CFA channels past for 15th anniversary celebration

Author: Alexxa Gotthardt

Rewind about a hundred years. The early 20th century was a time of political upheaval, economic uncertainty and also a whole lot of avant-garde artistic innovations. Art schools in Paris and New York were brimming with young pupils ready to take on the world with their wild inventions and wilder personalities. Artists were running a contagious fever of creativity, and what better way to get it out into the public by joining forces and throwing a party. Enter the Beaux-Arts Ball, a tradition that began in Paris in the late 1800s at the École des Beaux-Arts as a way of bringing artists of various disciplines together in a social setting. Later adopted by a group of New York City artists, the ball became a raucous tradition in the 1920s and 1930s where artists, architects, musicians, actors, dancers, filmmakers and friends toasted art with lots of champagne and danced the night away. Elaborate costumes were required.

Middlebury has similar reason to fete, and so it will on March 6-9 in celebration of the dedication and 15th anniversary of the Mahaney Center for the Arts (MCFA). A whole weekend of activities has been planned around the anniversary - and its culminating event? A Beaux-Arts Ball where the arts will be celebrated with food, drink, music, dancing and hopefully, according to the coordinators, many a crazy costume.

Built in 1992, the 10,000-square-foot MCFA is the primary location for arts activities and performances on the College campus. The structure, described by its architects (architectural firm of Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer) as similar to a chocolate chip cookie or series of gift boxes - main common areas connect many specialized rooms and exhibition and performances spaces - houses the Middlebury College Museum of Art (MCMA), a concert hall, the Seeler Studio Theatre, a dance theatre and practice rooms, a music library, practice spaces for the music and theatre departments and Rehearsals Café. At each turn, a different cross-section of the Middlebury arts can be found.

It is this multi-dimensionality of the arts that the weekend of planned events seeks to honor and celebrate. The idea for the 15th Anniversary Celebration, according to Marketing Manager of the MCFA Liza Sacheli Lloyd, began in the spring of 2007 when the Committee of the Arts met to discuss their plans for the coming year. "The chairs of the six academic arts departments, plus leaders from the Museum of art and the Performing Arts Series, all agreed that they'd like to do something collaborative to celebrate the Center for the Arts' 15th birthday," said Sacheli Lloyd. "From there, the idea for a concentrated weekend of arts activities and a Beaux-Arts ball was born."

Director of the Arts Glenn Andres also emphasized the importance of the celebration as an active bringing-together of the Middlebury arts. "The idea is to showcase all of the arts at Middlebury as well as celebrate the fifteenth anniversary of the MCFA facilities," said Andres. "It is pretty remarkable to note how much of this is 'home-grown.'"

All academic arts departments have contributed to the event - Theatre, Film, History of Art and Architecture, Studio Art, Music and Dance - with the help and participation of staff, students and alumni. In addition, the Performing Arts Series, the Hirschfield Film Series and the MCMA will contribute events to the weekend's repertoire.

The four-day artistic tableau kicks off on Thursday, March 6, but the majority of events will occur on Saturday, March 8, when the tableau will transform into an extravaganza. The "Christian A. Johnson Symposium in the History of Art and Architecture" starts the day with a series of lectures by faculty and students centered on the theme of collaboration.

Then, at 7 p.m., a gathering to celebrate the dedication of the MCFA is slated to take place in the building's upper lobby. While the center's new name - Mahaney Center for the Arts - went into use at the beginning of the 2007-2008 school year, the ceremony will officially recognize the title and serve to toast Kevin P. Mahaney '84, chief executive of The Olympia Companies, a Portland, Maine-based real estate firm, for his support of the Middlebury Arts.

After the ceremony, three performances set throughout the MCFA will begin at 8 p.m. Listen to the Dick Foreman Jazz Group's jazz repertoire in the MCFA concert hall, sit in on Dance Artist-in-Residence Leyya Tawil's dance company, Dance Elixir, perform "Capital Life Triptych" or head to the Seeler Studio Theatre to watch "Curtain Up: Scenes, Songs and Monologues Celebrating Theatre at Middlebury."

And if this diverse palette is not enough, student art exhibitions showcasing painting, photography, sculpture and video by students will be sprinkled around the MCFA and the MCMA's galleries will be opened late.

Finally, at 10 p.m., the 15th Anniversary Celebration Beaux-Arts Ball will commence. Open to everyone and unticketed, as most of the weekend's events are, the ball will celebrate the MCFA anniversary, the MCFA dedication and, perhaps most importantly, art itself amongst the songs of the Sound Investment Jazz Ensemble, festive food, two beer gardens and a host of over-the-top costumes. "Party-goers can expect dramatic, moving lighting­­- new lobby banners commemorating the building's 15th Anniversary and Dedication, a lavish spread of food and drinks from the Catering folks and lots of glittering white lights," said Lloyd.

Will it rival the Beaux-Arts Balls of the turn of the century? Only time will tell. It is certain, however, that the arts will not go underrepresented the weekend of March 6-9 at the College. In fact, the arts will be celebrated like they rarely are at Middlebury - with pomp, pageantry and collaboration. Andres underlined the resonance of a celebration of this scope and spectacle.

"Our individual arts programs provide the campus with a rich (almost dizzying) variety of student and guest performances and activities, but we seldom see the whole as more than the sum of the parts," he said. "If we take these activities in concert, it dramatizes how important a part is played by the Arts at Middlebury and the many ways that our students participate in those arts. What better time than the 15th anniversary and the rededication of the MCFA to shine a spotlight on the vital role of the Arts in campus life?"

A full list of events and event details can be found at www.middlebury.edu.