Opening Night
Marlee Matlin, Raul Midon, Melody Gardot, and Light Motion Dance Company Headline Opening Ceremony of Independence Starts Here Festival on October 18
Independence Starts Here: A Festival of Disability Arts and Culture kicks off its inaugural festival on Thursday, October 18 with an opening ceremony at the Kimmel Center’s Perelman Theater designed to showcase the unlimited talents of artists with disabilities. The evening is introduced by Ambassador Jean Kennedy Smith, founder of VSA Arts and emceed by Award-winning actress Marlee Matlin. The program will feature performances by blind jazz singer/musician Raul Midon, local songwriter/vocalist Melody Gardot and wheelchair dance duo Light Motion.
Tickets to the ceremony are $60, and $100 (with VIP reception), and are available by calling 215-893-1999 or TTY: 215-875-7633 or by visiting the website at www.kimmelcenter.org.
“The artists showcased in this Opening Ceremony are some of the best artists, with or without disabilities, in their fields. We are very fortunate to have them with us as we launch this important new festival,” explains Mimi Kenney Smith of VSA arts of Pennsylvania, the coordinator of the festival. “One of the most important goals of the festival is to demonstrate that disability has nothing to do with whether or not an artist reaches the highest level of artistic success. These artists and others in the festival are perfect examples.”
Ambassador Jean Kennedy Smith was the U.S. Ambassador to Ireland from 1993-98, playing a pivotal role in the peace process in that region. Smith’s experiences with helping her mentally-disabled sister Rose Marie live a full life gave her an insight into the abilities of people with disabilities. In 1974 she founded VSA arts, an affiliate of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, to provide arts education and programming for adults and children with disabilities. Her book, Chronicles of Courage, written in collaboration with George Plimpton, was published by Random House in 1993 and details the artistic achievements of 16 artists with disabilities.
Marlee Matlin received worldwide critical acclaim for her motion picture
debut in Paramount Pictures' "Children of a Lesser God," earning
her the Academy Award for Best Actress and at age 21 becoming the youngest
recipient of the Best Actress Oscar and one of only four actresses to receive
that honor for a film debut. In addition to the Oscar, Matlin was honored
by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association with the Golden Globe Award for
Best Actress in a Drama. Matlin has also received multiple nominations for
her work on television including two Golden Globe Award nominations as Best
Actress in a Dramatic Television Series, two People's Choice Awards nominations
for Favorite Actress in a Drama, and four Emmy award nominations for her
guest turns on CBS's "Picket Fences," ABC's "The Practice," and
NBC's "Seinfeld" and "Law and Order: Special Victims Unit." Passionate
about children, she has also appeared in a number of educational and children’s
programs. Matlin served as host of PBS's Emmy Award winning series "People
in Motion," and, in 2007, was featured in the PBS documentary, "Through
Deaf Eyes." She is also the author of a novel for children entitled "Deaf
Child Crossing" and two sequels, "Nobody's Perfect" and "Leading
Ladies" published this year. Matlin currently serves as a national celebrity
spokesperson for the American Red Cross, encouraging Americans to donate
blood. She has worked on behalf of closed captioning and was instrumental
in getting Congress to pass federal legislation requiring all televisions
manufactured in the United States be equipped with closed captioning technology.
Writer/vocalist/guitarist Raul Midon,
blind from birth, brings a rich tradition of pop inventiveness to his music,
influenced by Stevie Wonder, Paul Simon and Bill Withers. Having never seen
images, he uses a lively imagination to write about the experiences of the
other senses - hear, touch and feel. Midon was born in Embudo, New Mexico
to an Argentinean father and an African-American mother. Always a passionate
music lover, he started playing drums at age 4 before shifting his focus
to the guitar. After graduating from the jazz program at the University of
Miami, he became an in-demand backup singer, working primarily on Latin projects
for artists like Julio Iglesias, Shakira, Jennifer Lopez, Christina Aguilera,
Ricky Martin, Jose Feliciano, and Alejandro Sanz while moonlighting as a
club perform to hone his own synocpated, flamenco- and jazz-infused approach
to the steel-stringed acoustic. He moved to New York to partnering with Grammy
award-winning producer/arranger Arif Mardin and his multi-instrumentalist
son Joe to produce two crticially acclaimed recordings. As a jazz vocal improviser
and performer, Midon has worked around the world with such notable jazz legends
as Paquito D’Rivera, Dave
Valentin, Dave Samuels, and Claudio Roditi.
Melody Gardot’s blend of mellow blues, eclectic folk and jazz captures
the expressive emotions reminiscent of Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald and
Nina Simone. At the age of 19, Gardot was hit by a car while riding a bicycle.
The injuries sustained mean Gardot now needs to wear dark glasses and carry
a cane. Prompted by a tending physician who believed music would help her
regain some of her former cognitive abilities, her first musical venture
was in 2005 “Some Lessons” recorded from her bedside. Gardot
has performed with such notable acts as Livingston Taylor, The Wood Brothers,
Brandi Carlile, Susan Tedeschi, James Hunter, Mike Doughty, Jeffrey Gaines,
David Poe, and Amy Correia, and has played in such venues as The Kimmel Center,
The Kennedy Center, World Cafe Live, The Tin Angel, Club Passim, The Sellersville
Theatre, The Media Theatre, The Ritz, Rockwood Music Hall, The Living Room,
and The Cutting Room.
Light Motion, founded by principal dancers Charlene Curtiss and JoAnne Petroff,
is a two-woman integrated dance company that is refreshingly creative, exciting
and physically demanding. Emphasizing “Front End Control”, the
duo uses the wheelchair as an expression of movement rather than just a vehicle
for mobility. It is their purpose to integrate the chair into the movement
of their choreography. Charlene Curtiss received a spinal cord injury as
the result of a gymnastics accident. Leaving her job as an attorney, she
began her new career in 1985 as a dancer and choreographer. Her original
dance techniques in “front-end chair control” have redefined
dance parameters for wheelchair movement, helping disabled people discover
the untapped, unexplored world of dance and artistic movement. Accompanied
by her dance partner Joanne Petroff, Light Motion is instrumental in bringing
integrated dance to the forefront of new trends in dance and to furthering
the choreographic terminology of wheelchair dance. The two also co-founded
of Whistlestop Dance, a Seattle-based performance and instructional modern
dance company that has been acclaimed for their work with adult and children
with special needs. Together they have taught in Artist-in-Residence programs
in Washington, Hong Kong, New Mexico, Arizona, Idaho, Alaska, and Hawaii.