PAC Season Lineup Brings Local Artists, Audiences and Issues to Campus

By Bethany Bump

ALBANY, N.Y. (Sept. 27, 2022) — The University at Albany’s Performing Arts Center is hoping to engage local artists and audiences like never before this season as it seeks to offset two years of pandemic-related losses and other impacts to artists and creatives.

While the 2022-23 season lineup features performances by national and international artists, it also draws heavily from local actors, musicians, dancers and filmmakers in an effort to support Capital Region artists whose livelihood was impacted by the loss of in-person performances during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“We're always brainstorming on programming that is going to resonate with our community and everybody's talked about how difficult it is for artists these days, especially during the pandemic,” said Kim Engel, associate director of PAC. “Artists everywhere are suffering, but we have so many local artists who’ve been hit just as hard. So we started thinking, well, why don't we spotlight some of our local artists this coming season?”

Local artists of all disciplines will be highlighted throughout the upcoming season, and will offer free performances for both the general public as well as high school student groups. These artists include:

• Flamenco guitarist Maria Zemantauski, dancer La Nina and percussionist Brian Melick will perform Flamenco Rhythms tomorrow night. The guitarist and dancer will also offer morning matinee programs of Tacones y Manos Calientes on Sept. 29-30 for high school students.
• Capital Trio, UAlbany’s ensemble-in-residence, will offer two programs on Oct. 25, including a morning program for high school students called Life Hacks: Classical Music Edition and an evening program for the public featuring The Other Way! by David Walther from their 2013 Albany Records recording as well as Dvorak’s “Dumky” from 1891, written just before the composer’s famous visit to New York.
• Director and Skidmore College faculty member Hettie Barnhill will offer several screenings on Feb. 8-9 of her immersive film, “a love letter to Brian, Lesley and Michelle,” which uses dance, theater and text to further the discussion around Black Lives Matter and race relations in America.
• White Rabbit, Red Rabbit, an original play about contemporary Iran written by Nassim Soleimanpour, will feature two local actors (still to be announced) who will perform the piece sight unseen without any prior rehearsal or glimpse at the script. Previously offered for a four-day run in the fall of 2013, there will be both a public performance and one for high school students on March 26-27.

In addition, when booking artists from beyond the region, PAC officials sought to bring in creatives whose work highlights or serves the local community in some way, Engel said. One key way the center does this is by booking shows that will resonate with local high school audiences.

The center sees thousands of high school students walk through its doors each year, but many of those visits were halted during the pandemic. This year, as school officials are eager to offer their students some semblance of pre-pandemic normalcy, local districts are planning trips to campus that will feature a show at PAC, as well as a glimpse of campus life.

“Teachers are always saying to me, ‘This is great, because some of our students don’t see themselves going to college or university,’” Engel said. “But once they’re here and they see people that look like them, then it becomes more of a possibility in their minds. They imagine that they could do that and think 'that could be me' — whether it’s here at UAlbany or somewhere else.”

Daniella Cipriano, a dance teacher at Schenectady High School, brought about 15 high school students to campus last week for a performance by Urban Bush Women, a Brooklyn-based performance ensemble and dance company that tells untold and under-told stories from across the African diaspora through a women-centered perspective.

The group helped kick off the 2022-23 Dance in Albany series — a collaboration between PAC and The Egg that features cross-venue performances by touring companies.

“A lot of my students mentioned that they had never seen a dance company perform before and they’d certainly never seen this type of dance style before,” Cipriano said. “Many had never seen dancers that looked like them performing, either, which was amazing and I think really important.”

Jennifer Edgar-Johnson, who teaches 11th and 12th grade English at Schenectady High School, brought a group of about 30 students to campus for the show and made sure to include lunch in the Campus Center and a campus tour to the itinerary.

“Just being on the campus got students thinking about life after high school,” she said. “I had about 10 seniors with me who are all looking at colleges and making those choices now, and about 20 juniors who are just starting that thinking process. This gave them a taste of that real college experience — they saw dorms, dining centers, lecture halls. It was a great chance for them to really see what opportunities are out there.”

The venue is also putting on a project called “Celebrating Hmong Culture through the Arts” in late October and early November that will feature art, film, literature and theater, and be incorporated into local high school and college curricula, Engel said. The Hmong people, who live in China, Laos and other Asian countries, have fled to Western countries, including the U.S., to avoid persecution — an experience many local refugees who’ve resettled in the Albany area can relate to.

“I think that for a lot of people, when they think of the Performing Arts Center, they just think of the building and not necessarily the programming that's happening,” Engel said. “But when we are planning our programming, we try to pick not only really high quality art, but art that speaks to our community and engages with issues that we may be grappling with, or ones we may not know much about in order to highlight them. We want to afford people an artistic experience, yes, but also a learning experience.”