Spoleto USA inspires festival

The Arkansas Symphony Orchestra is part of the “big three” — along with the Arkansas Arts Center and the Arkansas Repertory Theatre — whose involvement made the Acansa Arts Festival possible.
The Arkansas Symphony Orchestra is part of the “big three” — along with the Arkansas Arts Center and the Arkansas Repertory Theatre — whose involvement made the Acansa Arts Festival possible.

Central Arkansas music, theater, dance and art organizations are combining for a five-day festival of concerts, premieres, performances, exhibits, lectures, brown-bag workshops and late-night pub shows, Tuesday-Sept. 28.

The inaugural Acansa Arts Festival is the brainchild of Little Rock philanthropist and fundraiser Charlotte Gadberry, who on a visit to Charleston, S.C., in late spring 2012 got a look at and a big dose of inspiration from the Spoleto Festival USA there.

"Gadberry couldn't stop thinking how nice it would be to have a similar festival in central Arkansas," says Rex Nelson, freelance writer and president of Arkansas' Independent Colleges and Universities, in a recent Voices page column.

Gadberry, festival board chairman, started with what Linda Newbern, the festival's associate director of programming, calls the "big three": the Arkansas Symphony Orchestra, the Arkansas Arts Center and the Arkansas Repertory Theatre, "just to see if people were interested and see if there was some momentum."

Two years later, the inaugural festival has expanded to 16 events with 26 performances, in a wide array of venues on both sides of the Arkansas River.

The city governments of Little Rock and North Little Rock are supporting the effort; festival organizers hope to eventually widen it. "In order to be successful, the cities have agreed to be heavily involved," according to the Acansa website. "It is our eventual hope that this will be a central Arkansas festival that will include cities within 50-60 miles."

Gadberry titled the festival after a name the Sioux Indians gave to the Quapaw, and one of the possible sources for the name "Arkansas."

"It's not an acronym for anything," Newbern says. "It's a Siouxan Indian word that means 'southern place.' If you go down to the actual little rock, down on the river, there's a pavilion that has a lot of the old words that were used prior to Arkansas, and it's one of those words."

The bigger showcases:

• "Keeping on the Southern Side," 7 p.m. Wednesday, an "informance" with small ensembles of members of the Arkansas Symphony Orchestra (including the ASO Brass Quintet, the Little Rock premiere of a piece for oboe and clarinet and dueling banjos) at Trinity Episcopal Cathedral, 310 W. 17th St., Little Rock. Tickets are $30, $50 VIP (includes a post-performance reception).

• The Arkansas Chamber Singers, Opera in the Rock and Hot Springs' The Muses join for a concert titled "Central Arkansas' Own," 6:30 p.m. Wednesday in the Great Hall, Clinton Presidential Center, 1200 President Clinton Ave., Little Rock. Tickets are $20.

Newbern admitted that the overlap will present a challenge for classical music patrons. "Wednesday is a good day for the choir and the symphony, when they're not doing their other gigs," she says. (The orchestra, for example, is in rehearsal this week for its season-opening Masterworks concerts, 7:30 p.m. Saturday-Sept. 28 at the Maumelle Performing Arts Center, the orchestra's home-away-from-under-renovation Robinson Center Music Hall.)

• The premiere of Disfarmer by Werner Trieschmann, with the Rep's Bob Hupp directing, 8 p.m. Thursday-Saturday at Argenta Community Theater, 405 Main St., North Little Rock. Trieschmann paints a comedic portrait of the eccentric Heber Springs photographer who took pictures of the townsfolk (and charged them a quarter apiece) in the early '40s, and whose work took off in the '90s as New York gallery owners "discovered" it. Tickets are $30, $10 students on Friday, $50 VIP (includes 6:30 p.m. pre-show reception for the Thursday performance, featuring a slideshow of Disfarmer photos created from negatives owned by the Arts Center).

• "A Pointe of Chorus," by Ballet Arkansas and the Arkansas Festival Ballet, 1-5 p.m. Sept. 28 at Wildwood Park for the Arts, 20919 Denny Road, Little Rock. The "Picnic at Wildwood" portion includes a box lunch, 1-2 p.m., with Ballet Arkansas taking the stage of the Lucy Cabe Festival Theatre at 2 and the Festival Ballet at 4. Finger-style guitar trio Finger Food performs between shows. Tickets are $20, $30 with box lunch, $50 VIP, including a champagne closing reception and end-of-festival slide show.

The festival also is bringing in some outside acts.

"The idea was to do both: bring in from outside to show new and exciting performing arts [groups] from around the country, and also show what a strong arts program we have here," Newbern says. "One thing Spoleto [USA] does not do is highlight Charleston's local [scene]. Spoleto has its own orchestra and its own choir and they do not tap into the local arts that much."

Out-of-state performers include:

• American mime and actor Bill Bowers in a one-man show, It Goes Without Saying, 7 p.m. Wednesday-Thursday in the auditorium at the Albert Pike Memorial Temple, East Seventh and Scott streets, Little Rock. Tickets are $20, $50 VIP (includes a Wednesday post-performance reception), $10 for students on Thursday. (Bowers appeared in a one-man show called Fully Committed at the Rep in 2003.)

• Organist Hector Olivera will give a concert on his four-manual Rodgers touring organ, "The King," at 7 p.m. Thursday at Trinity United Methodist Church, 1101 N. Mississippi St., Little Rock. Tickets are $20, $10 for students.

• A cappella sextet Street Corner Symphony, second-season runners-up on NBC's The Sing-Off, will perform at 7 p.m. Friday at the Connor Performing Arts Center, Pulaski Academy, 12701 Hinson Road, Little Rock. Tickets are $20, $10 for students.

• The dozen members of the Dallas Black Dance Theatre perform modern jazz, ethnic and spiritual works by nationally and internationally known choreographers, 7 p.m. Saturday, North Little Rock High School East Campus, 2400 Lakeview Road, North Little Rock. Tickets are $20, $10 students, $50 VIP (includes post-show reception).

• Puppeteer Phillip Huber, whose work appeared in the movies Being John Malkovich and Oz the Great and Powerful, brings the Huber Marionettes for a primarily adult program titled Suspended Animation, 7 p.m. Saturday at Albert Pike Memorial Temple and 3 p.m. Sept. 28 at the Ron Robinson Theater, Arcade Building, 100 River Market Ave., Little Rock. Tickets are $20, $50 VIP (includes post-performance reception on Saturday, $10 for students on Sept. 28).

A complete schedule is available at AcansaArtsFestival.org. A Silver Festival Pass is $250; Gold Festival Pass is $350. Pass holders get access to all performances; the latter also includes all VIP receptions, preferential seating and, where applicable, parking. Call (501) 663-2287 or email tickets@ACANSAartsfestival.org.

Style on 09/21/2014

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