Cedar City Arts Council Updates

  A Poetry Soulstice Danielle Beazer Dubrasky (Guest column for Iron County Today)   At a time when the arts struggle for validation, advocacy, and funding, why would anyone devote decades to reading, writing, or teaching poetry? The medium poets use is words—those intangible lenses that shape our perceptions. When we tell frustrated toddlers, “Use your words,” we are actually training them to become poets. Because that is what poets do—we use our words from our inner worlds to create a linguistic work of art, often inspired by the exterior world.   I teach poetry, and the first assignment I give is a “Cyclical Haiku.” Students write a series of haikus, one each day at set times: dawn, mid-morning, noon, afternoon, twilight. I did have one student protest, “But I’ve never seen the dawn.” To dispel any ideas that haikus are trite or limited to only a 5-7-5 syllable count, we study The Essential Haiku: Versions of Basho, Buson, and Issa , translations of ancient Japa...

  Having a Place to Play (column for Iron County Today) by Sara Penny, CCAC Vice President Putting on a concert requires having a place to perform. The original Social Hall, public school auditoriums, SUU facilities, and the Heritage Center Theater have all provided venues for concerts, plays, and dances. We are now looking forward to the opening of the new SUU Music Building, which includes a concert hall.  Cedar City has embraced music since the first people who called this valley home.  The Paiute traditions remain strong, as domonstrated by  the annual Restoration Pow Wow.    By the time the pioneers arrived in Cedar City, there was already both an English choir and an American choir according to Morris Shirts, whom my daughter interviewed for a school project.  When the pioneers began settling the area in 1851 they held dances accompanied by fiddles.  By 1861, they needed a place for concerts and community events, so a Social Hall was propose...