21c Salon: The Making of a World Premiere: The Wizard of Oz & the Kansas City Ballet
This week’s Open Spaces Salon at the 21 c Museum Hotel features Kansas City Ballet choreographer Septime Webre and dance critic Paul Horsely, to discuss Webre’s spectacular, multimedia remake of The Wizard of Oz, premiering at the KC Ballet Oct. 12. Join The Making of a World Premiere at the 21c Museum Hotel, Thursday, Oct. 4, at 5:30 p.m.
Visual and musical artist Sanford Biggers performs Moon Medicin at The American Jazz Museum
Renowned visual artist Sanford Biggers is the creative director of Moon Medicin, as well as a musician in its unique, multimedia performance. Moon Medicin is a musical act integrating collected sound effects and images as well as musicians and performance artists. Biggers’ Kansas City project reflects on its performance site, The Jay Mc Shann Pavilion of the The American Jazz Museum, Oct. 5 at 8 p.m.
East of Red Arthouse Poetry Slam makes a multimedia statement on the Village Stage
At 2:30 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 6, on the Village stage in Swope Park, the spoken word prowess of the East of Red Arthouse performs A Kansas City Stanza. The show will include elements of storytelling, song and instrumentation, and the spoken word will range in theme from love to social activism.
Making Movies plays Afro-Latino Rock on the Village Stage
Kansas City audiences love it when Making Movies comes home. Their songs have a unique way of welcoming us softly while leading us to musical extremes. They are hometown, global and cosmic in their reach. Don’t miss this free KC performance in Swope Park at 4 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 6.
Jahaira Aguilar presents an immersive workshop in Installation Art in Swope Park
Ebony Patterson’s Called Up installation in Swope Park’s Gilkey Swimming Pool has captured enormous attention. Steps away, in the Hogan building, artist Jahaira Aguilar guides a workshop in installation art for this week’s Triangle Learning Program in Contemporary Art. Register for one of two free afternoon sessions offered Oct. 6, at openspaceskc.com/education or on the Open Spaces app.
Trolley Tours of Randy Regier’s Dreams of Flight
Experience all three installations of Randy Regier’s Open Spaces series, Dreams of Flight, through an imaginative artist-led tour on Oct. 6. Participants begin at the Toy Museum, travel by trolley to River Market Antiques, and conclude with a reception at KCAI Crossroads Gallery: Center for Contemporary Practice, before returning to the Toy Museum. Seating is limited and reservations are required. Call 816.235.8005 or email mercierk@toyandminiaturemuseum.org to RSVP.
Kansas City Rumba Collective performs an encore show on the Village Stage, Oct. 7
For decades, the Kansas City Rumba Collective has played Afro-Cuban music each Sunday afternoon at Loose Park. In honor of their founder who started this tradition, they created The Romero-Diaz Project, a performance series for Open Spaces. By popular demand, the Collective has added a special performance, and starting at 12:30 p.m., their son cubano roots will bring high-energy to the Open Spaces Village!
Elizabeth Schurman offers a TASK Party in the Village
Open Spaces arts organizer Elizabeth Schurman is hosting a TASK party from 2:30 p.m. to 5 p.m., Sunday, Oct. 7 in the Open Spaces Village in Swope Park. Who-Knows-Who will accomplish tasks using who-knows-what materials, and the improvised outcome will be a celebration of Creative Freedom. Come try it: you can’t go wrong!
Let the kids beat drums at this week’s Kids’ Corner Workshop!
Get the kids out-of-doors and into Open Spaces on Sundays through October! Every Sunday afternoon the Swope Park Village hosts a different all-ages arts workshop, free. This week, The Drum Safari Drum Circle invites kids of all ages to the Open Spaces Village for a free, hands-on percussion experience!
ETHEL String Ensemble performs Documerica at the Nelson-Atkins Museum
In dialogue with an image montage made from a trove of 1970s environmental photographs, the renowned string quartet ETHEL plays newly commissioned works as well as pieces from their repertoire. Documerica reveals America’s impact on its own natural environment as recorded on film by a government commission in the early years of the Environmental Protection Agency. ETHEL’s taut and impassioned musical dialogues will deepen the sense of hope and urgency for American environmental stewardship expressed in the Documerica montage. Since 1998, ETHEL has brought fresh, multi-genre programs together with new classical compositions, and collaborated widely, including performances with Vijay Iyer, Kurt Elling and other performing arts icons. As part of the Open Spaces Beyond the Village series, ETHEL’s Documerica at the Nelson-Atkins costs only $20 for any seat. Reserve yours for Sunday’s 3 p.m. performance at openspaceskc.com.
Suggested Route: Three Open Spaces Works on the UMKC Campus Reflect on the Pursuit of Knowledge.
At the National Museum of Toys and Miniatures on UMKC’s campus, Randy Regier’s Dreams of Flight recreates the cultural environment many American children saw in the midst of the Cold War. This meticulously researched work centers on one Cold War toy but spans dozens of objects at three Open Spaces sites. Dreams of Flight explores how cultural fear shapes knowledge. Inside UMKC’s Gallery of Fine Art, Federico Solmi’s two-room installation, The Great Farce, projects images of cultural mythology in a large-scale video fantasy. His hand-made, carnivalesque models and painted images sail across the walls in a spellbinding critique of political myths and consumerist beliefs. Just outside the Fine Arts Building, in the Student Success Center courtyard, Flávio Cerqueira’s Any Word Except Wait has an almost opposite effect: the sober rendering in bronze shows a resolute young woman striding across the university green with a huge stack of books atop her head. Her realist figure embodies a poignant comment on Regier’s and Solmi’s labyrinths of fact and fiction, conveying the individual perseverance required wherever power and fear corrupt the pursuit of knowledge. To plan a UMKC Open Spaces visit, go to The Exhibition section of the Open Spaces app or openspaceskc.com.
