April 2004

Spring Fling

Music, dance, poetry, theater—Virginia Arts Festival has it all

by Montague Gammon III

Warriors and poets, acrobats and dancers, vocalists and organists, actors and musicians of every stripe make the Eighth Virginia Arts Festival a rich brew for every taste and every age.

From the military pageantry of the crowd—pleasing Virginia International Tattoo, with 650 performers and this year’s promise of “more pipes and drums than ever,” to the contemplative, intimate appeal of chamber concerts and free verse, the Festival crisscrosses the region from Williamsburg to Virginia Beach with 93 world class performances of every flavor in just 32 days.

This year a circus is even coming to town, when the innovative Circus Éloize brings its uniquely surreal, inspired aerial artistry, clowning and music to the Chrysler Hall stage (May 11 and 12).

The unlikely duo of Emily Dickinson and NATO team up to kick off the the Festival. While Sandy Duncan is performing in The Belle of Amherst, a one—woman show about Dickinson at the TCC Roper Performing Arts Center (April 21—25), the Tattoo will be filling Scope with its spectacle of massed military bands, drill teams, gymnasts and guests from around the world (April 23—25).

Music will always be the heart of the Festival, with instrumental and vocal programs in abundance. The youngest of audiences will delight in Peter and the Wolf, Sergei Prokofiev’s classic introduction to the orchestra, enlivened this time by the life—sized Spectrum Puppets at Chrysler Hall (May 16). There’s a baker’s dozen performances in the Chamber Music and the Classical Series; there’s a free outdoor Panorama Caribbean Music Fest at the Virginia Beach Oceanfront (May 8 and 9), a Bravo Big Bands event at the William and Mary Sunken Garden (May 22); and, also at the Sunken Garden, there’s a grand Festival Finale, featuring Handel’s Music for the Royal Fireworks, with some Bach, Hummel and Telemann thrown in (April 23).

Among the host of big names gracing the Festival, none is bigger than violinist Joshua Bell, who has been acclaimed for his sublime artistry since he was a teen. Arguably the premier violinist of his generation, Bell has won multiple Grammy awards, and was even named one of People magazine’s “50 Most Beautiful People in the World.” He joins with the Virginia Symphony under the baton of JoAnn Falletta for concerts at the Virginia Beach Pavilion and at the William and Mary’s Phi Beta Kappa Hall (May 13 and 14).

Chamber music programs remain a Festival anchor in excellence, and this year selected performances will be featured on National Public Radio. Fred Child, of NPR’s Performance Today program, will host a concert at Chandler Hall (April 30) featuring the Festival’s Chamber Music Director Andr
—Michel Schub on piano with the Miami String Quartet, clarinetist David Schifrin and the Virginia Symphony’s flutist Debra Wendell Cross. Other chamber concerts, including the favorite Lunchtime Chamber Concerts, offer audiences the chance to hear the Virginia Chamber Players, the Imani Winds and the six times Grammy winners Emerson String Quartet at venues all over the region (April 29—May 16).

Besides the international military brass always in evidence at the Tattoo, another general will be playing a big part, quite literally, in the Festival. Othello, the Moor of Venice, takes the TCC Roper stage in the Guthrie Theater production of Shakespeare’s always timely tragedy (April 29—May 2).

Modern dance fans get two different programs from the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater at Chrysler Hall (May 4 and 5), and ballet enthusiasts are treated to Cinderella, the original 1945 Bolshoi Theater production as performed by the Moscow Festival Ballet. That group is a joint venture of dancers from the word’s two most famous classical ballet companies, the Kirov and the Bolshoi (April 24 and 25).

Counterbalancing the classicism and tradition of Ailey and Russia, the hiphop—influenced Fly Dance Company comes to Willett Hall (May 17) and Ballet Hispanico visits William and Mary (May 21).

Hinted resonances of Emily Dickinson’s pioneering verse crop up in two poetry readings at the Renaissance Portsmouth Hotel. Virginia Symphony Music Director JoAnn Falletta will for the first time go public with verses that she has been writing privately for many years (May 8). ODU President Roseann O’Reilly Runte mixes selections from her published volumes of poetry with slides and stories from her world travels for an evening of insight and intellect, wit, humor and poetic charm (May 9).

On the mundane and logistical side, there are season ticket subscriptions, a lively educational program, an informative web site at www.vafest.com with all kinds of links, and a bunch of helpful people in the Festival office, who can be reached by phone at 282—2822. There’s also a Virginia Arts Festival Box Office at MacArthur Center, and tickets available through Ticketmaster at 671—8100.

For the rest of this story, you can order the April 2004 issue of Hampton Roads Magazine.