It’s an off year for Aurora Dallas, but there is still good news for fans of the biennial arts festival. Prelude, a free event previewing next year’s Aurora, offers the same thrills as the popular festival without the headaches that come with its especially large crowds.
If you were one of the 50,000 people at Aurora 2015, you may have felt the festival’s growing pains. From overcrowded spaces to long lines for food and drink vendors, the festival at times struggled to handle the massive influx of attendees. Josh King and Shane Pennington, the festival’s co-founders, are using feedback from last year to plan for a more seamless experience in 2017. In the meantime, Prelude is an opportunity to test solutions on a smaller scale.
“What’s great about Prelude is we scale the artwork to be more thoughtful,” King says.
Friday and Saturday, the AT&T Performing Arts Center campus will be filled with 10 large installations that give a glimpse of what’s to come at Aurora 2017. The works were selected by three curators involved in next year’s festival: New York-based curator DooEun Choi, Berlin-based curator Nadim Samman, and Justine Ludwig, curator at the Dallas Contemporary.
Prelude doesn’t have all the buzz or size of its parent festival, but the event should hold its own in terms of artistic substance. And if you find Aurora overwhelming, you may prefer Prelude’s more focused, quality-over-quantity approach.
Changes include a new docent program to give attendees in-depth explanations of the artwork, the expansion to a multi-night format, and vastly improved VIP areas complete with an “Art Bar” designed and curated by artist Alicia Eggert.
How much of a difference will these improvements make when the Arts District is flooded with tens of thousands of people at next year’s Aurora? Only time will tell. Either way, Prelude is a great way to experience a more intimate version of Aurora’s showcase of light, video, and sound installations.
For more information about Prelude, go here.
If you were one of the 50,000 people at Aurora 2015, you may have felt the festival’s growing pains. From overcrowded spaces to long lines for food and drink vendors, the festival at times struggled to handle the massive influx of attendees. Josh King and Shane Pennington, the festival’s co-founders, are using feedback from last year to plan for a more seamless experience in 2017. In the meantime, Prelude is an opportunity to test solutions on a smaller scale.
“What’s great about Prelude is we scale the artwork to be more thoughtful,” King says.
Friday and Saturday, the AT&T Performing Arts Center campus will be filled with 10 large installations that give a glimpse of what’s to come at Aurora 2017. The works were selected by three curators involved in next year’s festival: New York-based curator DooEun Choi, Berlin-based curator Nadim Samman, and Justine Ludwig, curator at the Dallas Contemporary.
Prelude doesn’t have all the buzz or size of its parent festival, but the event should hold its own in terms of artistic substance. And if you find Aurora overwhelming, you may prefer Prelude’s more focused, quality-over-quantity approach.
Changes include a new docent program to give attendees in-depth explanations of the artwork, the expansion to a multi-night format, and vastly improved VIP areas complete with an “Art Bar” designed and curated by artist Alicia Eggert.
How much of a difference will these improvements make when the Arts District is flooded with tens of thousands of people at next year’s Aurora? Only time will tell. Either way, Prelude is a great way to experience a more intimate version of Aurora’s showcase of light, video, and sound installations.
For more information about Prelude, go here.
