The Atlanta performance troupe Glo plans to move across more of Georgia with its movement-oriented public art.
Glo launched “The Traveling Show” in 2013, taking interactive performance and mural-making to 10 communities from Dalton in the northwest corner of the state to Kingsland in the southeast corner, in collaboration with Living Walls and the City Speaks.
Now Glo is preparing to launch “The Traveling Show: Beautiful Stranger,” the second iteration of the public art tour — or, as it terms it, a “social art experiment.”
The troupe has just completed a two-week residency at Serenbe in Chattahoochee Hills to prepare for the Georgia tour, which will include hip-hip poet Big Rube (serving as narrator) and sculptor Audrey Morrison.
The performances will center on historic sites listed as "Places in Peril" by the Georgia Trust for Historic Preservation. For instance, at the tour's first stop, Tunnel Hill in Whitfield County near Dalton, the performance will be set at the W&A Railroad Depot, which was constructed in 1848-1850 and played a role in the Civil War's Great Locomotive Chase. The depot is closed due to structural damage, but the city of Tunnel Hill is pursuing funding to restore it for use as an event venue.
In addition to the big performance at each stop, Glo plans to engage students with movement and art-making activities, work in community gardens, break bread with town leaders and residents and break into spontaneous dance along main streets.
The Georgia tour comes on the heels of a highlight for the troupe founded by choreographer Lauri Stallings in 2009: "And All Directions I Come to You," five weeks of commissioned "migratory" performances this summer through the North Woods of New York's Central Park.
The tour, presented in conjunction with the Georgia Trust and the arts and tourism agencies of the Georgia Department of Economic Development:
Aug. 18-20: Tunnel Hill
Sept. 7-13: Warm Springs
Sept. 19-25: Chauncey
Oct. 2-8: Griffin
Details: www.facebook.com/gloATL?ref=hl
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