Today the Greensboro News & Record prints yet another pathetic attempt at GPAC propaganda while leaving out the facts in this counterpoint letter by Jamestown resident, Patricia Gray. That's right, Jamestown, where she doesn't pay Greensboro City taxes and will never be burdened with paying for a failed downtown performing arts center should it fail which it most likely will fail as the project is currently being push by the most inept bunch of idiots to ever pitch a public works project in the City of Greensboro.
"Counterpoint: Arts center offers Beauty
Over the holidays, I found myself in Dayton, Ohio, sitting in the Schuster Performing Arts Center in the very last seat for sale for “The Nutcracker” that season. The 2,314-seat theater was packed to the walls with children, families and friends eager to enter the magical world of Tchaikovsky’s ballet of children and sugarplum fairies. In the orchestra pit, the Dayton Philharmonic Orchestra combined with the Dayton Ballet Company on stage, with rich costuming and seamless backstage technology to transport young and old to a place of happiness, elegance and perfection. And all of this — audience, performers and infrastructure — was wrapped like a beautiful package in an environment of special architecture, design and materials worthy of the site’s purpose.
Afterward, members of the audience lingered, interacting with each other and with the space’s qualities, perhaps to extend the experience a little longer. Walking back to the car, children improvised dances, pirouetting and singing along the sidewalks. Not wealthy-looking children and families, but average-looking folk.
Now Greensboro is exploring whether we need a performing arts center similar to Dayton’s. Those who are skeptical (Larry Morse, News & Record, Dec. 23) cite other community priorities, especially at a time of economic stress, job losses and a presumption that such places cater to the wealthy. Those in favor (Louise Brady, Dec. 23) argue for improved economic development, strengthened regional competitiveness and improved financial potential for the local arts community.
Both sides of these arguments have received abundant attention and, I believe, confused our discussion to the point that the real goal of a performing arts center is lost. Beauty. That’s it. Beauty. Greensboro needs a real, very tangible place for Beauty. A place that signifies its importance here. A place where the practical, pragmatic and mundane are overwhelmed and closeted for a while. A place that our children and our children’s children will know as special, and where the performance begins before the lights go down, lasts within its perimeters after the lights go up, and where harmony, balance, proportion, discipline and detail are put to use for inspired purposes.
That perspective would say a lot about who we are. To focus on anything else is to miss the bigger picture.
The writer lives in Jamestown."
Seriously, beauty Ms Gray, your years of living on the public dole as a professor at UNCG and residing in the plush bedroom community of Jamestown have hardly prepared you for the reality that Greensboro's working class faces. You want beauty, why not paint some murals or hang art on that big ugly glass monstrosity called Center Pointe if beauty is all you're after? Better yet, tear it all down and plant gardens. Let me know when you want to start and I'll bring a bulldozer.
Even better, why don't you start writing letters to my good friend, Ogi Overman, the Editor over at the Jamestown News and see if you can get the Jamestown Town Council to build a performing arts center so you and your fat cat neighbors can pay the bill as you have no business trying to interject your opinion into my wallet.
Calling in ringers from out of town, how desperate can the GPAC Task Force get?
"Counterpoint: Arts center offers Beauty
Over the holidays, I found myself in Dayton, Ohio, sitting in the Schuster Performing Arts Center in the very last seat for sale for “The Nutcracker” that season. The 2,314-seat theater was packed to the walls with children, families and friends eager to enter the magical world of Tchaikovsky’s ballet of children and sugarplum fairies. In the orchestra pit, the Dayton Philharmonic Orchestra combined with the Dayton Ballet Company on stage, with rich costuming and seamless backstage technology to transport young and old to a place of happiness, elegance and perfection. And all of this — audience, performers and infrastructure — was wrapped like a beautiful package in an environment of special architecture, design and materials worthy of the site’s purpose.
Afterward, members of the audience lingered, interacting with each other and with the space’s qualities, perhaps to extend the experience a little longer. Walking back to the car, children improvised dances, pirouetting and singing along the sidewalks. Not wealthy-looking children and families, but average-looking folk.
Now Greensboro is exploring whether we need a performing arts center similar to Dayton’s. Those who are skeptical (Larry Morse, News & Record, Dec. 23) cite other community priorities, especially at a time of economic stress, job losses and a presumption that such places cater to the wealthy. Those in favor (Louise Brady, Dec. 23) argue for improved economic development, strengthened regional competitiveness and improved financial potential for the local arts community.
Both sides of these arguments have received abundant attention and, I believe, confused our discussion to the point that the real goal of a performing arts center is lost. Beauty. That’s it. Beauty. Greensboro needs a real, very tangible place for Beauty. A place that signifies its importance here. A place where the practical, pragmatic and mundane are overwhelmed and closeted for a while. A place that our children and our children’s children will know as special, and where the performance begins before the lights go down, lasts within its perimeters after the lights go up, and where harmony, balance, proportion, discipline and detail are put to use for inspired purposes.
That perspective would say a lot about who we are. To focus on anything else is to miss the bigger picture.
The writer lives in Jamestown."
Seriously, beauty Ms Gray, your years of living on the public dole as a professor at UNCG and residing in the plush bedroom community of Jamestown have hardly prepared you for the reality that Greensboro's working class faces. You want beauty, why not paint some murals or hang art on that big ugly glass monstrosity called Center Pointe if beauty is all you're after? Better yet, tear it all down and plant gardens. Let me know when you want to start and I'll bring a bulldozer.
Even better, why don't you start writing letters to my good friend, Ogi Overman, the Editor over at the Jamestown News and see if you can get the Jamestown Town Council to build a performing arts center so you and your fat cat neighbors can pay the bill as you have no business trying to interject your opinion into my wallet.
Calling in ringers from out of town, how desperate can the GPAC Task Force get?
