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Pacific Symphony selects Irvine for home base

8/1/2017

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Pacific Symphony’s new home is in Irvine

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Participating in the ribbon cutting at the Charlie and Ling Zhang Musical Arts & Education Center are (left to right) Douglas K. Freeman, Executive Chairman and CEO of Orange County Music and Dance; John Forsyte, President of Pacific Symphony; Charles (“Charlie”) Zhang, Board Member with both Pacific Symphony and OC Music & Dance, and Founder of Charlie and Ling Zhang Musical Arts & Education Center; Charlie’s wife, Ling Zhang; Rick Stein, President and CEO of Arts Orange County. Photo: Doug Kalagian
By Irvine City News staff
The art and culture profile of Irvine was significantly improved with the recent opening of the Charlie and Ling Zhang Musical Arts & Education Center, the new headquarters of Pacific Symphony. Orange County’s resident orchestra performs at Segerstrom Center for the Arts, of course, but its administrative home is now set in our city. 

Located at 17620 Fitch Ave., just off of MacArthur Blvd. near the 55 Freeway, the building is also home to Arts Orange County and the newly founded Orange County Music & Dance (OCMD).  

At an opening ceremony for the building, Pacific Symphony President John Forsyte revealed the new name of the building in honor of Charlie and Ling Zhang, the man and woman whose vision and generosity made the move possible. 

Forsyte honored the Zhangs by mentioning them along with Andrew Carnegie and Henry Huntington. “Orange County is similarly blessed with visionaries who can make a profound difference,” said Forsyte. “Think of a man who came to the U.S. with a few dollars and a clarinet, who dreamt of being a professional musician. Charlie Zhang and his wife, Ling, have catalyzed dramatic change for our region and have given us all a gift that will transcend generations. We cannot thank them enough.” 

Charles Zhang created the nonprofit OC Music & Dance to provide top-quality musical arts education and training for children, regardless of their family’s ability to pay. Its 21,000-square-foot facility in Irvine has practice rooms, classrooms, studio space for recording and dance, and a 140-seat theater. 

Having OCMD next door creates an opportunity for the Symphony to utilize the performance and rehearsal spaces and create more programs for children and adults in the community. In addition to Symphony musicians holding music lessons in the building, it is also launching “Parent and Me: Music and Movement” workshops this month. The 21,000-square-feet facility features eight music rooms, three dance studios, two classrooms, a recording studio and a 120-seat theater, as well as the Monkey Business Café and the Arts OC office. 

The Zhangs started Pick Up Stix, the fast-casual Chinese food chain, in 1989 and sold it in 2001 for $50 million to TGI Friday’s parent company, Carlson Restaurants Worldwide. 

The Zhangs will receive the prestigious Helena Modjeska Cultural Legacy Award at the 18th Annual Orange County Arts Awards on Oct. 17. The Arts Awards are held in the Samueli Theater at the Segerstrom Center for the Arts.  
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OC’s second city of the arts 
 
Irvine may not threaten its neighboring city of Costa Mesa as Orange County’s center of art and culture anytime soon. The Tony Award-winning South Coast Repertory Theater, the several stages and thousands of seats at Segerstrom Center for the Arts, significant works of public art highlighted by Richard Serra’s Connector and Isamu Noguchi’s California Scenario sculpture garden and an anticipated move of Orange County Museum of Art to the city put Costa Mesa well in the lead in that regard.  

Still, Irvine is arguably in second place in the county (with apologies to Laguna Beach), and gaining, with the Charlie and Ling Zhang Musical Arts & Education Center and the adjoining Orange County Music & Dance key additions to the arts and culture institutions in the city. 

UCI’s influential role in art history is no longer a secret. Just search “Best Kept Secret: UCI and the Development of Contemporary Art in Southern California, 1964-1971” to learn more about the impact the university has had, and still has.  

The galleries, theaters, programs and productions of the Claire Trevor School of the Arts are a community treasure, and The Irvine Museum’s collection of California Impressionism masterpieces is now also part of the school. Dance, theater and digital art and technology are all leading programs at UCI, and the MFA Program in writing has produced some of the country’s finest authors. 

The Irvine Fine Arts Center, Irvine Barclay Theatre, and IVC’s Performing Arts Center, add to the cultural mix, as will the upcoming Concordia University Irvine’s Music, Worship and Theology building–the music wing will include an orchestra hall, and a choral hall. 

Arts education is also an important part of curriculum at Irvine Unified School District, augmented by the many art, dance and STEAM enrichment academies, companies and schools throughout the city. 
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Time will tell what the Cultural Terrace at the Orange County Great Park will add to the city’s artistic environment. If allowed to reach its potential (while still remaining practical financially) the impact should be significant. 
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Disney, Great Park

6/1/2017

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Disney goes to war at the Great Park

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WALT DISNEY PRESENTS THE FLYING BULL LOGO TO MARINE CORPS AIR STATION EL TORO COMMANDING OFFICER COL. WILLIAM FOX IN 1943. THE EL TORO LOGO WAS DESIGNED BY WALT DISNEY PRODUCTIONS AND REMAINED THE BASE’S INSIGNIA UNTIL ITS CLOSURE IN 1999. PHOTO COURTESY OF FLYING LEATHERNECK AVIATION MUSEUM, MCAS MIRAMAR, SD
By Irvine City News staff
Netflix fans and documentary lovers likely already know about ‘Five Came Back,’ a series of three films co-produced by Steven Spielberg about the World War II efforts of Golden-Age-of-Hollywood directors John Ford, Frank Capra, George Stevens, John Huston and William Wyler. The five enlisted and created movies such as “Why We Fight” to inspire understanding and support of the war effort.

Though Walt Disney didn’t film on the battlefields and fronts of the war as the other five directors did, Disney Studios’ war effort was also crucial to boosting morale on the home front and for the American forces at war. That effort will form the basis of a new exhibit, Walt and the Flying Bull, to run June 3 – Aug. 13 at the Great Park Art Gallery.

In 1943, Walt Disney Productions designed the El Toro “Flying Bull” logo for Marine Corps Air Station El Toro. This Great Park exhibit will include the history of Disney Insignia Art, and will also include contemporary art inspired by World War II, created by artists working for Walt Disney Productions, Marvel Entertainment, and Pixar Animation Studios.

The show will also include photos taken in 1942 by Bob Blankman, an archivist for the First American History Collection and a member of the first unit stationed at El Toro during the opening of the base, and photos taken after the closure of MCAS El Toro in 1999 captured by The Legacy Project.

During World War II, more than 90 percent of Disney employees were devoted to the production of training and propaganda films. In all, the Disney Studios in Burbank produced some 68 hours of film. In addition, Disney animators and artists used their talents to design some 1,200 military insignia and emblems for units such as the Flying Tigers, Naval Construction Battalions (Seabees), the mosquito fleet of PT boats, and many other branches of the armed forces, for a total of some 1,200 insignia in all.

The logos were known for their humor. Almost every Disney character of the day was used, with Donald Duck the most requested. Issue Journal, the online journal of business and design, put it well: “As incongruous as Disney characters are to the horrors of war, these cartoon military patches embodied pop culture, innocence, American values, and everything the troops loved about home—a much more fitting emblem than a heraldic pompous symbol with no sentimental significance.”
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The reception for Walt and the Flying Bull is Sunday, June 4 from 1-3 p.m.
 
cityofirvine.org/orange-county-great-park/palm-court-arts-complex
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Air Force Band, Barclay Theatre

5/1/2017

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Band of the Golden West

​Air Force Band at the Barclay Theatre
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U.S. AIR FORCE BAND OF THE GOLDEN WEST WILL PERFORM AT THE IRVINE BARCLAY
By Irvine City News staff
Depending upon which branch of the service one most identifies with, “Off we go into the wild blue yonder” may or may not evoke chills of recognition and identification. One would anticipate that the United States Air Force Band of the Golden West would play a stirring rendition of that and other patriotic songs when the band gives a free performance honoring veterans at the Irvine Barclay Theatre on May 22.

Though known by different names over the decades, the band’s history dates back to 1941. In 2004, the USAF Band of the Golden West was honored to support the interment ceremony of President Ronald Reagan in Simi Valley, an event viewed by a global TV audience of over 400 million. The official Air Force Band has led off three Tournament of Roses parades in Pasadena. More recent events include performances with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the San Francisco Symphony.

In addition to performing for civilian communities throughout the states of California, Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Nevada, Arizona, and Utah, the band supports 13 Air Force Bases, 8 Air Force Reserve Wings, and 6 recruiting squadrons in over 250 annual performances for 1.5 million listeners.

The band performs a wide variety of music, including military marches, Broadway standards, jazz and pop arrangements, and patriotic music.

Hopefully, the Air Force Band will sing a medley of military songs, in addition to “Wild Blue Yonder” (The Air Force Song).

Back when certain of ICN’s more seasoned staffers were in public elementary school, singing the official songs of the branches of the U.S. military was part of music class.

Today, we’re not sure how many young students would recognize these lyrics: “From the Halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli, we fight our country’s battles in the air, on land, and sea.”

Or: “Here they come zooming to meet our thunder; at ‘em boys, Give ‘er the gun!”

Or even: “Anchors aweigh, my boys, anchors aweigh. Farewell to foreign shores, we sail at break of day.”

Which is too bad, because those songs were sure fun to sing, what with the toasting and drinking to the foam.

Irvine is of course home to the hallowed land that was long the Marine Corps Air Station El Toro. So, while the Air Force band is in Irvine, we’d love to hear them sing the final verse of the Marines’ Hymn:

“If the Army and the Navy ever look on heaven’s scenes,
they will find the streets are guarded by United States Marines.”
 
thebarclay.org

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Surfing,  Great Park Art Gallery

3/29/2017

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Surfers and the art of the wave

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SURF’S UP AT GREAT PARK GALLERY
By Irvine City News staff
 
With all the excitement about what’s new and what’s next at the Orange County Great Park, it’s easy to overlook some old favorites. The chickens at the Farm + Food Lab are as intriguing to kids as ever, and in spring the gardens and planters seem especially fresh and full of life. We love this hidden gem and hope it has a place as the park grows. The carousel and the kids’ rock playground are part of the weekend for many local families, while the big orange balloon has evolved into something of an icon, albeit a symbol of an earlier error at the park. Did we say error? We meant era, honestly.

For those who have been paying attention, it’s probably obvious that one of our favorite spaces at the former MCAS El Toro is the Great Park Art Gallery. Its well-curated shows offer an aesthetic respite from whatever else we’re doing the day we visit. The current show “Surfing with Tom Carey” is one of the gallery’s most accessible shows, even if it’s not as thought provoking as this past year’s exhibits curated by Kevin Staniec, such as “Balance,” “Rhythm” or “Smile: Expressions of Orange County.”
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Surfing has always been about soul. If the apparel and accessories industries that marketed the surf lifestyle forgot about that for a while, most surfers did not. And that passionate connection of athletes to the ocean is on display in the exhibition of work by renowned photographer Tom Carey.

The photographs are stunningly crafted and captured images of surfers on waves around the world. Several of the images are huge, covering almost from polished concrete floor to open industrial ceiling in the clean, well-lit gallery. The large images reflect in the shiny floor of the gallery, adding to the appeal.

Portraits of surfers line another wall, some posed and many others candid and impromptu. These shots catching the personalities of the athletes, and revealing a bit of what it must be like to travel the world as a competitive or magazine model surfer.

Other parts of the gallery include a look at Carey’s innovative experiments in advanced flash techniques, while another wall includes the 18 magazine covers from a variety of surfing magazines featuring Carey’s photos over the past 15 years. For a surf photographer, scoring a magazine cover is one of the pinnacles of the profession.

The exhibit also features a surf film called “Psychic Migrations” on a constant loop. The Volcom film directed by Ryan Thomas was part of last year’s Newport Beach Film Festival. It’s described on the gallery wall as weaving “the physical expression of riding a rousing score of waves with a cerebral odyssey through the scapes and textures traveled to find them.” We can’t say how accurate that description is (or exactly what it means). We were more attracted to the art on the walls, so will leave the film for another day.
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Festival Ballet Theatre

2/28/2017

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Dance dreams

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“DON QUIXOTE” AT IRVINE BARCLAY THEATRE
Stars of the international ballet scene to perform in Irvine
By Irvine City News staff
Dance is an essential element in the creative repertoire offered at the Irvine Barclay Theatre each season, with Orange County’s own Festival Ballet Theatre (FBT) a significant source of the theaters artistic talent.

The professional dancers of FBT led by Artistic Director Salwa Rizkalla will return to Irvine this month along with two world-class guest artists to present Don Quixote. Set to the classic score by composer Ludwig Minkus, the ballet is centered on the well-known story of the eccentric knight Don Quixote and his loyal friend Sancho Panza on Quixote’s quest to find his impossible dream woman, Dulcinea. Marcelo Gomes and Hee Seo will dance in the leads as the young Spanish couple in the ballet that brings Cervantes’ iconic novel to life. 

​Set to the classic score by composer Ludwig Minkus, the ballet is centered on the well-known story of the eccentric knight Don Quixote and his loyal friend Sancho Panza on Quixote’s quest to find his impossible dream woman, Dulcinea. The professional dancers of FBT led by Artistic Director Salwa Rizkalla will return to Irvine this month along with two world-class guest artists to present “Don Quixote.” Marcelo Gomes and Hee Seo will dance in the leads as the young Spanish couple in the ballet that brings Cervantes’ iconic novel to life.
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FBT’s colorful production of the romantic comedy features Gomes and Seo, along with company dancers and a boisterous cast of characters, for two performances only: Saturday, March 25 at 7 p.m. and a matinee the following day, Sunday, March 26 at 2 p.m.

Gomes and Seo are both principal dancers with American Ballet Theatre (ABT), the country’s premiere ballet company often seen in Orange County thanks to frequent performances at Segerstrom Center for the Arts. Gomes is particularly well regarded, having dances in “Kings of the Dance,” “Tour de Force” and the world premiere of ABT’s “Sleeping Beauty” here in Orange County. Hee Seo also was a principal in the “Sleeping Beauty” premiere, dancing her debut as Aurora at Segerstrom Center.

In addition to her performance at Irvine Barclay in “Don Quixote,” Seo will also appear at Segerstrom Center’s world premiere of ABT’s “Whipped Cream” this month (March 15-19), in a production that includes Misty Copeland and Gillian Murphy.

Dance fans should not miss the opportunity to see these stars of international dance up close at Irvine Barclay Theater. The Festival Ballet company dancers will also perform excerpts from “Don Quixote” in a free community performance on the Newport Beach Library Civic Green on March 25, 12-1 p.m.
 
Irvinebarclay.org
 
Tickets: $42 - $55


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Shakespeare at UCI

2/1/2017

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Of oppressors and the oppressed: Shakespeare at UCI

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WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE’S “CORIOLANUS” IS ON STAGE AT UCI THIS MONTH
By Irvine City News staff
“Coriolanus” is not one of Shakespeare’s plays from which quotes or soliloquies easily come to mind. We’d venture to say few have read it, fewer still have seen it performed on stage. Now’s our chance, as UC Irvine’s Claire Trevor School of the Arts Department of Drama presents Shakespeare’s tragedy based on the life of Roman leader Caius Marcius Coriolanus. The play, which runs from Feb. 4-12, dramatizes the rise and fall of a military leader lionized for his valor and heroism, qualities that are manipulated by those around him to advance their own agendas.

Xenophobia is the theme of the 2016-17 UCI Drama season, with productions that explore a variety of aspects of how “the other” is treated in society. This production of “Coriolanus” by director Paul Cook, a third-year MFA candidate at UCI, isn’t set in the age of Rome. It takes place in a dystopian landscape of indeterminate era and location to emphasize the timeless issues at stake, and some of the warrior roles written for men are played by women, according to comments in a UCI release.

No doubt the play has seen increased interest after recent events…and elections. Google “Coriolanus” and “Trump” together; the search results will review a variety of views on the relevance of the play to contemporary culture, including the odd revelation that Trump strategist Stephen Bannon once wrote a rap version set in Rodney King riot era of L.A.

To appreciate the subtext of Shakespeare’s “Coriolanus,” we’ll look a bit further back than the 1990s. William Hazlett’s “Characters of Shakespeare’s Plays” was published in 1817, and in it the esteemed critic and author of his day wrote that “The whole dramatic moral of ‘Coriolanus’ is that those who have little shall have less, and that those who have much shall take all that others have left.”

Dystopian, indeed.

Hazlett, who also wrote much on the American and French revolutions (he was for them), continues on Shakespeare’s accomplishments in the play:

“The arguments for and against aristocracy or democracy, on the privileges of the few and the claims of the many, on liberty and slavery, power and the abuse of it, peace and war, are very ably handled, with the spirit of a poet and the acuteness of a philosopher.”

His analysis of the play’s themes is enlightening… and a tad disturbing:

“The insolence of power is stronger than the plea of necessity. The tame submission to usurped authority or even the natural resistance to it has nothing to excite or flatter the imagination: it is the assumption of a right to insult or oppress others that carries an imposing air of superiority with it.

“We had rather be the oppressor than the oppressed. The love of power in ourselves and the admiration of it in others are both natural to man: the one makes him a tyrant, the other a slave. Wrong—dressed out in pride, pomp, and circumstance—has more attraction than abstract right.

“This is the logic of the imagination and the passions; which seek to aggrandize what excites admiration and to heap contempt on misery, to raise power into tyranny, and to make tyranny absolute; to thrust down that which is low still lower, and to make wretches desperate: to exalt magistrates into kings, kings into gods; to degrade subjects to the rank of slaves, and slaves to the condition of brutes.”
Well, alrighty then.

Hazlett’s opinions on the play make one eager to view UCI’s version to see if its themes are as relevant to our era as “Coriolanus” clearly was to Hazlett in his revolutionary age.
 
General Admission $15 / Seniors $14 / UCI Students & Children under 17 $11
 
Arts.uci.edu/tickets
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What is the mission of the Irvine museum?

2/1/2017

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Irvine Museum’s mission

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By Irvine City News Staff
Many who grew up in California remember studying the missions in fourth grade. The project includes making a model of one of the 21 missions out of sugar cubes or Popsicle sticks, though today’s students often choose Legos, we’re told. Or even 3D printers.

Visiting missions is part of field trips and family road trips, with OC’s own Mission San Juan Capistrano being one of the most visited, and most beautiful. There’s even the California Missions Museum in Sonoma (californiamissionsmuseum.com) that includes scale models of each one.

The Irvine Museum’s current exhibition “Along Camino Real” looks at historic art depicting, or at least inspired by, the missions and the vistas seen from the road connecting them. The missions themselves had fallen into disrepair by 1850, when California became a state. The artists’ attention to them began in the 1890s, spurring efforts to restore and maintain them that continue today.
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The California missions were established by Spain starting in 1697 in Baja, with the first one in today’s California founded in San Diego in 1769. They stretched from there to Sonoma along some 600 miles known as El Camino Real. There’s still a short stretch of road with the name in Irvine, near the 5 by the Marketplace. The road evolved into U.S. Route 101, and then the 5 in our area, and the 101 still approximates the route taken by the friars and conquistadores. Sharp-eyed travelers can still spot the commemorative bells that marked the route beginning in 1906.

The exhibit at the museum, which is now part of UCI but is still located in the Irvine Business Complex, includes work by California painters working from 1850 to 1950. They include the well-known Laguna Beach painter William Wendt and Elmer Watchel, whose paintings of the San Juan Capistrano mission from the 1880s include the ruins of the Great Stone Church that fell in the earthquake of 1812.

A similar exhibition in 1995 was held at outdoors at Mission San Juan Capistrano. Called “Romance of the Bells: the California Missions in Art,” the catalogue that resulted from the exhibit provides an excellent review of the era in California art and the highly romanticized view of the missions.

Students of California history know that the population of native California Indians declined by 90 percent following the arrival of the Spanish. Many succumbed while living under the control of Spanish missions. Between 1846 and 1873, the first 27 years that California was a U.S. territory and then state, the Indian population in California went from 150,000 to 30,000, an 80 percent decline. The state’s leading historian, Kevin Starr (who passed away recently) put it simply: “60 percent of the deaths were attributable to disease, the rest to murder.”

Clearly, it hasn’t been the mission of The Irvine Museum to explore the harsher elements of the state’s history, as shown through art or otherwise. Nor should it have been. But we’ll be interested to see if its new affiliation with UCI will allow for teaching moments about some of the Golden State’s less-glorious and romantic stories.
 
irvinemuseum.org
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Concrete, art and nature at Irvine's Great Park

1/2/2017

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Concrete, Art and Nature at the Great Park

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A VISITOR VIEWS STORM KING SCULPTURE GARDEN IMAGES
By Irvine City News
​Several years ago some of Orange County’s leading artists looked to the hangars and runways of the former MCAS El Toro for inspiration. They wandered the grounds, took photos and painted images of the place while it was in a sort of purgatory between its role as a working base and its future as the Orange County Great Park. Known as the Legacy Project Collaborative, many of the works depicted the concrete structures beginning to decay, as nature took back what once had been its domain.

One of the people who explored and memorialized the base was Laguna Beach artist Jorg Dubin. His paintings formed the first exhibition at the Great Park Gallery in 2011.

So it’s appropriate, somehow, that the current exhibit at the Great Park Gallery deals with similar themes; though it’s a decade or so later in a time when the future of the Great Park is becoming present.

The exhibit is called “Balance,” and brings together artists who are looking at the interface between nature and human activities and structures. The human side of things is often symbolized by concrete, as in the building material.

Artist Andrew Woodward’s work at the gallery consists of living trees planted in cubes of concrete. Not square planters made out of concrete, mind you. Rather they are suspended sculptures of green and gray where it can be difficult to tell where the living plant begins and the inorganic mass that encases the trees ends. Though the trees are encased in the concrete, the roots can still absorb water through the porous walls.
Other artists examine the theme in quite different ways, including tiny, intricate treehouses built around houseplants by Jedediah Corwyn Voltz; a video installation by Isabelle Hayeur; and a display of photos, maps and recorded interviews from a 3,000-mile roadtrip Marissa Gawel took for National Geographic to document homemade roadside attractions.
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While some elements of the exhibit are introspective, even precious, photos of the magnificent Storm King sculpture park in New York are inspiring. We recommend anyone working on the future Cultural Terrace area of the Orange County Great Park see it for inspiration—if not the actual 500-acre sculpture park, then the photos at the Great Park.
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Nutcracker,  Maple Youth Ballet’s

12/1/2016

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Nutcracker Notes

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IRVINE DANCERS IN AMERICAN PACIFIC BALLET’S “THE NUTCRACKER.” BACK ROW, LEFT TO RIGHT: RANDAL HANS, CHRISTINA WODARZ, JULIETTE NG, MARIA WODARZ, ALICIA HANS. MIDDLE ROW: CAMILLE NG, PAULINA WODARZ, JOHN JIRJIS, MOLLY SMITH, SYLVIA RUSZAT. FRONT ROW: JOCELYN WANG, LAUREN KATZ, JULIA JIRJIS.
By Irvine City News staff
For many, attending a performance of the Nutcracker ballet is as much a part of the holidays as choosing a Christmas tree or giving gifts. In Irvine, we have many performances to choose from, including Maple Youth Ballet’s presentation at Northwood Performing Arts Center in Irvine. The Irvine-based youth ballet organization puts on an amazing show, with the added benefit of kid-friendly activities and a Nutcracker boutique before and after select shows.

Irvine Barclay Theatre hosts Festival Ballet Theatre’s production of “The Nutcracker” beginning Dec. 10 and running through Christmas Eve. The full-length traditional production is choreographed and directed by Festival Ballet Theatre’s artistic director, Salwa Rizkalla, and features professional guest performances by dancers from San Francisco Ballet, New York City Ballet, and former American Ballet Theater principals.

Speaking of ABT, the world-renowned ballet company will be appearing at Segerstrom Center for the Arts this month with what is perhaps the region’s most prestigious Nutcracker performance. Featuring Orange County favorite Misty Copeland among the principals appearing on different nights, the ballet also features students from ABT William J. Gillespie School.

Though the production is in Fullerton, you’re certain to see Irvine residents dance in American Pacific Ballet’s production of “The Nutcracker” on Dec. 3 and 4, including those in the image above.

The company and its ballet school draw mainly from Irvine, Tustin, Orange, and Santa Ana, and the production is a full-length classic version of “The Nutcracker,” with choreography by the late Mignon Furman, and ballet-trained children dancing the children’s parts.
 
 mapleconservatory.com
 festivalballet.org
 scfta.org
 americanpacificballet.org
 

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Interim amphitheater, “Save Live Music Irvine”

10/28/2016

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Interim amphitheater plan to keep live music alive in Irvine

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ARTIST RENDERING, CONCEPTUAL, SUBJECT TO CHANGE
By Irvine City News staff
Fans of attending concerts at Irvine Meadows Amphitheatre have been mourning the loss of the venerable venue all summer. Now that the music venue that’s been part of summertime in SoCal for 35 years has seen its last show, plans are underway to replace it.

FivePoint and Live Nation have announced a proposal to build an interim outdoor concert venue on 45 acres of land at the end of the runways of the old MCAS El Toro base.

The new, interim amphitheater would seat 12,000, compared to the 16,000 who attended shows at Irvine Meadows, and be within walking distance of the train station at El Toro. It would stand for some three years, while, hopefully, plans to build a permanent outdoor concert venue are finalized.

The master plan for the Orange County Great Park has long called for an amphitheater in the Cultural Terrace, the part of the park that is controlled by the city and the furthest from realization. Insiders say that the Cultural Terrace cannot move forward until a lease for recycling facilities located on that part of the old base expires in 2018.

Public pressure to come up with an alternative outdoor venue for concerts has been building throughout the summer, as music fans attending Irvine Meadows shows came to the final realization that there would be no last-minute reprieve for the much-loved locale. Several of the musical acts that took the stage in recent months were outspoken about the loss of Irvine Meadows, and the need for a new venue.

In August, a “Save Live Music Irvine” movement began, with fans joining an online campaign, complete with petitions and email lists of registered Irvine voters and others who want action on a new amphitheater—some 30,000 of them so far. Fans also wrote their memories of attending concerts at Irvine Meadows on large boards put up during concerts near the entrance to the venue. A large sampling of those comments from fans, some playful, others poignant, was displayed at the press conference announcing the plans for a proposed interim facility near the Great Park.

As part of the plan, Live Nation will design, construct and operate the outdoor facility and adjacent parking, as well as concession and hospitality offerings. The goal is to open in time for the 2017 summer season. FivePoint, working with Live Nation and the city of Irvine, hopes to secure the necessary permits for the proposed venue.
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“Live outdoor music is so important culturally and economically for Irvine and the region,” says Irvine City Councilmember Christina Shea. “Having a facility of this size and quality in the heart of this city is a big win for us and all of Orange County. I want to thank FivePoint and Live Nation for partnering on this project. I can’t wait to see the interim amphitheater finished and continue the important discussions about putting a permanent amphitheater in the Great Park.
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