By Idyllwild Arts Academy
Contributed
PHOTO COURTESY OF IDYLLWILD ARTS ACADEMY
Idyllwild Arts Academy (IAA) students will present works they were unable to show last spring — the “Lost Works” — during a special Zoom session at https://idyllwildarts.zoom.us/j/92973371767 beginning at 3 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 31.
PHOTO COURTESY OF IDYLLWILD ARTS ACADEMY
The premature closing of the IAA campus in March, because of the pandemic, pushed the rest of IAA’s 2019/20 school year online and forced the cancellation of performances and exhibits for which students spent months preparing.
The young artists began returning to campus Oct. 1 for classes that remain mostly online but have often taken advantage of the school’s beautiful outdoor spaces. However, they brought their memories of spring’s disappointment with them.
Kim Henderson’s creative writing majors wanted to address that disappointment.
“They weren’t able to read from the ‘Parallax’ literary magazine that they’d put so much work into producing,” explained Henderson, chair of the creative writing department. “Knowing that their friends in the other arts disciplines had experienced the same thing, they came up with the idea for a multidisciplinary show. It was Bella Koschalk, one of my 11th graders who suggested calling it the ‘Lost Works’ performance.”
Recruiting performers and exhibitors from other arts departments was easy. Henderson said her online teaching now “feels more natural than it did last spring,” when the academy faculty needed to adjust to Zoom classes almost overnight. She adds that “discussions feel about the same” as they do during in-person classes. Yet satisfaction with an IAA education is incomplete without the chance to show the art the classwork prepares the students to make.
While the lineup of artists could change by the time of this Saturday’s show, Henderson expects Bella Koschalk to be joined by fellow creative writers An Lin Hunt-Babcock, Lillian Tookey and Leo Yang. Sedona-Sky Duffy will be a featured musical theater performer, and for this virtual show, the theater department will also present clips from two recent productions, “The Drowsy Chaperone” and the radio play “Dracula.” Dance students will perform a piece choreographed by the academy’s longtime master teacher Patrick Franz, former principal dancer for the Paris Opera Ballet.
Fashion design students will show some of their creations and the film and digital media department will offer a compilation of the best pieces produced by May’s graduating seniors.
Not to be left out, the visual arts department will be represented by work from a senior show “Lantana,” that the pandemic short-circuited. Ariel Barish, Raegan Ingbretsen, Aleca Lee, Lily Nam, Han Sung, and Jeremy Xu are the graduating seniors to be showcased in “Lantana.”
The show is called “Lost Works” for good reason, yet there would be equal justice in calling it “Found Works.”
If you join the students of IAA at https://idyllwildarts.zoom.us/j/92973371767 Oct. 31, you’ll have found young artists who were slowed down by the pandemic, but not defeated. The show is free and open to the public.
