This week on State of the Arts, creating pathways for Black musicians in classical music, a sensory-driven immersive experience remembers Hurricane Katrina, and the art of docu-poetics.

These stories coming up on State of the Arts.

Hello and welcome.

I'm Mary Paul.

This week, we have three stories to share with you in celebration of Black History Month.

We begin in Virginia, where the Virginia Symphony Orchestra's Fellows Program is creating pathways for Black musicians in classical music.

By offering hands-on experience, mentorship, and community outreach, the program addresses the lack of diversity in orchestras around the nation.

Fellows in the program are able to build professional skills and pave the way for inclusion.

If you close your eyes, the majestic sound of a symphony orchestra can consume you.

When you open your eyes, there are numerous talented musicians helping to escort you on this musical journey.

But it's what you don't see that the Virginia Symphony Orchestra is working to change.

(audience applauding) We're trying to make a difference.

We're trying to expose students of color to classical music, to beautiful music, and to really understand that this is something that they can do as well.

According to a study done by the League of American Orchestras in 2014, Black musicians make up less than 2% of orchestra musicians.

Three years ago, the VSO started a Fellows Program, designed to grow the number of Black musicians, not only in this orchestra, but in orchestras around the country.

My name's Camille Jones.

I'm a returning fellow from Maryland, and I play the violin.

My name's Adrian Jackson.

I'm from Austin, Texas, and I play the viola.

This is my first year in the program.

Thanks for having me.

(audience applauding) My name is Amari Abdul-Alim.

I am a returning fellow and a violinist from Seattle, Washington.

Music is a universal language, so we'll find stuff that we love in all cultures, but it kind of takes that extra representation to kind of activate it within ourselves, activate it within students to say, "Oh, I could do that."

Going into school programs and boys and girls clubs and the places where there are young Black and brown kids and showing them these opportunities at a high level with seriousness really helps.

The reaction when I go into schools and show what it's like to be an African American playing a classical instrument is, it's a little bit awestruck of kids that look like me.

Sometimes they don't see people in those spaces.

You'll see someone on TV or someone in a magazine, but to have someone you can speak to that looks like you, that does something different that you haven't thought about before, I think kind of opens up the possibilities for yourself.

So you can kind of see like the spark lit in a kid's eye.

What the fellows and many classical musicians have known for some time is, the earlier you can introduce Black youth to orchestral music, instruments, and mentors who look like them, the greater the likelihood of them seeing the orchestra as a career choice.

VSO fellow Camille Jones was first introduced to the violin in the fourth grade.

When I was younger, I did feel very constricted musically because I just didn't see people that looks like me doing the things that I was interested in.

I just remember being like, wow, violin is sick.

That's the instrument for me.

I'm gonna learn the heck out of that.

So that's what I did.

And then the rest is history.

One key component of the fellows' time with the symphony are the mock auditions.

These blind auditions mimic what they'll encounter as they audition for spots with different orchestras across the US.

I think it's a good idea, the opportunity to have that feedback.

Because sometimes we judge ourselves a little bit too hard.

Now playing with a professional orchestra as a fellow is just great.

Since the first rehearsals when everybody is prepared and the conductor just move the button and everything sounds like a recording, it's nice.

And that's what this is about.

It's about making an environment where we're all just making music together at the absolute highest level.

The year-long fellowship not only takes these talented young musicians into schools to teach the next generation, but it incorporates an opportunity to give back through a community service project.

The capstone is this opportunity to allow the fellows to expand their administrative entrepreneurial skills through curation of some sort of special event.

We curated this really cool event called Artistry for the Soul, which was this program focused on uplifting black artistry through focusing on music by black composers from 20th century to now.

It's a program that's growing roots and sprouting results.

See, they are expanding, they're from their wings and they are flying and we're extremely proud of them.

And this is the future of the Virginia Symphony Orchestra and is the future of orchestras across America.

So what we have to do is continue to support these types of programs so that we continue to include everyone in our community as we move forward with our musical ambitions.

(orchestral music) (audience applauding) August, 2025 marked 20 years since Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast.

Lives and livelihoods were lost.

Hundreds of thousands of people in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama were displaced from their homes.

We go behind the scenes with Guggenheim choreography fellow, Ryan K. Johnson.

He's using his latest work to amplify the continuing struggle of the East New Orleans community with a sensory driven, immersive experience.

(performers warming up) ZAZ: The Big Easy is an extension of my MFA thesis project, which is an extension of me falling in love with New Orleans.

I met Kelly School of Dance almost 16 years ago.

And ever since they cannot get rid of me and I'm not leaving.

I feel like it's really important for us to use our art for change and also to reflect the times in which we exist.

And Hurricane Katrina was such a huge moment.

(performance audio) Even though I watched it from the screen, once I became part of the New Orleans East community, I knew there was something within me and my spirit that called me to create this work, especially seeing firsthand how displaced the community has strategically been.

And so I really wanted to use my art to bring awareness, not only to global warming, but to the realities of what people experience when marginalized and displaced and strategically uninvested in, but persevere through culture, history, music, dance and great food.

My role with ZAZ started right from the beginning when Ryan was sharing the idea with me, I had the opportunity to visit New Orleans and visit the East and go to all these spaces and see his connection to New Orleans, as well as the people's connection to him, as well as their relationships to each other and see what was so special about New Orleans, what's so special about Louisiana in itself, experience the culture, the people, how they vibe and their energy.

It's infectious.

The time dance was here.

Some of you just read this morning, I think it actually works.

I see the scene like a transition.

So last summer, we had the first part of the creative residency.

Between last summer and now, a lot of the technical elements have come to life.

The integrated media reimagined music, so we went from synthetic sounds to live recordings.

My team got bigger, I released control a little bit, understanding the importance of having a team around me that cares about me, but also cares about the work has been transformative.

Quynn Johnson, associate choreographer and Jodeci Milhouse, associate director, have come in and just made things even better than what they were.

Brought in Jonathan Hunter as the production stage manager and light and design, and have been working with the team for about the last six or seven months to just prepare for this.

We're doing a lot of immersive sound, a lot of technology.

As an artist, it's hard to get exactly what's in your mind out, right?

So I think I'm mostly translating what he wants.

It's hard to remember everything that he's doing, right?

So I'm always taking notes, following him around, but I'm learning a lot too.

Ryan has his hand in everything, everything, from the sound to the music to the choreography to the set.

So I'm really just going around with him and making it all come alive.

The most rewarding thing has been seeing it all come to life.

It's lived in Ryan's mind for probably eight years now.

We've done other iterations, but it's grown with him so much.

So it's just so nice to see it all come alive through the people, through the set, through the sound, through the music.

It's just been an absolutely beautiful experience.

Sometimes it's tough because I remember where I was, and I am not a native New Orleanian.

So being an outsider and working on the choreography and being able to embody those experiences can be a bit of a challenge.

So I have the pleasure of serving as the associate choreographer and bringing those ideas and visions and pieces to life and working with the cast to make sure that we are all on point and we're all telling the story to the best of our ability.

With art, making pacing is huge.

With this work specifically, because there's such a huge ethic of care that has to go into this, because we're really taking the oral histories of survivors and turning it into an embodied storytelling.

And so it's important that the work does, it educates people, but doesn't cause harm, right?

And so the pace and the tempo and the flow and the orchestration of the dance and the story, it's really important that we don't overload the audience.

The idea is for it to be an immersive experience, but in a way that is healthy.

Jesus keep Keep me from on The audience will get to experience sand dance.

sand dance is an art form that many people haven't seen in probably decades, but we are fortunate enough to be able to have predecessors of that art form that have left some treasures with us along the way.

And we are using the essence of sand dance as a way of symbolizing rebirth and the birth of a phoenix coming back to life.

So I'm excited for the audience to see that.

The show is, and I don't wanna call it a show, but it's definitely an experience.

And the experience is the intersection of theater and dance.

Vocal arrangements, there's a story, there's two worlds that wind up coming together.

We've added some more nuance to this space.

Yeah, it's here.

When you walk into the theater from the top of the show, it'll be about 5 p.m.

on a summer day in New Orleans.

And then throughout the course of the prologue, you'll wind up landing inside of ZAZ, which is the center of the story.

The show kind of takes you inside and outside these worlds.

The black box is set up like a nightclub.

You transform from walking into a theater lobby, into a world, and to be really clear, this is not the full story of Hurricane Katrina, right?

Every person who experienced this storm and the governmental failures has their own story and their own connection.

This is a small group of people that I've become really connected to, and it's a part of their stories that we're bringing to life.

And so as artists, wanting to make sure that we preserve these oral histories, especially those in the black and brown community.

I hope people feel something.

I think we are in a time where everyone is so desensitized.

We look in our phones, we see a lot of crazy stuff every day, and we just kind of keep it moving.

I'm hoping that people come to this show and sit, put their phones down, and feel something.

And remember just what humanity is and what people are, and we're all the same.

We're all going through the same stuff.

We love the same.

We lose the same.

And I hope they can kind of sit in that experience.

Ryan doesn't call it a show.

He calls it an experience.

So I hope that people come and can be fully immersed in the experience.

It's important because we're currently living in an environment where black and brown identity and culture and history is strategically being erased.

And so as a performing artist, as a black body, it's extremely important to me that we find ways to use art as a medium to archive and preserve the oral histories to ensure that these stories don't go away.

And that's vital.

And when you think about it, the children in 2005 are now adults.

And so this community, the city, is still navigating the psychological, the emotional, the financial consequences of the mistreatment of the United States government when it came to preparing the city for this.

As artists, as an organization, just as a human, it was vital for me to create ZAZ to preserve the oral histories of the people that I'm connected to, to address and bring awareness to the realities of the response or lack thereof, and try to create something magical, bringing theater and dance together, bringing my 22 years of experience into the space, listening to all of these talented artists who have all contributed to it.

Right?

I had the idea, but none of it could have come to life without every single person who has put their hands on it.

I think sometimes when we see live theater, we always expect this happy ending.

And the reality is there really hasn't been a happy ending post-Katrina.

There have been areas like the French Quarter that have welcomed so many people in and people still go and they party and they celebrate and they do all those things.

But New Orleans East still looks like Katrina happened.

And something about that doesn't feel right to me.

And I think people have either decided to forget that it happened, forgot that it happened, or weren't alive when it happened.

I hope that the audience really feels it.

I hope that the audience has the opportunity to reflect on maybe where they were when Hurricane Katrina is happening.

I know that that's something that I've been doing and just continue to keep the story alive.

[Music] This is beyond capitalism.

This is about human beings.

And it's real.

You know, ZAZ: The Big Easy I don't even call it a show because I don't think that we should ever use the pain and hurt of Black bodies as a way to make money.

Which is why there's a large proceeds of all ticket sales that go directly back into Kelly School of Dance and the New Orleans Tap Festival that SOLE Defined and Kelly School of Dance partnered with.

This is really about the fact that this is still affecting people to this day.

It's real.

People lost everything.

People lost loved ones.

People lost everything that they had worked for.

New Orleans East was one of the most prominent Black communities in New Orleans.

And now it's a food desert.

Emergency services don't frequent the area.

And as someone who has a Master's of Fine Arts and dance performance in social justice, I have to use the dance as a form of social justice.

And a lot of people ask, "Well, why are you doing it?

You're not from New Orleans."

I'm clear on that.

But I've been really blessed to have a fruitful career to put me in places that I can actually create some change, even if it's just a small push forward.

And because of that, and because of the way that I love the young people at Kelly School of Dance, the musicians of New Orleans, the artists, that's why I do it.

Ajanaé Dawkins has grown from the teenager telling stories at a poetry slam to the docu-poet she is today.

Working in both traditional and non-traditional pathways, she still holds one thing true: Your stories matter.

I always say that I use my poetry to archive my natural lineage.

And by that, I mean I feel really responsible for preserving my family's history, for preserving the stories of women in my family.

I think about docu-poetics as kind of a spin on documentary work.

I think that you get to do a lot of really interesting things with poetry.

You get to not lie, but poetry is less about facts and more about what the overall truth is, right?

Maybe the room wasn't blue, maybe the song that was playing wasn't a specific song, but those kinds of details matter a little bit less.

And so I like playing with the idea of docu-poetics and archiving my matrilineage, because I feel like it lets me reinterpret stories in a way that honors the women who came before me and in a way that maybe gives them some autonomy in their stories and the retelling.

I also think docu-poetics are really interesting because I see folks disrupting the idea of what a traditional documentary is and what it means to archive something for historical record.

And I feel like that's really important.

There's been a lot of conversation around Black women in the archive and what it means as a Black person to come to all of these traditional archives and not see yourself in them because of historical literacy gaps, because of the way history was historically documented.

And so I'm not working oftentimes with traditional archives.

I'm working with embodied archives.

I'm working with oral storytelling that's been passed down because that's what I have access to.

And so for me, part of docu-poetics is also taking really seriously these other forms of archival and that are also sometimes more fragile.

So even as I'm moving through or I've been moving through interview, I've had people who I'm trying to preserve their stories who are like, who've died on me.

And that is the end of that embodied archive.

And so my access to it was only present as long as that person was there, like housing it in their body.

So that's a lot of how I play with docu-poetics.

I started my interviews with my great-grandmother when she was in an assisted living facility when she was terminally ill and I would just sit and ask her questions.

And that was the first of a series of interviews that I did.

And then I started that process with my mom as well.

I have a chat book that's coming out called Blood Flex that's about her.

And I realized everything about everything in the book was from my perspective.

And I did not feel like it was ethical for me to say that I'm giving my mother a voice when my mother has her own voice and has her own language to talk about and share stories.

So that is kind of how I crept up on the process of archiving.

So usually I do not know what to expect.

Something that has been very, very surprising for me has been how excited people are to talk to me.

And I guess not just excited but willing.

I think I always expected, or I guess maybe less expected, but I always feel very cautious because I never want my family to feel like, oh, I'm coming and encroaching and trying to make this grand story about you or, you know, do something that maybe feels like gross and not just unethical but voyeuristic, I guess.

But seeing how open they are to talking to me is, I think for me, been a really pleasant surprise.

Seeing the way the things they remember shape or shift different parts of a story.

Like I have an older cousin who I interviewed recently and in the stories he's telling, he told a story about him being younger.

He told a story about my grandmother but from the perspective of a child and like with her as his aunt.

And like he told a story about how she told him that she was pregnant with my mother.

And I just kind of never think about my grandmother as an aunt or as a baby sister or, you know, in these other roles.

When I was first trying to do some of the archival work and I was writing, I did not want to write, I did not want to put my family members as characters on the page, mostly because I think that once somebody hits the page they become two- dimensional and there's no way for somebody reading a text to know like all of the intricacies of someone.

So I started creating characters that were loosely based off of either different people or combinations of people.

And one of the characters I built was Alene who was built off of a combination of different women that I knew of my family.

Thank you for tuning in with us here on State of the Arts in celebration of Black History Month.

I'm your host Mary Paul.

See you next week with more art stories from around the country.