Mixing it up at Spoleto

Annual festival shaping up to be one of the most diverse events on the arts calendar
By Kendra Hamilton

CHARLESTON, S.C.
One of the most anticipated events on the arts calendar — the Spoleto Festival USA, now in its 27th year in Charleston, S.C., — also seems to be evolving into one of the most diverse, with African American, South American and Asian acts generously sprinkled throughout the three-week carnival of classical and jazz music, dance, theater, opera, visual arts and multimedia events. According to Spoleto officials, 85,000 people visit Charleston during the festival.
"This year the program was particularly diverse for a variety of reasons — for the most part because things just worked out that way," says Nigel Redden, the festival's general director. "But we're very pleased in terms of the variety of the festival — and not just the variety, but the way in which things seemed to fit."
For example, conceptual artist, writer and musician Paul D. Miller, a.k.a. "DJ Spooky That Subliminal Kid," was attractive not just because his work is provocative and original, but also because his highly contemporary "remixing" of the 1915 film "Birth of a Nation," stood as a sharp contrast to the festival's period piece: "The Peony Pavilion," a 400-year-old masterpiece from the Ming Dynasty, performed in traditional kunju style, a highly formalized singing, dancing and pantomime Chinese opera. So, too, did playwright Carlyle Brown's "The Fula from America: An African Journey" provide an interesting counterpoint to another one-man show, Brian Lipson's "A Large Attendance in the Antechamber," a satirical take on the life of the founder of eugenics, Sir Francis Galton.
In all these pieces, notes Redden, "the issues of identity are central — God knows an enormous amount of art has been devoted to that sort of exploration, and the interesting thing about all this searching for identity is that it's found in so many different forms. Indeed, one of the reasons for going to a festival, any festival, is to see that exploration from as wide a perspective as possible."