ARTS PREVIEW
Duke Ellington School to Host Fall Events BY PEGGY SANDS
E
ven as students, faculty and staff at the stunningly renovated Duke Ellington School of the Arts are getting used to their brand-new, state-of-the-art classrooms, practice rooms, studios and stages, they also are deep into planning the fall schedule of performing arts events on campus. And the public is invited. “Now we can go back to full, multiday, on-campus performances, including matinees,” Savannah Overton, the school’s admissions director, told The Georgetowner. Although the schedule hasn’t been made public as yet, fall performances at Duke Ellington, located on 35th Street NW between Reservoir Road and R Street, will include a musical, other theatrical productions, instrumental and choral concerts and student recitals. In addition, a 250-piece art exhibition (many of the works collected by school founder
Peggy Cooper Cafritz) will be displayed at the school and off campus. “Now, instead of one theater we have three,” Overton pointed out. The main theater — housed in a visually breathtaking globe at the center of the building — seats 800; the performance hall seats 300; and the “black box” theater seats around 80. All are available to the school’s dance and instrumental and vocal music departments, which now have their own practice and performance studios as well. The performances also involve students in the technical design and production departments, who study makeup, lighting, sound, set design and so on. The museum studies students curate the on- and off-campus displays of art and photography. At the official ribbon-cutting on Aug. 19, Mayor Muriel Bowser called the school “the premier performing arts high school in the
Duke Ellington School of the Arts. Photo by Ari Golub.
S. RICHARDS PHOTOGRAPHY
11.19.17 Bellini’s La straniera 2.18.18 Donizetti’s Maria di Rohan Lisner Auditorium | Washington, DC
TIC KETS O N SA L E N OW AT CONCERTOPERA.ORG O R 202-364-5826 10 FALL ARTS | September 13, 2017 GMG, INC.