Milestones and Celebrations
We’re marking milestones and celebrating things this winter and spring! Our Annual Gala, always a highlight of the region’s social calendar, is extra special this year because it’s the 15th Anniversary edition. Our Veterans and the Arts Initiative (which will be duly celebrated at the aforementioned Gala) is marking its 10th Anniversary of serving our Veterans, Servicemembers, their families, and extended communities.
On stage, the Mason Cabaret—a program featuring the amazing students in George Mason’s musical theater program—will be celebrating the ground-breaking work of Broadway legend Harold Prince, whose productions helped create and define the modern musical. The United States Army Band, “Pershing’s Own,” will celebrate another transformative artist with “The Music of Janelle Monáe: Love, Liberation, and Joy.” And those are just a few examples.
Which leads me to muse on the title subject, Milestones and Celebrations. Why do we feel the need to mark various points along a journey, especially in units of five and ten? (When’s the last time someone made a big deal out of a 17th Anniversary anything?). What’s this compulsion to take time out to focus our celebratory energies on a single artist or theme?
The impulse is not new, but I think it is gathering steam (to use an old-fashioned locomotion metaphor) in this age of hurry up and look over there and keep scrolling and fast forward. We need reasons to pause and take stock. We need (calling back to my last Director’s Corner essay) reasons to focus. We enjoy the opportunity to look back and around and ahead in an intentional way, instead of always hurtling headlong into the next thing.
Our Gala always performs that role to a fare-thee-well, with distinguished honorees and an outpouring of support for the idea that the arts create community. But this one—number 15—will be even more special because, well, we’ve made it this far. We can look around the room and thank every single person there, and all who have come before. We can take stock.
The Veterans and the Arts Initiative—age 10 and still growing—offers a similar opportunity to celebrate and reflect. Who knew, a decade ago, that this bright idea shared by a few would become a nationally (and now internationally) known and respected innovator in the field of arts and health, while always keeping the main mission, serving our Veteran community, as the North Star.
When Mason Cabaret celebrates Hal Prince, you’ll get a chance to look back at some of our most beloved musicals, including the work of Harnick and Bock, Kander and Ebb, Sondheim and…Sondheim, among others. And you’ll be doing it through the lens of the next generation of emerging musical theater makers, a neat kind of double vision. The same might be said in reverse of Pershing’s Own—one of the most venerable musical institutions in the world—celebrating the work of Janelle Monáe, a chart-topping, award-winning American phenomenon as a singer, songwriter, rapper, and actress. These concerts bring a welcome opportunity to focus our attention—in a high energy way, mind you—on some of the most exciting work that America has produced and is still producing.
So—come take a breath, look around, focus on some great achievements and magnificent artistry, and—most of all—celebrate with us this winter!
Rick Davis
Dean and Executive Director