Thursday, October 25, 2012
Dance Two dance shows this weekend mark the last chapter for a Decatur institution
Posted by Andrew Alexander @AndrewAWriter on Thu, Oct 25, 2012 at 12:40 PM
- Larry Holland
- CURTAIN CALL: Gathering Wild will present "Sutra" this weekend at the 7 Stages Theatre in Little Five Points. The show is among the last to have been created and rehearsed in Decatur's Beacon Hill Arts Center which has acted a crucial institution for the Atlanta and Decatur dance communities for the past 25 years. The space will cease to function as an arts center at the end of this year.
Beacon Dance will present the appropriately-titled Closing the Space on Friday and Saturday, October 26 and 27, at 8 p.m. each evening, in the Beacon Hill Arts Center. Artistic director D. Patton White refers to the free show, which features the visual art of sculptor Martha Whittington and the music of composer Jon Ciliberto, as "part celebration and part requiem."
The Beacon Dance company has long been tied to the Beacon Hill space. The group participated in renovating the former school library at 410 West Trinity Place into a studio and black-box style performance venue: the space was christened with an inaugural performance in November of 1987 by Beacon Dance. After using and sharing the space for 25 years, Beacon Dance received word earlier this year that the City Schools of Decatur needed to re-claim the facility for administrative offices while other facilities were undergoing renovations.
Decatur-based dance company Gathering Wild will likewise present its show Sutra this weekend on Friday, October 26, and Saturday, October 27, at 8 p.m. at 7 Stages Theatre in Little Five Points. Tickets are $20 advance, $25 at the door. (The show will also have a special performance on Saturday, November 3, at 4 p.m. in the Courtyard at the Serenbe Community south of Atlanta).
Sutra, like many of Gathering Wild's shows, was created and rehearsed in the Beacon Hill space. The show is based on the yoga sutras, introducing the interplay between dance, spoken word, live music, and visual art. "Sutra literally means to thread or sew, mostly in regards to ideas," says artistic director Jerylann Warner. "It's a matrix of threads coming together." The work features 12 dancers, live improvisational jazz music from the Joe Palese Trio, and visual art by Rachel Jackson, Rafael Lopez, Larry Holland, and Patty Okeefe Hutton.
"Beacon Hill" was originally an African-American neighborhood near downtown Decatur bordered by Atlanta Avenue, Herring Street and Robin Street. The schools in the area included Herring Street School (later Herring-Trinity High School) and Beacon Elementary School, which became the city's police and recreation departments, also housing the Arts Center for the past 25 years.
White says that in the future his company will divide its time between CORE studios on the Decatur square, the Decatur Recreation Center, and the B Complex in the Oakland City neighborhood of Atlanta, as well as continuing to present site-specific works. Warner says she's uncertain where Gathering Wild will be housed in the future. The center will cease to function as an arts center on December 31.
For more information or to purchase tickets, visit Gathering Wild or Beacon Dance.
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