Congratulations to Lily Sloan of Denton, the winner of the Flickr Photo of the Week contest!   She follows last week's winner, Leigh Ann Field.

If you would like to participate in the Flickr Photo of the Week contest, all you need to do is upload your photo to to our Flickr group page. It's fine to submit a photo you took previous to the current week, but we are hoping that the contest will inspire you to go out and shoot something fantastic this week to share with Art&Seek users. If the picture you take involves another facet of the arts, even better. The contest week will run from Monday to Sunday, and the Art&Seek staff will pick a winner on Monday afternoon. We'll notify the winner through FlickrMail (so be sure to check those inboxes) and ask you to fill out a short survey to tell us a little more about yourself and the photo you took. We'll post the winners' photo on Wednesday.

Now, here's more from Lily:

Lily Sloan
Title: enter.move
Equipment: Canon EOS 40 D
Tell us more about your photo: This was taken at the Texas Dance Improvisation Festival at Texas Woman's University during a late-night improvisation jam.

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You didn't manage to get to the Arts District Sunday? Recovering from the football game? Still stuck on the Green Line? Feeling left out?

Well, you can replicate the whole sunshine-y, people-happy, arts-splendid, overcrowded-parking experience of 45,000 people checking out the Sammons stage and the Winspear's acoustics. Just get a lot of co-workers to squeeze into your cubicle (better still, have them line up to get in), and run this video.

Then walk around a lot, feel the warm-friendly vibe, come back and run Cindy's video.

• KERA Radio report:

Expanded online version:

Diwali = Di VOLL ee (like volleyball)

Saturday is Diwali, the Festival of Lights, celebrated by a billion or so Hindus worldwide. Barely known in the United States, more and more people are celebrating it in North Texas, as the South Asian population has grown to a hundred-fifty thousand or so. KERA's Bill Zeeble reports:

It’s a breezy, cool & drizzly evening outside the new Cowboys stadium. Tens of thousands of mostly South Asians have turned out for the 4th annual Diwali Mela – the Diwali Carnival. Stages and booths with food and clothes for sale line the parking lot. This night is one of many events leading up to October 17th.

Sri lakshmi: "Its more or less like how we have Thanksgiving here. It’s a big event. Of all the festivals, Diwali is the biggest."

Sri Lakshmi was born in India, but has lived in North Texas 11 years. She says Diwali represents the day the Hindu God, Lord Rama, victoriously returned home after 14 years in exile. It was forced on him by the demon named Ravan, whom Lord Rama finally defeats. The success symbolizes good over evil, and for thousands of years, Hindus have lighted the path home for Rama and his wife, by burning candles.

Lakshmi: "We put a lot of lights, what we call Diya, and put it in front of our house. We welcome Lord Rama to our house. We put a lot of color in front of our house, we decorate our house with lights, candles and everything."

Each year, as part of Diwali celebrations, volunteer actors present the folk play called Ramlila. The open-air drama depicts Lord Rama’s encounters with the evil demon and Rama’s ultimate moral and physical victory. [Lakshmi’s little son played a small role.] Volunteer stage hand Sanjay Date says he participated when he was young.

Sanjay Date (DAH-tay): "Because of my size, I was the Ravan, which is like the demon. It’s a lot of fun (laughs)."

In some countries, the play Ramlila is spread over days. At Cowboys Stadium, it lasts about an hour. Near the end, the sky lights up with celebratory fireworks. Satish Gupta, key organizer of this North Texas Diwali event, says its all in keeping with the festival. He says it’s not only a bit like Thanksgiving, but also Christmas and New Years combined.

Satish Gupta: "Any major festival, around the world, somehow it has a relationship to the light. Light means you are trying to remove darkness. Darkness from yourself, darkness from the world, and trying to get peace. So light is also always associated with the peace, with the calmness and with removing the darkness."

Gupta says after days of different Diwali-related rituals with lights, drama and music, Diwali itself turns low-key. Hindus visit their temples. Those of the Sikh and Jain faiths also observe Diwali. Time is spent mostly at home, where family is honored, and the faithful give thanks and pray for peace, prosperity and happiness in the coming year.

Gupta: "You do certain prayers, then spend time with the family, and exchange gifts with the family. Normally you don’t have any big celebration that particular day."

Many Hindus here welcome the North Texas Diwali festival, not only for its religious and spiritual significance, but because it’s a fond reminder of home, at least for a brief time, anyway. Many here are from south Asia. They say, it’s a way for native Texans – some of whom attended the festival – to experience a bit of their own culture, including the fireworks.

• KERA radio story:

• Expanded online story:

There are many performances being created for the opening galas this week at the AT&T Performing Arts Center. But only one is a world-premiere, modern dance event.

[Sound of music and dancers’ feet. Music stops.]

We’re in a dance studio at Southern Methodist University. Christopher Wheeldon is rehearsing his company, Morphoses, for Thursday night’s gala at the Winspear Opera House .

WHEELDON: “Good, OK, good.  The one thing you don’t want to do is rush it. Take your time.”

Two years ago, Wheeldon himself seemed to have extremely bad timing. The British-born choreographer has been called the best thing to happen to ballet in 50 years. The New York City Ballet, where Wheeldon had danced since 1993, had even created the position of resident choreographer just for him.

But in 2007, Wheeldon co-founded a new company. Morphoses was a hugely ambitious leap for the 34 year old. It is the first trans-Atlantic troupe – based in both London and New York.

Then the economic crisis hit.

WHEELDON: “We started at the worst possible time. So we had to find ways to kind of get around that. Still, we were supported by two major theaters, Sadler’s Wells Theater in London and City Center Theater in New York and it’s  been thanks to those two theaters largely that we’ve survived as well as we have.”

In fact,  Morphoses has managed to double the number of venues it's toured to each season. This year, Wheeldon has been touring with a troupe of 17 dancers to six cities in Australia, America and Europe. Even so, he’s been re-considering his business model.

WHEELDON: “It’s becoming more and more evident that we need to start thinking clearly about having a home base, a real home base where we can spend six or seven weeks working on the new ballets because the emphasis with us, of course, is for new work. There are enough Sleeping Beauties and Swan Lakes to go around the world several times at this point.”

Wheeldon is celebrated for his commitment to new works and for his fusion of clean, classical technique with contemporary music. Wheeldon's great mentor when he left London for New York was Jerome Robbins, and it shows. But what Wheeldon tackles that Robbins generally didn't is the kind of modern music that many might consider “difficult": minimalist, atonal, polyrhythmic.

The company name, Morphoses, even comes from a ballet that Wheeldon devised for a string quartet by the Hungarian composer Gyorgy Ligeti. Ligeti is still best known for his works in the soundtracks of Stanley Kubrick films like 2001. Wheeldon humanizes such compositions, critics say. Muscularizes them, gives them clarity.

WHEELDON: “I think dance sometimes can unlock the mystery of music. You know, you find ways to accentuate the rhythm or kind of sculpt a phrase using the body, and that way, what can seem inaccessible can then become accessible. A lot of people have said that about the work of Ligeti. I use a lot of Ligeti’s music. And his work is very atonal, often very polyphonic, lots of rhythms going on at the same time so you can’t actually  identify one. I think that’s fascinating.”

Ligeti is not on the menu for Thursday, but two of Wheeldon’s pieces at the Winspear are excerpts from full-length works that would fit the description of “difficult” music — one by Estonian minimalist Arvo Part. the other by the British soundtrack composer Joby Talbot, who was also a member of the pop-rock group, the Divine Comedy.

[Music begins playing, gets louder]

And then — there's the world premiere he is preparing for Dallas.

[Music reaches its exultant stride]

Yes, it’s the cancan – or more precisely, it’s the Galop from Jacques Offenbach’s operetta, Orpheus in the Underworld. Wheeldon’s premiere is called Tales of Offenbach and in it, the dancers handle a trumpet, a telephone and even some silent movie slapstick.

WHEELDON: “Knowing that it was going to be a ballet and opera gala, I wanted something musically that would bridge the gap. So I chose Offenbach because most of these are pieces from operas that have been stitched together to make sort of an orchestral suite. But I wanted to do something light and fun because there’s a lot of very serious work that night.”

[Cancan comes back for a triumphant finish.]

And it is, after all, a gala.

One of the tough tasks for a catch-all institution like the Dallas Museum of Art is reaching a broad audience while continuing to stimulate its more knowledgeable visitors. With a pair of related exhibitions now on display, the museum seems to have this balancing act about right.

Both of the new exhibitions, All the World’s a Stage and Performance/Art, serve as welcome-to-the-neighborhood parties for the museum’s new Arts District neighbors.

All the World’s a Stage is the more grandly presented of the two, following in the exhibition footsteps of Tut (complete with its own gift shop). And, like the Boy King, it’s a crowd-pleaser. The show mines the DMA’s permanent collection and mixes in a few borrowed items to celebrate the performing arts. It also sports a cool sound bar, where you can slide on a pair of headphones and listen to the music associated with the performers on display.

The Guitarist (left) and Rock-Rock

The real star of the show, however, is the museum’s curatorial staff. Many of these works have been on display in the museum for years. This show lets viewers make new connections among pieces from different styles, time periods and cultures. Picasso’s muted The Guitarist hangs a few feet away from the Richard Lindner’s psychedelic Rock-Rock. Performance costumes and masks from around the world are grouped in another gallery.

Oedipus at Colonus

But all the links aren’t quite so obvious. In the last gallery, a series of Degas’ ballerinas (right) resides next to Jean-Antoine-Theodore Giroust’s neo-classical Oedipus at Colonus. Though the dancers and actors are engaged in different activities, they share a style of movement and a performer’s focus. The feel is the same.

This show, with its largely literal spin on the performing arts, is one that most will enjoy. Kids and adults alike will be awed by Abraham Walkowitz’s graceful watercolor series depicting dancer Isadora Duncan (below). And for that reason, this is the place to start your museum two-step.

If you are feeling adventurous, move along from here to Performance/Art in the Barrel Vault and its four adjoining galleries. It’s here that the M.F.A. holders among us will find a place to truly stretch their art brains.

The exhibition collects six contemporary artists who have at least some tangential relationship to theater, opera or both. How firmly you make those connections will depend on how loose your definitions of those genres are.

Of the six, the one that really feels out of place is Finnish video artist Eija-Liisa Ahtila. Her contribution consists of a 15 minute or so installation of three videos projected onto separate screens, one in front and the other two flanking on the sides. Charles Wylie, who put the show together, says that the piece is similar to a monologue performed by an actor. That’s true in that the installation features one person talking, telling us of her slow descent into madness. But little about the piece seems theatrical compared with, say, Yinka Shonibare’s installation across the hall (more on that in a bit).

If there is something truly mesmerizing, it’s the inventive use of the three screens. The positioning puts us more squarely in the action than any 3D movie can. When our protagonist drives through the woods, we see the view out the windshield in front of us and the trees passing by on our right and left. Cool. The main problem is that nothing all that remarkable happens in the first several minutes to hold our attention until the (sort of) interesting stuff arrives near the end.

That stands in stark contrast to Shonibare’s vibrant video, Un ballo in maschera, based on Verdi’s opera of the same name. Here, the British-Nigerian artist strips away the music and allows his colorful 18^th Century costumes and the dancers’ movements to shine. It’s a wonderfully conceived reminder that, while the opera or the play may be the star of the show, there are other artisans at work who create the costumes, light the stage and build the sets that allow the star to shine.

And you’ll feel like the star of your own show when you cross over into the Lamont Gallery. Inside, Dallas’ Frances Bagley and Tom Orr have put together Si Bella e Perduta (So Beautiful and Lost), an installation based on the sets they designed for the Dallas Opera’s 2006 production of Verdi’s Nabucco. Among the pieces are a six-foot-tall rodent with carefully shattered colored glass beneath it and a series of dozens of thin pipes representing the reeds near the banks of the Euphrates. But you don’t have to know the opera’s plot to walk around the set pieces and get a sense of what it feels like to be onstage. You’ll even get a little spotlight shining in your eyes, depending on where you stand.

The last two parts of the show also involve opera. Argentina’s Guillermo Kuitca was commissioned to design the curtain of the Winspear Opera House. Two series of studies that he worked up as he imagined the final product are featured in the Barrel Vault, as is a series of giant canvases based on the four parts of Wagner’s Ring cycle. This is a visual artist clearly inspired by what he hears.

Consider ending your walkthrough by taking in David Altmejd’s The Eye (below), a gallery-filling sculpture comprised of precisely cut mirrors formed into shapes that at times evoke staircases, DNA structures and any number of architectural elements. Altmejd created the piece in response to John Adams’ recent opera Doctor Atomic, about building the atomic bomb. That explains the scientific feel of the structure, but I’ll leave it to you to read into the significance of seeing ourselves in every flat surface of the piece. Kids looking at this would probably just be awed by all the light thrown around the room by the hundreds of mirrored pieces assembled in front of them.

They might be on to something.

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Texas Dance Theatre debuted in April with a gala performance and a world premiere of Fast, which featured choreography by company founder/director Wil McKnight, music by Steve Reich and paintings by Daniel Corona. In two weeks, the troupe will open its first full season at Fort Worth's Scott Theatre — a season that features a premiere by celebrated choreographer Bruce Wood (a veteran of his own Fort Worth-based-but-now-sadly-defunct company) as well as works with music by jazz-tango master Astor Piazzolla and Oscar-winner Ryuichi Sakamoto (formerly of Yellow Magic Orchestra).

Needless to say, for a brand-new company that proudly bills itself as a classically-trained ballet, this is staking out some impressive territory. So we asked Wil McKnight to come in and talk about what in the world he's up to.

Wil McKnight's Fast with music by Steve Reich, paintings by Daniel Corona: Confugium ("to take refuge"), choreographed by Emily Hunter to music by Antonio Vivaldi:

Photo: Ryan Prins

When the leaves on the trees die, that's when the arts come back to life. If you've checked the Art&Seek calendar lately, you've noticed that we've added hundreds of events coming up over the next few months as organizations large and small announce their seasons. We've already begun writing down some dates in our calendars, and we thought we'd share with you some of the arts events this season that we're definitely not going to miss:

SEPTEMBER

John Denver Mourning, by Chris Kysor

WHAT: Strokes: A Multimedia Art Exhibition
WHEN: Sept. 25 – Oct. 24
WHERE: University of Texas at Dallas Visual Arts Building, Richardson
WHY WE'RE MAKING PLANS TO ATTEND: Local legend John Pomara curates an exhibition of artists whose working processes involve many individual "strokes" in the creation of the whole, but in an interesting range of media. Being UTD, there will be plenty of digital, but some of the best North Texas visual artists in all media will be there, including Lorraine Tady and Johnny Robertson.
Betsy Lewis

WHAT: Texas Dance Theater Season Opener
WHEN: Sept. 25, 8 p.m.
WHERE: W.E. Scott Theatre at Fort Worth Community Arts Centre
WHY WE’RE MAKING PLANS TO ATTEND: Bruce Wood, former Artistic Director of the Bruce Wood Dance Company, is presenting a world premiere ballet for Texas Dance Theater’s first official season. The former dancer-turned-choreographer spent his formative years training under George Balanchine and later years creating more than 50 ballets with his former Texas-based dance company. “This will be the first time Bruce’s work has been shown on a Fort Worth stage since his company folded,” said Wil McKnight, Artistic Director of Texas Dance Theater. “We are very excited, because his works share the same goals we do at TDT – which is to blend contemporary, ballet and modern together.” Other works will include a world premiere by McKnight; a world premiere by Emily Hunter, Ballet Mistress of Texas Dance Theater; and a contemporary ballet by Penny Askew, Artistic Director of Western Oklahoma Ballet Theatre.
David Ninh

OCTOBER

Diana Sheehan and Pam Daugherty star in Grey Gardens.

WHAT: Grey Gardens
WHEN: Oct. 1-25
WHERE: WaterTower Theatre at the Addison Centre Theatre
WHY WE’RE MAKING PLANS TO ATTEND: In Grey Gardens, the Southern Gothic goes up the Eastern seaboard to find the ultimate in “crazy old cat ladies.” The eccentric “Big Edie” Bouvier Beale and her daughter “Little Edie” Bouvier Beale – aunt and cousin of Jackie Kennedy Onassis – spent 50 years neglected in a Long Island health hazard, the family’s dilapidated, 28-room mansion with raccoons and 52 cats. Made infamous by the 1975 Maysles Brothers documentary, the strong-willed, once-wealthy and always-dysfunctional pair were ultimately portrayed on stage in (former Dallasite) Doug Wright and Scott Frankel’s off-Broadway-to-Tony-Award-winning Broadway musical, Grey Gardens. If composer Frankel and lyricist Michael Korle do nothing else, they will be remembered for the show’s stunning “Around the World,” a tour-de-force, psychological-breakdown number worthy of Stephen Sondheim.
Jerome Weeks

WHAT: The Road to Qatar, presented by Lyric Stage
WHEN: Oct. 9 – Oct. 24
WHERE: Irving Arts Center, Dupree Theater
WHY WE’RE MAKING PLANS TO ATTEND: It’s another musical-about-staging-a-musical, but this one is a) based on real events and b) it’s more or less crossed with a  Bob Hope-Bing Crosby Road movie. And it’s debuting in Irving before heading to New York. Out of the blue in 2005, composer David Krane and lyricist Stephen Cole – who didn’t even know each other – were contacted to create Aspire, the first-ever American musical to premiere in the Middle East. Judging from the YouTube video, Aspire looks like a Disney musical done in Vegas – with a sultan’s son learning wisdom from a fairy godmother. Grandiosity doesn’t even come close: The Qatar stage is so cavernous, dozens of fire twirlers, flying dancers and live camels look puny on it.  Now Krane and Cole – two “short Jews,” as they say – have musicalized their improbable tale of Broadway-Goes-to-Arabia, and Lyric Stage is premiering it.
Jerome Weeks

WHAT: Urban Street Bazaar
WHEN: Oct. 10-11
WHERE: Bishop Arts District
WHY WE’RE MAKING PLANS TO ATTEND: Shop, spend and support local artists and designers by attending the 9th Urban Street Bazaar in Oak Cliff’s Bishop Arts District. The bazaar started in 2005 as a small trunk show and has ballooned into a bustling outdoor street fair. More than 40 vendors will set up tents along Bishop Avenue to showcase men’s, women’s and children’s clothing, eclectic jewelry, home décor wares and art pieces to splash up the walls. One-stop shop and hunt for vintage and quirky hand-made finds. This shopping extravaganza is free and open to the public.
David Ninh

WHAT: Free Night of Theater
WHEN:October 8-November 8.
WHERE: Theaters around Dallas
WHY WE’RE MAKING PLANS TO ATTEND: It’s back! Check Art&Seek in late September for details about the second Free Night of Theater. We love it because it’s a no-risk opportunity to enjoy a performance at a theater you might not normally visit.
Anne Bothwell

WHAT: The Opening of the Dallas Center for Performing Arts
WHEN: Oct.12
WHERE: Dallas Arts District
WHY WE’RE MAKING PLANS TO ATTEND: The opening of the Winspear Opera House and the Wyly Theatre will attract wall-to-wall coverage (D Magazine is devoting its entire October issue; the DCPA is courting international coverage.) There’ll be plenty of glitz and exclusivity during opening week, which kicks off Oct. 12. But many events will give the public a chance to mark the opening.
Just as interesting to us at Art&Seek are the questions that will hang long after opening week ends:  Will the new additions be the tipping point that attracts daily life – and traffic – to the Dallas Arts District? Can the DCPA fulfill its promise to serve a variety of arts organizations and patrons, beyond its resident companies?  And will the DCPA and its artsy neighbors (the Meyerson Symphony Center/Dallas Symphony; Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas Art Museum and Crow Collection) learn to collaborate? Judging from the events all are planning to mark the opening, early signs are encouraging:

• The Nasher presents a retrospective of Norman Foster and his firm’s work.
• The Dallas Museum of Art has opened an exhibition called All the World’s a Stage.
• And the Dallas Symphony will host an open house to celebrate the Meyerson’s 20^th Anniversary.

Anne Bothwell

WHAT: Susan Rothenberg: Moving In Place
WHEN: Oct. 18 – Jan. 3, 2010.
WHERE: Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth
WHY WE’RE MAKING PLANS TO ATTEND: Much of the early work in this artist’s 35 year career resembles cave paintings – canvasses unoccupied except for a single horse. But the paintings are not so much of one horse as of the hazy remembrance of a horse. Her more recent work exposes the raw life of New Mexico (where she lives with husband Bruce Nauman) in action-packed color, often depicting the aftermath of an experience through imagery not instantly recognized. The Modern will exhibit 25 pieces spanning Rothenberg’s career.
Betsy Lewis

WHAT: William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream
WHEN: Oct. 24 – Nov. 22
WHERE: The Dallas Theater Center at the Wyly Theatre
WHY WE’RE MAKING PLANS TO ATTEND: Why? Obviously because A Midsummer Night’s Dream will be the debut stage production in the Arts District’s new Wyly Theatre. It'll be a contemporary setting. Interestingly, DTC Artistic Director Kevin Moriarity isn't aiming to dazzle with all the Wyly's technology. In fact, part of the Wyly stage will be cut off, increasing the audience's intimacy with the performers. In Shakespeare's comedy of mismatched lovers, magic potions and sexual warfare in the fairy kingdom, Cedric Neal will star as Puck, Chamblee Ferguson will be the comic lead as Bottom and Liz Mikel will play Queen Titania.
Jerome Weeks

NOVEMBER

WHAT: VideoFest 22
WHEN: Nov. 5-8
WHERE: Angelika Film Center Dallas
WHY WE’RE MAKING PLANS TO ATTEND: If you’ve been following the Art&Seek blog over the past few months, you’ve no doubt read about Video Association of Dallas President Bart Weiss’ world travels. Since last year’s festival, he’s been to film events in El Paso, New Orleans, Pakistan and Poland, just to name a few. And when he travels, he always has one eye on what he can bring back to Dallas for VideoFest. Last year, I remember watching a program of German music videos. It was wonderfully weird, and unlike anything else I was going to see at another festival. Every year, VideoFest manages to expand my grasp of what is out there to be consumed. And as much as Bart has been traveling, there’s no reason to think things will be any different this year. When I last talked to him, he did let me in on one program he’s planning for this year: a tribute to Chuck Morgan. Morgan has been with the Texas Rangers for nearly 30 years, and he’s basically the guy in charge of the in-game presentation. “He’s the man who started the dot race, and for many years that was the only cool thing out there in Arlington,” Bart says. “He is the auteur of sports stadium.” Amen to that.
Stephen Becker

WHAT: Lone Star Film Festival
WHEN: Nov. 11-15
WHERE: Sundance Square, Fort Worth
WHY WE’RE MAKING PLANS TO ATTEND: For a festival in just its second year, Lone Star gave Fort Worth an early look at some buzzy films last year. Let the Right One In, Wendy and Lucy, Sunshine Cleaning and Last Chance Harvey all played LSSF ‘08. It’s enough to make you wonder what they have in store for this year. But LSSF isn’t all about the Hollywood film. Two other films I really enjoyed last year were Trinidad, a documentary about the sex-change capital of America, and Virtual JFK, which asks the question, “What would have happened in Vietnam had Kennedy not been assassinated.” The best film festivals mix the broad appeal movies with the niche, something LSSF is managing quite nicely.
Stephen Becker

WHAT: Opening, of the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History
WHEN: Ribbon cutting, Nov. 20
WHERE: Fort Worth Museum of Science and History
WHY WE’RE MAKING PLANS TO ATTEND: Worth it for the architecture alone – Legorreta + Legorreta, the Mexico City firm behind the Latino Cultural Center in Dallas, was offered a much bigger playground for this building. But the museum also promises a new planetarium, hi-tech twists on exhibits anchored in Fort Worth history (cattle-raising, energy) and “innovation studios” and other special features that bring Disney-style creativity and engagement to learning about science.
Anne Bothwell

WHAT: Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra’s “Caminos del Inka” concert
WHEN: Nov. 20-22
WHERE: Bass Performance hall
WHY WE’RE MAKING PLANS TO ATTEND: I don’t know what percentage of classical music performed in North Texas is by dead European guys, but I have to think it’s fairly high. So when I hear that the FWSO is exploring music influenced by the Incas, my ears perk up. FWSO Music Director Miguel Harth-Bedoya has been a student of South American music for many years, and his discoveries are starting to make it into the orchestra’s programs. This weekend of concerts will feature a world premiere by 30-year-old Peruvian composer Jimmy López as well as a piece that includes a cajón drum solo. Don’t know what a cajón drum sounds like? See you in Fort Worth the weekend before Thanksgiving.
Stephen Becker

WHAT: From the Private Collections of Texas: European Art, Ancient to Modern
WHEN: Nov. 22 – March 21, 2010
WHERE: Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth
WHY WE'RE MAKING PLANS TO ATTEND: Picasso, Van Gogh, Renoir and Rembrandt are just a few of the artists whose work has been privately owned by Texans. The Kimbell will exhibit pieces owned or once owned by more than 40 private collectors, many of which will, no doubt, be familiar names in North Texas. Anticipate a rare glimpse at some major masterworks.
Betsy Lewis

LOOKING AHEAD

WHAT: Art Conspiracy
WHERE: Location TBA, December
WHY WE’RE MAKING PLANS TO ATTEND: Local artists create an 18×18 artwork in 24 hours. The pieces are auctioned off, and the money benefits a great cause. (This year, it’s Resolana) Purchase – or just browse- affordable art, make a difference, check out some great local music and enjoy one heck of a party.
Anne Bothwell

• KERA radio story:

• Expanded online story:

Creative Solutions is a creative arts summer course. The participating teenagers are sent there by Dallas County juvenile probation officers. But what the teens encounter isn't just some outlet to express themselves in music and paint.

Creative Solutions has been called an arts "boot camp" for a reason.

[Shouted and stomped opening drill: "Break it down! About -- attention! About -- attention! About -- face!"]

The 68 teens in the Creative Solutions program are not called students. They’re employees. They have a job. Their job is to create a gallery exhibition of art works and a musical theater production. And they have seven weeks to do both.

Lisa Schmidt (above) has directed Creative Solutions for 15 years.

LISA: “They’re learning responsibility. They’re learning teamwork. They’re learning how to follow through. They’re learning how to show up on time for a job. They’re learning how to dress appropriately, how to communicate with their boss – all those things that are necessary to keep a job today.”

Most of the teenagers are on probation because of truancy. Some are guilty of misdemeanor offenses – like drinking alcohol. Probation officers refer teens to Creative Solutions because they’re associating with gangs. But they’re also the kind of young people who might benefit from some self-discipline.

LISA: “To get into the program they don’t have to demonstrate any talent — whatsoever [laughs]. Many of the kids do have a great deal of talent. They’ve already been studying art either on their own, self-taught, or maybe they’ve been taking classes at school. Some of them have serious, serious learning disabilities and challenges. What we’re trying to do is help these kids gain life skills.”

When he was 16, Robert was incarcerated at the Dallas County Youth Village for indecent exposure.

ROBERT: “I was first put on probation when I was 13. But I kept violating, which caused my probation to get extended. I violated it one more time and that’s why I got sent to the Dallas County Youth Village.”

Robert read about Creative Solutions and was sent to the camp. That was three years ago. He’s been back every summer since. He discovered talents for poetry and acting he didn’t know he had. Now 19, Robert calls the program a life-changing experience. Which he had to work at.

ROBERT: “It’s a whole lot of work. You’ve got to have a whole lot of patience because you have different kids you don’t even know. Some are quiet, some is just loud and obnoxious. But you gotta know how to talk to them.”

Schmidt and the professional artists who teach these teens confront more than just educational problems.

LISA “The kids many of them have a lot of anger. They have a lot of anger at their families, for maybe letting them down. They’re aware of the fact that their parents are not there for them. Many of the kids come from abusive situations so there’s a lot of anger, a lot of hurt. We ask the kids to write about their lives for the plays, so they do. And the stories – they’re raw.”

[Crowd noises from the lobby before the opening of this year's show, The Switch]

Creative Solutions has served more than 20,000 teens from 14 to 18 years old, and the program won an arts-education award in 2004 from the President's Committee on Arts and the Humanities. For three years now, Creative Solutions has been held at Southern Methodist University. It’s a partnership with the Dallas County Juvenile Department, SMU and Big Thought, the creative learning organization. At the end of the seven-week program, the gallery exhibition and the theater performance — this year's is called The Switch — are held at the Meadows School of the Arts.

LISA: “We’re so lucky to be here because we’ve been sort of bopping around from home to home. Now to have first-class arts studio, first-class theater, it makes a huge difference. And then the kids can really begin to see themselves as maybe going to college because now they’ve been on a college campus.”

Robert is one of those lucky ones. He's been admitted to Sterling College in Kansas. He wants to study — radio journalism.

[Ending song and stomp drill -- "Break it down."]

Final performance of The Switch Friday, Aug. 7 at 1 p.m. in the Margo Jones Theater at SMU.

In the Saturday Spotlight, it’s cutting edge dance in Fort Worth. The 6th Annual Modern Dance Festival celebrates the connection between dance, music and art at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth. Saturday at 2, choreographer and dancer Jeff Slayton will sign his book The Prickly Rose: A Biography of Viola Farber. At 8, Contemporary Dance Fort Worth hosts Dance Exchange, A Choreographers Showcase, featuring the work of half a dozen choreographers. The festival continues over the next two weekends.

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• Lawson Taitte's review in The Dallas Morning News

• Mark Lowry's review in Theater Jones

• Arnold Wayne Jones'  review in the Dallas Voice

The recent film documentary, Every Little Step, chronicles the audition process for the 2006 Broadway revival of A Chorus Line – a revival that has now stopped in North Texas, courtesy of the Dallas Summer Musicals. In following those auditions, the film also recounts how the original 1975 musical was created. That's right. It's a documentary about the auditions for a show that's all about auditioning for a show, yet a show that, naturally enough, wasn't actually created through auditions.

Which is a major reason it's a landmark show. There had been musicals about backstage life before this. There had been musicals with "out" gay characters as well. And there had been stripped-down musicals concentrating on the inner psychological lives of characters. But as Michael Serrecchia makes clear in this Art&Seek interview for THINK TV, there hadn't been a musical told through the dancers' own voices, drawing on the dancers' own lives.

Serrecchia (below) should know. A North Texas actor, director and the head of the musical theater program at the KD Studio Conservatory, he was one of the original members of A Chorus Line in 1975. He talks here about the backstage life the show drew on, how those orginal rehearsals felt, how the show changed his own life.

A Chorus Line was notable not just for what it said but how it got made. It was the first Broadway show to be developed out of workshops — in this case, out of late-night talk sessions that a group of "gypsy" dancers had started and then invited director-choreography Michael Bennett to sit in. Bennett spent months shaping the resulting material — with composer Marvin Hamlisch, lyricist Ed Kleban and writers James Kirkwood and Nicholas Dante (and a little uncredited "sweetening"  from Neil Simon). The musical would run for 15 years and would cement Bennett's status as one of Broadway's great director-choreographers (along with Bob Fosse, Tommy Tune and Jerome Robbins). It would also cement Bennett's reputation for cold-hearted calculation. The portrait of "Zach," the onstage director in A Chorus Line, barely touches on Bennett's notoriety for manipulation.

A Chorus Line's success is ironic because by the time the original run finally ended in 1990, the era of the unsung "gypsy" dancer was also over. No longer is it really possible for dancers to make a living hopping from one Broadway musical to another. There's not enough consistent work. The Anglo-French invasion musicals of the '80s and '90s — which generally had colossal sets, not chorus lines — helped put an end to it. The reign of the director-choreographers was also ending. Only Tommy Tune and Susan Stroman are really left, and Tune, one of the greats, seemingly hasn't worked on a Broadway (or Broadway-bound) musical in a decade (unless one counts the flop Turn of the Century at the Goodman last year).

So as much as A Chorus Line celebrates — as the show's dedication famously states — "anyone who has ever danced in a chorus or marched in step, anywhere" — it's also a high-kicking, soul-baring memento from when the Broadway musical existed as a living industry and not a series of one-off corporate tie-ins or boomer "jukebox" musicals.

That's why A Chorus Line is one, singular sensation. We're not likely to see a show like it again.