Sunday, September 05, 2010
Arts & Extras: Film bridges Himalayas and Appalachia
Arts & Extras column
Mike Allen, arts columnist
Recent columns
- 'Ophelia' marks Black History Month
- Art Council's updated website reflects mission to be 'inclusive'
- Metal sculptor who died too young gets retrospective
Arts&Extras blog
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When Blacksburg artist Jane Vance created a lineage painting for a Buddhist lama living in Nepal, she became the first woman and the first Westerner ever to participate in that ancient tradition.
In 2007, she and six friends delivered that painting to Tsampa Ngawang's village in the Himalayas.
A hour-long documentary chronicling that journey, "A Gift for the Village," premieres Sept. 16 at the Taubman Museum of Art. All the tickets for the free showing have already been reserved, though co-producer Tom Landon said there will be a handful of tickets available for cancellations and no-shows. A reception takes place at 7 p.m., and the museum is open free of charge that evening.
The movie will make other appearances, though. There's a free showing 7 p.m. Sept. 30 at Ferrum College in the Blue Ridge Mountain Room. On Oct. 4, The Shadowbox Cinema on Kirk Avenue in downtown Roanoke will hold showings at 6 p.m. and 8 p.m. -- admission $8 -- with questions taken after each showing. Then, at 3 p.m. Oct. 9, the Lyric Theatre in Blacksburg will hold a free screening of the film.
Vance describes the film as demonstrating a bridge built between two mountain cultures, Himalayan and Appalachian.
After a friendship with a co-worker from India in the 1980s triggered Vance's interest in South Asian culture, she began traveling there. In 1995, on one of her trips, she met Ngawang, a traditional Tibetan Buddhist herbal doctor, veterinarian, artist and craftsman. He lives in the village of Jomsom in Nepal, a country where many Tibetans in exile from Chinese occupation have taken up residence.
Vance, who teaches at Virginia Tech about the creative process, found that she and Ngawang shared an interest in learning about each other's cultures that blossomed into a long-term friendship.
Ngawang came to the university to visit Vance in 2001, and spent a semester as a visiting professor speaking about Himalayan culture. During that time, Vance asked Ngawang if she could create a lineage painting for him.
A lineage painting is a ceremonial artwork that honors a learned man or woman's achievements and creates a record of the person's teachers. Vance described it as a "genealogical chart of where your vision and compassion came from."
With permission and blessing from the Dalai Lama, Vance completed the painting, and delivered it to Ngawang's village in 2007. The movie follows the creation of the painting, the delivery of the painting to Nepal, travels the team undertook while they were there and a festival in which the painting was unveiled to the community.
One of the team's stops includes a visit to the Cave of the Snow Leopard, a recently discovered cave carved out of a 16,000-foot cliff with a back wall covered in ancient Buddhist frescos. In the film, Vance talks about how the paintings look remarkably similar in style to ones she has seen in Sri Lanka and speculates about the origins of the artist.
Landon said it took three years to whittle the 50 hours of footage that he and co-producer Jenna Swan gathered down to one hour.
Landon said there were a number of interesting incidents that didn't make it into the final cut. For example, the crew of the tiny airplane that flew the filmmakers from Katmandu to Jomsom was initially reluctant to load the enormous rolled up painting onto the plane, until shown the letter of blessing from the office of the Dalai Lama.
The movie included a moving tribute to the victims of the April 16, 2007, shootings at Virginia Tech. While Vance and her team were at Jomsom, Ngawang, who received news of the tragedy within a day of its occurrence, held a candlelit prayer vigil to commemorate and bless the dead and wounded.
The film has another connection to a Hokie tragedy. Virginia Tech student Morgan Harrington, victim of a homicide in Charlottesville in 2009 that's still unsolved, was one of Vance's students and can be seen in a still shot standing next to Ngawang during a visit to Vance's class at the university.
Had Harrington lived, she would likely have gone along on Vance's trip to Nepal this year. The film is dedicated to Harrington's memory.
For more information, visit www.agiftforthevillage.com or agiftforthevillage.blogspot.com.
'Nutcracker' auditions
The Southwest Virginia Ballet will hold auditions for its annual performance of the Christmas season classic "The Nutcracker" on Sept. 12 at Tanglewood Mall. Registration begins at 2 p.m.; auditions start at 2:30 p.m.
The audition is open to children ages 7 or older. The ballet company said dance experience is preferred but not required. Roles available include mice, soldiers, angels and reindeer.
If this year's production is anything like last year's, it will be pretty all-inclusive. Last year, according to the ballet, more than 100 children auditioned, representing 19 dance studios and 53 elementary, middle and high schools across the region -- and all were offered parts.
The performance takes place Dec. 10-12 at the Roanoke Performing Arts Theatre in the Roanoke Civic Center complex. For more information, call 387-3978, e-mail mike@svballet.org or visit www.svballet.org/nutcrackerauditions.htm.
On the Arts blog
Fighting Gravity, the unusual performance group from Virginia Tech with an act that combines puppetry, dance and black light effects, has advanced to the "Top 10" competition round of the NBC reality show "America's Got Talent." Meanwhile, the History Museum of Western Virginia is asking for stories about the infamous flood of 1985 to go with a new exhibit.
For more details -- including performance videos and updates on the progress of "Fighting Gravity" -- as well as other arts news, look to my blog at blogs.roanoke.com/arts.
