3 minute read
Arts Community Pivots
A SCINTILLATING SUMMER AWAITS
Local arts community pivots beautifully, creatively
BY EMILY SHOFF
Chromasonic — Fluid State
Telluride AIDS Benefit
Courtesy of Chromasonic
Jason Hicks of Jason and Daris Photography Covid might be lingering like a couch-surfing ski bum, but the Telluride arts community has pivoted beautifully and creatively for summer, leading to innovation in everything from theater to fashion to film to visual arts. In other words, get ready for a scintillating summertime arts scene.
The local nonprofit arts council, Telluride Arts, for instance, has made great use of its open-air Transfer Warehouse, the historic building at the corner of Fir Street and Pacific Avenue. By reducing capacity from 480 to 135 guests, it has been able to host small-scale films and concerts over the past year. This summer, it plans to continue these, as well as serve as the venue for streamlined versions of Mountainfilm, Telluride Mushroom Festival, Wilkinson Public Library programming, an expanded music series and more. Executive Director Kate Jones says that the need to reduce the size of gatherings has made them more intimate, “mandating something that we want to continue.”
In-person audience sizes might be smaller, but local radio station KOTO has plans to live broadcast many of the warehouse’s events, expanding overall reach. Says Jones, “I’m so excited that we’re teaming up with KOTO. This is something we’ve been dreaming about for years.”
Telluride Arts also collaborated with the Original Thinkers festival; artists’ collaborative Deep Creek Experimental; Deep Creek Mine, a former mine west of town that is now an arts space; and Studio Chromasonic to secure a National Endowment for the Arts grant. The funding will support two installations, an expanded installation at the mine of Chromasonic — Fluid State, and a new one at the Transfer Warehouse with sculptor and artist Johannes Girardoni and sound artists Orpheo McCord and Joel Shearer combining a real-time algorithmic process with light and sound
Telluride Theatre’s Shakespeare in the Park
Alexei Kaleina
— Colin Sullivan
“Shifting TAB outdoors is a uncertainty, where our kids have been robbed of secret dream I’ve had for quite so much, it’s been really important for us to keep some time,” confesses Exec- theater going for them,” she says. utive Director Jessica Galbo. Keeping theater alive has been the mantra “It’s going to be really stunning, for Telluride Theatre as well, which pivoted last with the beauty of the moun- summer to pull off a free outdoor production that tains matching the beauty of became a model for theater companies elsewhere. the fashion being displayed.” “Our plans for this summer are the same as they As for the Sheridan Arts were last year — to work with [public health offiFoundation’s Young People’s cials] to run the best show we can while keeping Theater, not only did they pull everyone safe,” says Colin Sullivan, the organiza-
Sheridan Arts Foundation’s Young People’s Theater off productions throughout tion’s executive director. He admits, though, that the spring, they ran multiple he is hoping he can get actors a little closer togethfor a stunning experience. shows. Now, Artistic Director er during Macbeth, this summer’s Shakespeare in
Telluride Arts isn’t the only one pulling a 180 Leah Heidenreich says her talented young thespi- the Park. “It’s going to be a little awkward if the in the terrain park this summer. Typically a winter ans will participate in two camps this summer that Macbeths can’t touch.” event, the Telluride AIDS Benefit will instead host will lead to productions of 101 Dalmatians July 19- Adds Sullivan, “If Shakespeare pulled off its iconic Gala Fashion Show on the actual runway 23, and A Year with Frog & Toad July 26-30, both at The Tempest during the Black Plague, we can at the Telluride Regional Airport in late June. the Sheridan Opera House. “In a year of so much do anything.”
