cbellamy@heraldsun.com; 419-6744
Last year, the Bull City got Saturnized, and Bob Dylan played the Durham Bulls Athletic Park. In August, an exhibit of artifacts left behind by pianist and composer Sun Ra opened at the Durham Art Guild. The exhibit, titled "Pathways to Unknown Worlds: Sun Ra, El Saturn & Chicago's Afro-Futurist Underground 1954-1968," contained everything from records to mock-ups of album art and other memorabilia.
The late Ra was born in Alabama as Herman Blount, but he liked to claim that he was from Saturn. In that spirit, visual artist Jim Kellough and the Scrap Exchange organized a pre-exhibit Sun Ra parade. On a hot August Saturday, a group of "Ra-istas" walked from Durham Central Park, stopping at points to read poetry and chants written by Ra, to the Durham Arts Council, where several musical groups performed compositions written or inspired by Ra. Sun Ra's Arkestra (run now by saxophonist Marshall Allen) and the Mingus Big Band performed a concert at Duke in September that capped the year's most wonderfully weird, but gentle, event.
Here are some other arts events that made life more bearable during some difficult economic times:
n In July, the Bob Dylan Show, a national tour of ballparks, came to the Durham Bulls Athletic Park. The Wiyos, Willie Nelson and John Mellencamp also shared the bill. Dylan's music draws a wide audience; listeners young and "forever young" showed up to hear Dylan at the DBAP. Before the gates opened on a hot summer day, lines stretched from Blackwell Street to South Mangum Street, a few blocks north of the Durham Freeway exchange.
n The Full Frame Documentary Film Festival had a "Hoop Dreams" reunion. William Gates, one of the basketball players who is the subject of this ground-breaking basketball documentary, and filmmakers Steve James and Peter Gilbert discussed the film and answered questions. Gates, displaying a warm sense of humor, updated the audience on some of the other people in the film.
n The 22nd annual Bull Durham Blues Festival returned to the renovated Durham Athletic Park after a one-year hiatus at the Durham Bulls Athletic Park. Veteran blues musician Elvin Bishop was the headliner at the 12-hour main event marathon. Other performers were the Homemade Jamz Blues Band and Triangle-based Valentino and the Piedmont Sheiks.
n After getting Saturnized, Durham was transformed for one night in October to evoke the Belle Epoque era of Paris, France, when The Cotton Room at Golden Belt, a new events space in the renovated manufacturing facility, was decked out for its opening party to resemble the Moulin Rouge cabaret, complete with women on swings. The Ember Ellas, a performance duo from Greensboro, greeted partygoers outside of the facility on stilts.
n Choreographer Mark Dendy also chose the Cotton Room for one of his site-specific works presented at this year's American Dance Festival. Titled "Golden Belt," this dance work used music as well as movement to pay tribute to Durham's tobacco and textile days. Dendy also choreographed a site specific work that marked the ADF's first night in the Durham Performing Arts Center. Before the night's main event, dancers performed outside the DPAC, on all three lobby levels, even in the rest rooms.
n Poets who gathered in June at the St. Joseph's Performance Hall applauded, stomped their feet and snapped fingers during a performance by Marc Kelly Smith, Chicago poet and founder of the slam poetry movement. Smith gave an opening performance for poets who came to the Southern Fried Poetry Slam, held last year in Durham. Eighteen poets and 23 teams competed for titles and prizes at the annual event, held every year at a different Southern city.
n Libraries and bookstores often observe Banned Books Week, which the American Library Association started in 1982 to celebrate the freedom to read, with displays of books that have been challenged or outright banned. The Durham County Library went a step further last year and presented dramatizations of passages from books that have been challenged on various grounds. At "Banned Books Onstage," local actors dramatized some key passages. Dana Marks dramatized Molly Bloom's stream-of-consciousness soliloquy from James Joyce's "Ulysses," and Lucius Robinson portrayed Alex from Anthony Burgess' "A Clockwork Orange."
