From dance that combines movement and technology to music that captures the power and mystery of the sea, the 17th annual Fall Arts Celebration events at Grand Valley State University are set to bring out “all the feels.”
Each year, Fall Arts Celebration shines a spotlight on some of the world’s foremost poets, musicians, dancers, artists and scholars. For the past 17 years, West Michigan audiences have enjoyed a series of six free events every fall that celebrate the positive impact of the arts. Below are the four of the signature events that are scheduled for September and October. All events are free and open to the public. For more information, visit gvsu.edu/fallarts.
ART
“Art of Today: Contemporary Collections from Chicago”
Through Nov. 1
Art Gallery
Thomas J. and Marcia J. Haas Center for Performing Arts, Allendale Campus
Working with Chicago-based artists, gallery owners and collectors, Grand Valley has developed a collection of contemporary art over the last 15 years.
Drawn from Grand Valley’s collection and enhanced with additional loans from Chicago, Art of Today brings together more than 40 paintings, prints, drawings, photographs, sculptures and mixed media. This curation includes both bold and minimalistic works exploring simplicity in design, society’s relationship to the environment, and the intersection of pop culture and art by artists Alex Katz, Ellsworth Kelly, David Nash and Takahashi Murakami.
Other artists, such as Tony Fitzpatrick, Jane Hammond, Erika Rothenberg and Kara Walker, provide challenging imagery that examines the meaning of identity, race, culture and sexuality.
MUSIC
Water on the Mind: A Baroque Musical Journey
Sept. 23 at 7:30 p.m.
Cook-DeWitt Center, Allendale Campus
Water has transfixed the imagination and creative artistry of the human race since the earliest days on earth. To the ancient Greeks, water defined life and was seen as the essential element in the creation of civilization. At the dawn of the Baroque Era, as classical teachings spread across Europe, Baroque composers were as equally inspired as the ancients by the power and mystery of the sea.
See that inspiration come to life through works such as the “Storm Scene” from Marin Marais’s opera, Alcyone, which convincingly delivers the terror and dread from a powerful ocean tempest, and Georg Philipp Telemann’s hauntingly beautiful and imaginative orchestral suite, Hamburger Ebb und Fluth. This piece musically depicts the rise and fall of the ocean while invoking the story of Neptune and his son, Triton.
Rounding out the performance is Handel’s Water Music, composed in 1717 for a barge party given by George I on the River Thames, and Antonio Vivaldi’s fiery violin concerto, La Tempesta di mare (The Sea Storm). Famed Baroque violin virtuoso, Ingrid Matthews, one of the most-recorded baroque violinists of her generation and solo violinist with Toronto Tafelmusik Ensemble, will perform the dazzling composition that concludes the concert.
POETRY
An Evening with Ellen Bass and Kevin Young
Oct. 3 with poetry readings at 6 p.m.
L.V. Eberhard Center, second floor, Pew Grand Rapids Campus
Acclaimed poets Ellen Bass and Ellen Young will read their works. Bass is a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets. Her most recent book, “Like a Beggar” (Copper Canyon Press, 2014), was a finalist for several notable literary awards. Previous books include “The Human Line” and “Mules of Love,” which won The Lambda Literary Award. She co-edited (with Florence Howe) the first major anthology of women’s poetry, “No More Masks!” (Doubleday, 1973).
Young is the director of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture and is poetry editor at The New Yorker. His newest book of poetry is “Brown” (2018). Also an essayist and curator, Young’s “Ardency: A Chronicle of the Amistad Rebels” was the winner of an American Book Award. His work “Jelly Roll: A Blues” (2003) was a finalist for the National Book Award and Los Angeles Times Book Prize and winner of the Paterson Poetry Prize.
DANCE
Water: A Vision in Dance
Oct. 28, 7:30 p.m.
Louis Armstrong Theatre, Thomas J. and Marcia J. Haas Center for Performing Arts, Allendale Campus
In this performance, Bedřich Smetana’s “The Moldau” traces the path of this mighty river from its origins deep in the Bohemian Highlands to its final journey bringing life and sustenance to the Czech people. Debussy’s “La Mer” presents a musically evocative, suggestive image of the sea in all of its beauty. Bringing these works to life in a brilliant new choreographic vision is BODYART, a New Orleans–based dance theater company founded and directed by Leslie Scott. Focusing on the intersection of movement and technology, Scott and the artists of BODYART will unite dance, video, and the music of Smetana and Debussy performed by a full orchestra in an absorbing multimedia experience.
