Tonight Nazareth College Arts Center’s Event of the
Season: Black Tie Unveiling set a stage of excellence and brought together
many of the areas major elected officials including Congresswoman Louise
Slaughter (radiant in an elegant black dress) County Executive Maggie Brooks,
Mayor Bob Duffy, State assemblymen and senators, much of Rochester’s arts
community, corporate and civic leaders, and a plethora of who’s who of
Rochester’s philanthropists. If you haven’t seen the newly renovated arts
center walk don’t run for you’ll want to savor every moment and ever inch of
newly exquisitely designed space. While heated conversations were thrown back
and forth for some time about whether to build a performing arts center
downtown president Daan Braveman of Nazareth College and his collaborative team
of faculty and staff, citizens, corporations and interested parties focused on
the true need of the community – a mid-sized theatre.
The entrance to the new arts center is plush sleek and modern.
Once inside the transformation is astonishing. What was for 40 years a cramped
gallery/lobby/student thoroughfare is now an expansive elegant experience of
its own. A variety of live music played throughout the arts center tonight as
the nearly capacity crowd traversed the new gallery space, patrons lounge and
lobby where good food and beverage overflowed. The building’s architectural
design of curved wood, tinted metal, colored tiles, and delicate lighting
coupled with festive conversation became the perfect prelude to what would be
an evening of poetic mastery.
When I was growing up in Rochester in the 1970’s Nazareth
College was part of a local legacy of distinguished artistry – creating and
presenting. This metro area cultivated art in those days like it does
technology now. Opera Under the Stars, Young Audiences, Rochester Community
Players, Opera Theatre of Rochester, City School District’s
Artist-in-Residence, Mercury Ballet, Eastman Children’s Chorus were all places
where I was nurtured and guided as a young artist; the young Geva Theatre at
that time had a program where I presented an abstract musical I composed in
junior high school. As a sophomore in high school I soaked up the experience
when the Nazareth theatre department chose me to be in a play with the college
students. Then while a college student it was on the Callahan Theatre stage at
Nazareth where I first performed Chekov, Ibsen, Racine and Shakespeare plays;
sang in musicals and Gilbert and Sullivan operettas. My first solo dance concert
was on that Nazareth thrust stage with poet Francesca Guli over 26 yrs ago.
Nazareth Arts Center was where I first saw Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre
and took class with Marcel Marceau. Art is an education that combines what we
think with what we feel, what we know with what we imagine. Nazareth is
committed to that educational discovery for its students and the greater
community. The impact Nazareth has had on the development of the arts in this
region continues to be substantial and unique.
Unique and meaningful is exactly what this gala evening
established from the opening moment the lights dimmed and Rochester Children’s
Theatre performers along with Nazareth College Musical Theatre students gave a
clever (rewritten for the occasion) rendition of Stephen Sondheim’s “Putting it
Together” from Sunday in the Park with George explaining the ups and
downs and winding path to making art and an arts center. And what a work of art
has been created - there was a
proscenium, front curtain, wing space, fly space, and a sprung floor for dance
– the transformation boiled me over. The theatre was as much a showpiece as the
performers! WHEC TV 10 provided an overview documentary, a bit too lengthy for
the gala audience to sit through but interesting information on the process.
One of the highlights of the evening was ‘Bravo! Colorado – Alpine Gardens’
enchantingly danced by Rochester City Ballet, choreographed by Jamey Leverett,
the company’s artistic director who seamlessly threaded dance to Jeff Tyzik’s
poignant music. The dancer’s moved, as one audience member told me, like silk.
Their clean lines and soft curves melted the viewer with expressiveness.
Everyone was transfixed on the beauty the dancers embodied. The company next
presented what has come to be a signature piece, LumaVoce. The excerpt they did
tonight with live vocal improvisations and dancers dancing with flashlight-like
lights turning on and off highlighted the strength and ease with which the
dancers moved effortlessly from traditional ballet to modern ballet.
After a chatty intermission (the energy and excitement was
difficult to contain for all of us and was infectious) the Grammy award winning
Ying Quartet took their places the curtain opened and a magical marriage of
movement and sound burst forth in Tony award winning choreographer Garth
Fagan’s triumphant world premiere of ‘Mudan 175/39’. The Quartet’s playing was
sublime. With music by three new-generation contemporary Chinese composers,
including Tan Dun (composer of the film Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon)
the Garth Fagan Dancers in their trademark quick precise movements followed by
balanced stillness were in peak performance and fully demonstrated why they are
one of the world’s best dance companies. Garth is a master of musicality and spatial
pattern, brings to mind those two other geniuses of design in space and the
musicality of movement George Balanchine and Anthony Tudor. An excerpt from Mr.
Fagan’s 2002 ‘Translation Transition’, a rousing audience pleaser closed the
program. What Garth Fagan does is not merely mold bodies into shapes in space
but molds our perception of the reality of that space. We see freshly and
experience both motion and music more viscerally through his imaginative
vision.
The evening concluded with an enormous reception held
throughout the arts center. It was such a thrill to be part of this exceptional
night that I forgot the evening had started at 6pm and it was nearly 11pm. Time
definitely seemed suspended for this special time together. Mingling with the rest
of the audience and the performers it occurred to me that this was not merely a
moment for Nazareth or even for just those of us present but this manifested
vision of Nazareth College is potentially a beacon of energy to inspire others
in the community to embark on similar innovative projects. We were reminded
just how fortunate we are to reside in a city with such exceptional art
infusing our lives. We need to truly support and encourage its continued
expression. There’s more than hope for us to build on our collective future
here in Rochester. After tonight’s brilliant collaborative event there’s also
excellence!
