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Off The Wall & Onto The Stage | Columbia | Evening
September 27, 2024 | 7:30 pm - 9:30 pm
September 27, 9:00 a.m. Update: The ‘Off The Wall & Onto The Stage’ performance will proceed as scheduled. Since the weather is improving, we are moving forward as planned.
Columbia City Ballet, now South Carolina Ballet, is gearing up to bring their one-of-a-kind ballet Off the Wall and Onto the Stage: Dancing the Art of Jonathan Green back to the historic Township Auditorium in Columbia. Deemed “fabulous…an ingenious idea…striking” by the New York Times, Off the Wall and Onto the Stage: Dancing the Art of Jonathan Green brings Green’s Gullah inspired paintings to life through creative choreography and innovative sets.
Off the Wall and Onto the Stage: Dancing the Art of Jonathan Green was first performed in 2005 after Starrett and Green met at the SC Art’s Commission’s Awards ceremony. The two mutually admired each other’s work and worked together to collaborate and make Green’s paintings come to life with dance.
Starrett has created vignettes from 22 of Green’s paintings and explores the themes of family, faith, hope, and love. He incorporates Green’s rich, vibrant colors onto the stage through eye-popping backdrops and scrims, over 150 hand-sewn costumes, an array of music that combines traditional work songs, gospel music, Motown, classical, and jazz, as well as a live choir. The choreography brings it all together as the company’s dancers depict the cultural heritage of the Gullah and Geechee communities depicted in Green’s paintings.