Paul Kieu
Dancers at the 2023 Festivals Acadiens et Créoles
By the time you’re reading this, creatives across the region will be attending rehearsals, building sets, and going to costume fittings in preparation for the start of the new performing arts season. There’s a lot of significance held in this year’s slate of events—it’s been five years since the COVID-19 pandemic emptied auditoriums, causing an existential crisis for dance and theatre organizations across the country. It’s been twenty since Hurricane Katrina disrupted New Orleans’s thriving creative scene as we then knew it. And just around the corner is the 230th anniversary of our state’s grand legacy in the history of performing arts: the first ever opera to premiere on American soil did so at the Théâtre St. Pierre in New Orleans.
So, where does that leave us today? Our 2025 Performing Arts Issue homes in on the current moment, in which community theatres face modern challenges, and respond to them with creativity and openness; in which artforms like dance can be used to articulate the impossible dualities of mourning the past and victoriously taking on the future; in which Shakespeare is performed for free in the libraries and Tennessee Williams is still attracting new, dedicated fans.
It’s also a moment defined by a collective desire to rekindle dying connections to our bodies, our communities, and our culture. The stage is not for everyone, but the dancefloor can be. This is why our first feature in the issue is centered on the culture of social dance, flourishing in pockets across Louisiana. “Dance is your birthright as a person,” says Ann Glaviano. It’s an expression of performance that belongs to anyone who seeks it out. A hobby, an art, a health pursuit, or a tribute to one’s culture—joining the crowds on a local dance floor is, more than anything, “just freaking fun,” as said by Adeline Miller. “It’s just so freaking fun.”
