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A Texas-sized arts complex
Dallas to open AT&T center
This view from the stage shows the Margaret McDermott Performance Hall in the Margot and Bill Winspear Opera House, part of the Dallas Center for the Performing Arts.
By JAMES D. WATTS JR. World Scene Writer
Published: 10/11/2009 2:20 AM
Last Modified: 10/11/2009 5:54 AM
The city of Dallas is gearing up this week for an event that is sure to bring national attention to this Texas town. And it has absolutely nothing — repeat, NOTHING — to do with football.
On Monday, the first phase of the AT&T Performing Arts Center — a multivenue complex for music, opera, theater and dance that is the largest arts-related construction project in the United States since the creation of Lincoln Center in New York City — will officially open to the public.
Two of the four main performance spaces that make up the new center will open Monday: the Margot and Bill Winspear Opera House, a new 2,300-seat facility designed by Norman Foster; and the Joshua Prince-Remus/Rem Koolhaas-designed Dee and Charles Wyly Theatre, a 575-seat space for classical and contemporary theatrical productions.
Also opening Monday will be the Elaine D. and Charles A. Sammons Park, a 10-acre area designed by Parisian landscape architect Michel Desvigne that will link the new facilities of the Performing Arts Center.
The opening will be celebrated with concerts, outdoor performances, contemporary dance, public art installations and forums on the architecture, culminating in a public open house on Oct. 18 highlighted by performances by jazz artist Nestor Torres and a presentation of the Symphony No. 9 by Beethoven performed by the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, among other events.
"This is not just an arts project," said Mark Nerenhausen, president and CEO of the Dallas Center
for the Performing Arts. "It is a community project, a downtown project. This center will have a transformative effect on Dallas, creating a new urban environment in the city's center."
It will also, said Phillip J. Jones, president and CEO of the Dallas Convention and Visitors Bureau, "paint Dallas as one of the top cultural venues in the country. Having these facilities will benefit our local arts organizations by providing them with state-of-the-arts spaces in which they can present expanded repertoire.
"And it should help attract an even higher level of touring performers and productions to Dallas."
The majority of the $354 million cost for the center was raised from private donors.
"There is very little public money in this — maybe 5 percent of the total, tops," Nerenhausen said.
"And the majority of our donors were not the typical arts patrons. Their reasons for contributing to this project was because they understood its importance to the community and to the revitalizing of Dallas' downtown area."
Free stuff
AT&T Performing Arts
Center grand-opening
events that cost nothing:
Admission to exhibitions
and special programming
at Crow Collection of Asian
Art, Dallas Center for Architecture,
Dallas Museum
of Art and Nasher Sculpture
Center
Performance at 2:30 p.m.
of Beethoven’s Ninth 9th
Symphony by the Dallas
Symphony Orchestra,
conducted by Jaap Van
Zweden at the Meyerson
Symphony Center
Concert by 40-voice
choir Gloriae Dei Cantores
at Cathedral Guadalupe
Fireworks at 7:45 p.m.
For more information, go
to tulsaworld.com/attpac.
Big ticket
For those with lots of
money (ticket prices start
at $150 and go up to $1,500
each), the AT&T Performing
Arts Center will offer “Act III,”
a series of premium performances
Oct. 14-17. These
include:
Bruce Willis hosting an
evening of theater, directed
by Tony Award winner James
Lapine and featuring composer
Alan Menken (“Beauty and
the Beast”) and actress Debra
Monk. Three performances
in the Wyly Theater, Oct. 14
and 16.
Performances by opera
stars Denyce Graves and
Thomas Hampson, along with
the world premiere of choreographer
Christopher Wheeldon’s
“Tales of Offenbach” by
his company Morphoses. One
performance in the Winspear
Opera House, Oct. 15.
A salute to Broadway
with Oklahoma native Kristin
Chenoweth, Patti Lupone,
George Hearn and Kiril Kulish,
directed by John Doyle — all
Tony Award winners. One
performance in the Winspear
Opera House, Oct. 17.
For more information, go to
tulsaworld.com/attpac.
James D. Watts Jr. 581-8478
james.watts@tulsaworld.com
By JAMES D. WATTS JR. World Scene Writer
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