Ballet company adopts new name, broader mission
Ballet Spokane is changing its name to Spokane Youth Ballet.
The name change reflects a new mission for this dance company: To help young dancers reach “a level of excellence in the art of dance and especially for those who wish to have a career in the professional ballet world,” according to co-artistic director Kristen Potts.
The new Spokane Youth Ballet will be led by the team of Potts and Phaedra Jarrett. Jarrett has been a ballerina with several professional companies, including the Oakland Ballet Company and the Sacramento Ballet Company. Potts was the head of a youth dance company for more than 20 years in Southern California.
Auditions for the Spokane Youth Ballet will be held Saturday, at the studios of the Academy of Dance, 14214 E. Sprague Ave., 1 p.m. to 2 p.m. for dancers 10 to 13 years old and 2 p.m. to 3 p.m. for those 14 and up. Auditions are open to all serious ballet students regardless of studio affiliation.
A schedule of performances will be announced.
Cathedral Arts Workshop
When the Spokane Art School was forced to sell its building last year, it created a void in Spokane’s visual art scene.
Here’s a new arts program that could help fill that void: The Cathedral Arts Workshop, at the Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist, 127 E. 12th.
This is an educational program for ages 3 through adult in the areas of fine art, applied art and creative writing.
The organization has lined up 11 instructors this fall to offer classes in ceramics, watercolors, painting, drawing, photography and writing. Lena Lopez Schindler is the director of the program and one of the instructors. Other instructors include Toni Plastino, Richard Schindler, Isamu Jordan, Rajah Bose, Liz Bishop and MariAnne Figgins.
Interested in registering or seeing a list of classes? Go to www.stjohns-cathedral.org or call (509) 838-4277.
Most of the classes begin in late September or early October.
Join Comstock nation
Spokane’s traditional way to mark the end of summer, the Spokane Symphony’s Labor Day Concert at Comstock Park, is coming up on Monday at 6 p.m.
Every year, thousands show up at this South Hill park, bearing picnic baskets, blankets and lawn chairs. By the time musical director Eckart Preu lifts his baton, the sea of people will extend all the way back to the distant ponderosa pines.
You might say that Comstock is like Woodstock, except with Beethoven and clothes.
Preu and resident conductor Morihiko Nakahara will lead the full orchestra in the final movement to Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5, “Eine Kleine Nachtmusik” by Mozart, selections by John Williams and music from the “Harry Potter” movies. It will conclude the traditional way, with a rousing version of “Stars and Stripes Forever.”
And it is, of course, free.
David Thompson bicentennial
Next weekend, the Bonner County Historical Museum in Sandpoint will be celebrating the bicentennial of fur trader-explorer David Thompson’s trading post on Lake Pend Oreille.
On Saturday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. – 200 years to the day when Thompson started building his trading post at the mouth of the Clark Fork River – the museum will host a “living history” fur trade camp. It will also open the traveling exhibit “The Mapmaker’s Eye: David Thompson on the Columbia Plateau,” originally developed for the Northwest Museum of Arts and Culture. At 2 p.m., Thompson historian Jack Nisbet will give a talk about the early fur trade at Lake Pend Oreille.
On Saturday evening, 7 p.m., a documentary film, “Shadows of David Thompson,” will be screened at the Panida Theater in Sandpoint. Nisbet and filmmaker George Sibley will speak after the film.
For information about these and other Thompson-related events, call the Bonner County Historical Museum at (208) 263-2344.