School of Performing Arts and Cinema announces ArtsFusion 2009

ArtsFusion 2009, a celebration of the Arts on the Virginia Tech campus, in the Town of Blacksburg, and throughout Southwest Virginia, is scheduled for the week of April 19-25.

ArtsFusion’s mission is to highlight the variety of arts experiences available throughout Southwest Virginia. It includes special events and everyday arts opportunities.

ArtsFusion, sponsored by the School of Performing Arts and Cinema, is open to all organizations both non-profit and for-profit. Every spring, ArtsFusion generates arts awareness by directing the public’s attention to the ArtsFusion website where they can find the arts events that are happening during a typical April week in Southwest Virginia. Our listing includes all forms of performing arts and visual arts.

The ArtsFusion website also includes Internet links to the participating organizations, venues, and sponsors as well as a full list of events. Since events are being added continuously up to one week prior to the kick-off date, frequent visits to the website are recommended.

Each year, ArtsFusion chooses a special arts experience to headline the celebration. This year, that event is the Kandinsky Beat Down, a multicultural concert experience on Tuesday, April 21 at 8 and 9:30 p.m. in the Squires Studio Theatre in the Squires Student Center. On stage for this eclectic and electric performance will be a classical chamber music trio, a human beat box artist, hip hop dancers, and four soloists performing new music by four composers writing in cross-genre styles.

This creative collaboration features the renowned Kandinsky Trio and beat box phenomenon, Shodekeh with guitarist Cyrus Pace, soprano Nancy McDuffie, trumpeter John Adler, and trombonist Jay Crone. Dancing throughout will be hip-hop artists, The Boogaloo Crew. The composers are John D’earth, James Miley, Dan Cavanagh, and Brian Coughlin.

Tickets for the Kandinsky Beat Down are $5 for adults and $3 for seniors and students and are available in advance at the University Unions and Student Activities Ticket Office in the Squires Student Center, online, or by phone at (540) 231-5615. Tickets will also be available at the door one hour prior to performance time while they last. The Squires Studio Theatre is located in the Squires Student Center on College Avenue adjacent to downtown Blacksburg. Convenient free parking after 5 p.m. is available in the nearby Squires and Shultz Hall parking lots.

Funding for the Kandinsky Beat Down concert is made possible through the generosity of the Virginia Tech Bruce Carver Multicultural Arts Fund, the Virginia Tech Office for Equity and Inclusion, the Virginia Tech Department of Sociology, Virginia Tech Vice President for Outreach and International Affairs, and a Virginia Tech School of Performing Arts and Cinema Commissioning Grant.

ArtsFusion is also sponsored, in part, by WSLS 10 on Your Side, the NBC television affiliate that serves Roanoke and Southwest Virginia.

Virginia Tech’s School of Performing Arts and Cinema is comprised of three departments from the College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences, the Department of Music, Department of Theatre Arts and the Cinema program in the Department of Communication. It is a place for passion, imagination, creativity, experience in the arts, and applied research in theatre, music, and cinema. The school’s mission is to elevate awareness and expand the impact of the shared creative experience through discovery, learning, and engagement.