Eyes on What's Next
Sioux Falls has proven time and again that there’s no shortage of artistic talent and wildly creative minds in our fair city. And as we gathered a trio of such individuals for our annual “Faces to Watch” edition, it was clear that the future of performing arts in our community is in vastly able hands. Read on for our discussion on what’s next.
Pictured: Mary Ridder, guest artist with the Good Night Theatre Collective (Credit: Peter Chapman)
What is motivating about creating in Sioux Falls?
Mary Ridder: I am always encouraged by getting to collaborate with new people. Seeing this new energy and new life—getting different perspectives always gives me a boost of energy to continue working in Sioux Falls. I think that’s super exciting.
William Cedeño: Sioux Falls is a hidden gem when it comes to classical music. When I came to Sioux Falls, I wasn’t really expecting to have big audiences and the amount of support from everyone—I came in without knowing. The symphony collaborates with basically everybody—a lot of the Native American work we’ve been doing has been life-changing, to be honest. When you come to an orchestra, your main focus is to be the best principal you can be, but when you get to do work with other people and other cultures and start to look at music a different way, you start to realize that music isn’t just for you—it’s for other people.
Angelina Gibson: I think the nice thing with Sioux Falls is it fosters a real blank canvas every single time you create something. It fosters finding something new, entrepreneurship—but creatively, specifically. As a musician, dancer and academic, I’m not sure I would’ve really been able to explore all three avenues together at the same time in another city. I think the artistic question mark the city can give you as an artist is something it will actually continue giving as long as you take it.
WC: And there’s definitely a thirst for it. I live in this music bubble, but it seems like there’s this huge following in each area of the arts. The fact that there are all these tiny communities all over the city that have that public interest, it shows how much you can explore different avenues and have the same level of experience you’d have anywhere else. It’s kind of incredible.
What is your performing arts origin story?
WC: I did a lot as a kid. Mostly I wanted to be a baseball player. My grandfather was a musician, so in an effort by my mom to keep me from being on the street, she forced me into doing music when I was nine. I was in El Sistema, similar to a program here called Harmony (South Dakota), which is basically a music program founded in Venezuela to give music to people who didn’t have the resources, no matter the neighborhood or social class you were a part of. I didn’t really understand it or care for it at the time—I was too young—but being 10 years old and attempting to play Shostakovich on a beat-up instrument as a kid in a huge orchestra with 100s of people coming to concerts, it just gives you this feeling of being a rock star. Clearly I wasn’t going to be Shakira or anything like that, but there’s something to putting work into something and having it be appreciated like that.
Pictured: William Cedeño, principal flutist with the South Dakota Symphony Orchestra (Credit: Peter Chapman)
MR: My “aha” moment was in high school when I realized that I no longer wanted to pursue any other interest I had. Originally, I grew up being a competitive gymnast and cheerleader and I quit all of those things to do more arts. It just gave me so much happiness, and other activities were stressful—I did them because I could. But they weren’t bringing me joy. I was repeatedly just thrilled to be involved in theatre productions. I originally didn’t have a theatre degree in mind, but freshman year of college I became so sad and realized what I was missing was theatre. I immediately connected with the theatre department and auditioned for Urinetown. And that’s when I started pursuing theatre in earnest. No looking back!
AG: I actually for a long time thought I would go straight piano for a while, just keeping dance on the back burner. But it’s really come into focus with college, with academics, dance and piano being my three main fields. I’ve been really able to find what that means for me to create something where I get to ask questions about what I want a piece to do. The end goal is that I wish to become a professor of music history, but the nice thing with a professorship is you can consistently still create work on the side or in tandem with the research you’re doing. Getting to combine dance and music in a specific way is something I wish to do throughout my creative life. Not just entertaining, but actually teaching through the work.
What are you seeing locally that’s artistically & creatively invigorating?
WC: Yi-Chun (Lin) is collaborating with literally everyone. Natalie and Tim (Campbell), too. The second you step out of your comfort zone, you see there are 17 different bubbles the same as mine in this city. If I wanted to collaborate with theatre or dance, it would probably be one mutual friend away. I don’t think that’s as easy to achieve in other places. I think other places can be a lot more elitist. All the experience I’ve had in Sioux Falls personally is more, “Are you into this? I’m into this. Let’s do it!” There’s no “background checking” in a way—everyone is more open to collaboration and making things together. I haven’t experienced that before. The bridges are more connected.
AG: I think one of my favorite things that enables the outcroppings of arts that we see here is that there’s this intrinsically Midwestern humbleness and organic nature of the people—the fact that Sioux Falls is the size it is but has the resources it does. It’s the perfect mix of things that propel a self-generating machine. How can you not be inspired to see these new things come up all around you and not start to try to find your own way of mixing them together?
MR: I think it’s been really neat, as somebody who left Sioux Falls for a little bit and got to come back, I’ve just seen so much growth in the arts and even within this past year during the pandemic. People were very creative in continuing to survive. We all agree that art is the way of our lives and we need to continue to make it. I think that the city agrees and wants to support us. I think it’s cool to see dance, theatre and music come together in a way that helps us continue to do what we love.
Pictured: Angelina Gibson, founder & artistic director of the ArtiTänzer Project, Augustana University’s first fine arts dance company (Credit: Peter Chapman)
What opportunities do you see in bringing performing & visual arts together?
AG: I hope to see it happen more. When two different mediums come together, it’s a really gorgeous cycle of trial and error. You get to forge new marriages between things, and if you get to do it once, you offer a blueprint to other people. I think that will just continue to happen, as I know in music—and even piano—it can get so insular. When you actually do step out of that, there’s a lot of independent thinking. There’s a willingness to generate your own ideas and enact them on your own.
WC: I think there can be a mental block. The formula is very simple, and it’s been successful in many other places. But I think there’s still this fear—I don’t know why. The (South Dakota) Symphony has had performances with painters on stage. And every time I’m part of the orchestra performing, what I hear from the audience is, “This is so much better, and I loved it on a different level.” It’s a lot easier to engage people through two different senses, instead of just one. You can’t always expect everyone to appreciate Scarlatti—you have to come up with ways to make it accessible for everyone. I think having visual arts and performing arts together is a great first step.
What about the experience keeps you coming back again to the stage?
MR: I think my favorite is hearing audience reactions. Hearing them feel something. That relationship with the audience from the stage is just such a high. When it builds and builds and something goes well, it’s so gratifying, personally.
WC: My answer has shifted later and later in life. When I was younger, it was the after-concert feeling. That feeling of being done like you’ve just finished a race. But the more you perform, you maybe get a little more self-focused on stage. One of the things I love is whenever I’m about to do something in a concert that makes me nervous, right after I’m done, my body just completely relaxes and give me a weird level of focus. I always look toward the lights and acknowledge mentally how focused my body is at this moment. It’s kind of like a runner’s high every time I perform. My whole body—no pain, no feeling, just bliss. I just love that.
AG: I think my answer has become two-fold. I used to compete a lot with piano, but I think as I’ve gotten older I actually don’t want to be on stage nearly as much, if at all, anymore. And that’s only because I love creating with people to generate it. It’s not the meal for me, while it’s wonderful, but, once you get an audience in there, it’s that the arts specifically offer a medium to dissect and explore really hard aspects of life that might not be very palatable elsewhere. I think some of the best art we’ve had has come through some really horrendous circumstances. ArtiTänzer never shies away from topics that might be hard pills to swallow. There’s a real power in creating for emotions that people haven’t touched in a really long time.
What are your hopes for the next generation of artists?
WC: I think opportunity is key. We can’t always change everything right now, but we can offer up opportunities. Some things need generations to change, and sometimes it’s impossible to do it without preparing the generation upcoming. A lot of our issues start with giving the next generation the tools they need to fix it. I think the biggest mistake we make is that, no matter what you do in the arts, there’s an incredible level of focus into that side of the arts only. There’s no bigger spectrum, and it’s all you know. I think that’s where a lot of musicians fail halfway through careers, because it’s a very stressful way to live life. It’s kind of like an athlete—you have one goal, and that’s it. That mentality is great for some things, but for the arts it limits a person’s ability to expand their brain. I think we need to set out a way where kids from a younger age are exposed to all of that. To have a more informed view of art.
MR: I never want to force my own kids into a particular type of artform. As a parent, you might enjoy a specific type of thing, or maybe even sports—but realizing your children are their own individual people and you shouldn’t be afraid of that is so important. Embracing and encouraging that and not letting fear inhibit their creativity in whatever venue brings them happiness. Help foster what will make them better humans. It can be hard as a parent, knowing you don’t get to control your children’s lives.
[Laughter]
WC: The commitment and effort that these things take give people the tools to apply to many different things. When you love it and don’t see it as work or “your job,” you want to do as much as you can to be good. And if you were to try something else, you might not necessarily be as “good” at it, but when you’re an artist, at least you have the tools to commit. That’s hard to find.
AG: I wish I could say to parents, children and peers that art is not inherently selfish and not inherently isolated. It’s just something you can use to both find your own footing as an individual, but also as someone who can enact something different within whatever sphere you might be in. It’s actually something I’ve really come to appreciate through music and dance history. Being open to reeducate yourself on how the arts have related in the past, looking at other cultures, it opens you up. Many languages don’t have separate words for different artistic mediums like we do in the West. I think the world, specifically the West, needs to be open to reeducating itself on a constant basis. Yes, we have our arts subgroups, but all of them have an innate ability to work together to create something new to this world.