural with Williams at Underground. The gallery will be open from 12 p.m. to 12 a.m. on Friday and is part of Underground's first Friday event. Mural unveiling will be at 8 p.m., reception at 9 p.m. Tickets for Atlanta's Fashion Week, which includes entry to the unveiling, start at $50. The event is free after 10 p.m. The second Atlanta Art Week kicked off on Monday and continues through Sunday, which means there are dozens of art openings, panel discussions, artist talks, and events throughout the city. Way too many to list here. Check out the event's website and Art Atlanta's preview about the event. Georgia-born Kendra Walker, an art advisor, came up with the concept last year and Atlanta's art community has embraced it. Most of the events are free. Dance. The Atlanta Chinese Dance Company will present a one-hour interactive program on Saturday morning during the Smyrna Culture and Spirit Festival. Their participation will include performances, props demonstrations, and information about the culture and history of Chinese dance. It's part of the City of Smyrna's 151st Birthday Celebration, 1145 a.m. at the City Hall Stage. It's free. Georgia Ballet is known for presenting traditional family-friendly ballets such as Cinderella, which the company will perform Thursday through Sunday at the Jenny T. Anderson Theater in Marietta. Choreography is by Artistic Director Dayette Rodriguez and Ballet Mistress Margit Poggero. Children are encouraged to dress up for the occasion. Thursday's 7 p.m. performance is designed for audience members with sensory sensitivities. Other performances are Friday at 8 p.m., Saturday at 2 p.m. and 8 p.m., and Sunday at 3 p.m. and 7 p.m. Tickets start at $15. That was What to See, Do, and Hear, ASO, Poetry vs. Hip-Hop, Little and Mall, and more by Arts ATL staff. Next up, Havoc brings Dracula to stage with Airborne Vampires Blood Cannons by Benjamin Carr. Driven by action and buckets of blood, Dracula, The Failings of Men, a new adaptation of Bram Stoker's novel on stage at Shakespeare Tavern Playhouse from October 7th through October 31st, will give audiences unexpected thrills and spectacle, its makers said. Havoc Movement Company, which specializes in stunt, circus, and stage combat performance, has brought the vampire adventure story, which was first staged outdoors at the Cherokee Historical Association in Cherokee, North Carolina, to the tavern for Halloween, keeping its high-flying stunts, blood sprays, and sword play in the process. Director Jake Gwynne said the production is a blast. We've got some of the better fighters in the theater industry in Atlanta on stage throwing down, he exclaimed. For people who like sword fights, like myself, there's some really awesome ones that we get in this show. We definitely go the extra step, so if people are used to seeing some choreography on stage at the tavern, this goes further because we believe that the fights are a real storytelling opportunity. Gwynne said Havoc Movement's work propels the narrative in addition to being thrilling to see. I came up loving kung fu movies, anime, and eastern representations of fight choreography, he said. There are narrative beats that happen in those fights. Characters are going through defining moments during those battles, and we try to highlight that in the work. Benedetto Robinson, who adapted the script and also appears as the title character, said he tried to keep the beauty of Stoker's language intact while creating a version for today's audiences. I read, in its entirety, Bram Stoker's original novel, Robinson said. It is a fascinating book. It's certainly dated. It came out over 100 years ago, but Stoker's language is gorgeous. His descriptions are beautiful, his characters are vibrant, his settings are lush. One of the aims of the adaptation was to preserve as much of that as I could while bringing the work to a modern audience with a modern context and more contemporary values. Robinson said the biggest change he made was to change the vampire hunter Abraham Van Helsing into Ada Van Helsing, played by Mary Ruth Ralston, they then. Van Helsing serves the same function in the story as the mentor to Dr. Jack Seward, Robinson said. She comes in and saves the day despite pushback from turn-of-the-century surroundings and the tremendous weight of sexism at that time. Ralston, a staple in Atlanta Shakespeare Company productions, is doing tremendous work as the fearless hero, Gwyn added. Mary Ruth Ralston is absolutely knocking this out of the park, the director said. Of course, for them to hit home runs, all they have to do is wind up. They're doing a great job. For the sake of economy, Robinson said he concentrated the story of the play on the London section of the novel's plot, where the beautiful Lucy Westerna, played by Bailey Frankenberg, is being courted by suitors during the day and tempted by the Transylvanian bloodsucker at night. Frankenberg uses a lira in the show, a hoop for acrobatics suspended over the stage, and the production also features aerial skills. It really gives us an opportunity to explore vampire fight in an interesting way, Gwyn said. The aerial apparatus is used as a metaphor for Dracula seducing Lucy Westerna to the vampire side. And then there's the blood. To get the blood effects that he wanted for the show, Gwyn reached out to Sarah Beth Hester, a seasoned performer and puppeteer, to assure that the red sprays hit the walls on stage in just the right way. I needed an extra set of hands to assist with the blood because I wanted to, no lie, make blood cannons, Gwyn said. We borrow a lot of special effects design from film sets and horror houses on how we go about doing our blood effects. Hester said the blood design is literally just puppeting water to get it to hit the walls in a way that gets the look and feel that we want. Gwyn said audiences don't need to worry about getting hit with any blood, though. We have a no-splash zone in this production, he said. Though Gwyn advises parents to judge what their children might be able to handle regarding the violent, action-packed production, he is excited for what audiences will see. The kind of magic that we pull off in the show is something that younger people will be astounded by, he said. I would always hope that any show I was directing could be called a rollicking good time. That was Havoc Brings Dracula to Stage with Airborne Vampires, Blood Cannons, by Benjamin Carr. Next up, review. Passing Strange Pays Musical Homage to the Pain, Fun of Being an Artist, by Alexis Hawke. This past weekend, as my fellow audience members and I filed out of Theatrical Outfit's fiery, funny, and cracklingly clever production of the 2008 musical Passing Strange on stage through October 22nd, I found myself wondering if perhaps there's an answer to climate change after all. That is, if only we could harness and synthesize the combustible, fathomless skill and energy of this show's cast and turn it into some kind of renewable fuel. And yes, this is the only way to put into adequate words the sheer abundance of talent on stage, in a coup of casting by the theater's Associate Artistic Director, Odeh Moon, for the two-plus hours of the show's runtime. Spanning genres, continents, and years, we follow youth, a young Black American musician who's hungry for artistic meaning and truth. We begin in Los Angeles, where he's pulled into the church choir less for the religious stuff and more for the pew-rattling songs. Then, when youth decides it's time to become an expat, following in the footsteps of other 20th-century Black artistic luminaries, like Josephine Baker, James Baldwin, Nina Simone, and Jimi Hendrix, we venture out to an idyllic but indulgent Amsterdam, and then to a hilariously nihilistic yet foss-filled Cold War West Berlin. While the show employs some self-effacing nods to the pretentiousness and absurdity of art as a profession, it also clearly has a deep love and empathy for it. This piece was obviously created by someone who creates, and wants to make sense of what creating is all about. So then it tracks that composer, lyricist, and writer Stu was a musician himself in the 1990s, and followed an almost identical geographical route as his protagonist. That autobiographical aspect gives this authenticity and uniqueness, which is especially interesting given that it's also a metanarrative show about the quest to find such authenticity. It helps that Stu is a fantastic writer, giving us poetic lines to describe each action and choice, such as how the Congregation of Youth's church is waiting to be released from its collective frown. Something strange disassembles and reconstructs the particulars of a coming-of-age story we all recognize, never giving us anything close to boilerplate. Even when a scene seems to be headed down a predictable route, that pathway quickly gets inverted and folded back on itself. For instance, as Youth is planning to jet away to Europe to find himself, the narrator, played by the always-terrific Brad Raymond-Quipps, at this point in the play, we were planning a show tune, an upbeat, gotta-leave-this-town kind of show tune. He pauses and deadpans, we don't know how to write those kind of tunes. Instead, we get a scene mocking the avant-garde performed by Youth and his mom, aptly titled Mother, in the script. Side note, Mother is played beautifully by Atlanta stage legend Latrice Pace, who rips the roof off and knocks the wind out of you every time she begins to sing. As our lead, Youth, played by Christian Magby, leaps, swoops, and swirls across the stage, seamlessly shifting from one phase of this developing artist's identity and adopted persona to another. Sharing a similar amount of time on stage, Raymond's narrator shows what it's like to run the equivalent of an acting and singing marathon without ever breaking a sweat. It's stunning to watch. Through dynamic and engaging movement, it's the assured hands of director and choreographer Thomas W. Jones II. Every character's action is punctuated by the unpredictable. That's all the time we have for this article, which is entitled Review. That concludes today's MetroArts 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.