Here are this week’s calendar picks from KC Studio editor, Alice Thorson. It’s your last weekend to see Metropolitan Ensemble Theatre‘s production of Tall Girls, playing through Sunday, April 17. Tomorrow, stop by the opening reception for Kansas City Art Institute‘s Annual BFA Exhibition,then see An Anonymous Art at The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art. The Harriman-Jewell Series presents Isabel Leonard and Sharon Isbin at the Folly Theater Friday night, and Owen/Cox Dance Group performs DANZA with Ensemble Iberica at Polsky Theatre, JCCC Friday and Saturday night. For more ideas this weekend, visit Kansas City’s most comprehensive arts calendar at kcstudio.org/events. We hope to see you out!
The Tall Girls
April 14 @ 7:30 pm
April 15 @ 7:30 pm
April 16 @ 7:30 pm
April 17 @ 2:00 pm
Metropolitan Ensemble Theatre
By Meg Meroshnik
Directed by Karen Paisley
Sometimes basketball is the only way out. Even for a girl. Especially for a girl. Especially in the Dust Bowl of the 1930s.The tiny hamlet of Poor Prairie doesn’t see a lot of folks coming into town, least of all men. But this man is mysterious. He’s coming home but nobody knows where he’s been and his story’s got some gaps. A play about more than basketball—a play about love, about friendship, determination, and having heart in the heart of America in the Dust Bowl 1930’s.
An Anonymous Art: American Snapshots from the Peter J. Cohen Gift
April 15 – September 4
Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art
Amateur snapshots are the “folk art” of photography. Snapshots represent a world we instinctively know, while reminding us of the special—and often peculiar—nature of camera vision.
These simple images embody a spirit of affection, curiosity and play. They reflect the familiar rhythms of everyday life—the events and motifs lovingly recorded generation after generation. They also represent a rich tradition of pictorial invention—a result, variously, of intention, mistake and chance. Tilted horizons, awkward intrusions and oddly cropped or off-center subjects are common in snapshots, as are the effects of blur, faulty focus and double exposure.
Now, at the end of photography’s analog era, artists and collectors are studying these works with new respect as a key aspect of modern visual culture.
Image: Unknown maker, American. Woman with drink on bed, 1950s. Gelatin silver print, 3 1/8 x 4 ½ inches. Gift of Peter J. Cohen, 2015.9.44.
2016 Annual BFA Exhibition
April 16 – May 14
H&R Block Artspace
The 2016 Annual B.F.A. Exhibition will feature works by over 117 B.F.A. candidates from the Kansas City Art Institute, majoring in Animation, Art History, Ceramics, Creative Writing, Fiber, Filmmaking, Graphic Design, Illustration, Interactive Arts, Painting, Photography, Printmaking, and Sculpture.
An opening reception will be held Friday, April 15, 5 – 8 p.m.
Isabel Leonard and Sharon Isbin performing Spanish music for voice and guitar
April 15 @ 7:00 pm | $20 – $70
Folly Theater
Mezzo-soprano Isabel Leonard will be joined by acclaimed guitarist Sharon Isbin for a program of Spanish music, with the addition of two favorite arias sung by Ms. Leonard with piano accompaniment.
Two star musicians at the height of their powers will perform a special evening of Spanish music for voice and guitar.
Mezzo-soprano Isabel Leonard, known for spellbinding passion, technique, and charisma, is the 2013 Richard Tucker Award recipient and appears in lead operatic roles worldwide. Ms. Leonard is currently at the Metropolitan Opera in one of her signature roles, Cherubino, in Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro.
Sharon Isbin is acclaimed as one of the today’s finest guitarists and a foremost interpreter of Spanish guitar. The winner of multiple Grammy Awards has been hailed as “the pre-eminent guitarist of our time” by Boston Magazine.
The power duo received high praise from critics for their Carnegie Hall Spanish concert last November. “With such formidable proponents as Leonard and Isbin, one hopes that such recitals will be less ‘change of pace’ and more of a regular attraction,” reported the New York Classical Review.
Mark Markham is widely recognized as one of the great piano collaborators of his generation. He has been the recital partner of soprano Jessye Norman since 1995, giving nearly 300 performances in over 25 countries. Markum performed a recital with Jessye Norman on April 15, 2000, at the Folly Theater, presented by the Harriman-Jewell Series.
DANZA: 500 Years of Dance in Spain
April 15 @ 8:00 pm – 9:30 pm
April 16 @ 8:00 pm – 9:30 pm
$13 – $26
Polsky Theatre, JCCC
Experience a retrospective of centuries of Spanish dance re-imagined by Owen/Cox Dance, international tenor star Nathan Granner, and Beau Bledsoe’s Ensemble Ibérica. The program will feature new dance works choreographed by Jennifer Owen to music spanning the last 500 years from Spain and the colonial Americas. Also on the program is La Locura, a work by Katarzyna Skarpetowska commissioned by the Johnson County Community College Performing Arts Series for New Dance Partners 2015.
A post-performance Artist Talk and question and answer period with the dancers, musicians, actor, and choreographer will follow each performance. This discussion gives audience members an inside view of the creative process behind the work.
