Editor’s Note

December 2022 / January 2023

TERRI PROVENCAL

Publisher / Editor in Chief terri@patronmagazine.com Instagram terri_provencal and patronmag

This September, Klyde Warren Park unveiled the Nancy Best Fountain gushing with delight for all—a 5,000-square-foot splash pad offers plenty of room for children, parents, grandparents, and friends of friends. It’s an impressive display that honors the urban park’s triumphant history of diversity and engagement over the past ten years. Our cover, photographed by Tramaine Townsend when the sun had yet to set on a hot autumn evening, shows the preternaturally gifted dancer Sean Smith of Dallas Black Dance Theatre heralding its arrival. At the invitation of Klyde Warren Park president Kit Sawers, Lee Cullum brings readers a behind-the-scenes look in All Together Now. ’Tis the season for tradition but also for the curious. A beacon for timeless tales to be told, there is something for everyone, from productions of A Christmas Carol and The Nutcracker to Hamid Rahmanian’s Song of the North, an epic Persian love story told through large-scale shadow puppetry, making its Texas debut with TITAS.

Sean Smith reappears in Lee Cullum’s story about the artists informing our stages, as does Hamid Rahmanian, each of whom kept ingenuity alive during the dark days of Covid to bring about a robust 2022/2023 performing arts season. Read about the myriad of talent animating every genre in Backstage Access. Other standouts include Erin Hannigan, principal oboist with Dallas Symphony; actress and director Tiana Kaye Johnson of Dallas Theater Center; Jillyn Bryant with Bruce Wood Dance; Elizabeth Askren, a master teacher at The Dallas Opera’s Hart Institute for Women Conductors who will return to conduct Così fan tutte this spring; and Isaac Gómez, a graduate of UT Austin, who will bring his one-woman play The Way She Spoke from his Chicago home to the Undermain Theatre next summer.

In January, we have much to look forward to, aside from a new year. One of these is Bas Jan Ader, Thoughts Unsaid… the inaugural exhibition opening at Meliksetian | Briggs on January 11. Frequent Dallas Art Fair exhibitors, cofounding husband-and-wife duo Anna Meliksetian and Michael Briggs moved their gallery from Los Angeles to the River Bend complex to join the flourishing Dallas art scene. Brandon Kennedy shares the news in Not One to see the Father for the Trees.

In our departments Darryl Ratcliff reviews Theaster Gates’ Afro Mingei, a guest restaurant combining the culinary cultures of Japan and the Black American South served up on ceramics created by the 2018 Nasher Prize Laureate. Reserve your seat at Nasher Sculpture Center. Chris Byrne chats with art critic Barry Schwabsky about Dallas exhibitions and collections; Drawing Interest highlights Michael Williams’ solo show at The Power Station; and Nancy Cohen Israel checks in on Theatre Three’s return to a recently renovated space as well as two outstanding honorees from this year’s Business Council for the Arts Obelisk Awards: Lily Weiss and Harry Robinson. In Furthermore, we catch up with DAMOYEE, a Booker T. alumnus, soon graduating from Berklee College of Music. As a multi-instrumentalist and vocalist with absolute pitch, she has star power written all over her.

Jewels that Sleigh, photographed by Dixie Dixon with creative direction by Elaine Raffel, brings on the dazzle. Speaking of dazzle, in There, find a photo recap of some of the great October and November fêtes, when the visual arts are always at their height.

During this nourishing time of year, share a meal with a longtime friend or someone you’ve recently met, then attend a symphony, see a new play, enjoy modern dance, delight in the spectacle of opera. The performing arts community will be grateful.

– Terri Provencal

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