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Fredericksburg’s Company 360 Wants To Give You All The Feels

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Involving dancers of all body types and embracing inclusivity and diversity, Company 360 works to make dance empowering and accessible for all.

Bailey Anne Vincent might make you cry when you see her dance company on stage.

“We do tend to go for as much emotion as possible. We tend to make people cry,” Vincent laughed.

According to their website, Fredericksburg’s Company 360 hopes to push boundaries and bend stereotypes about the world of professional dance. They’ve paid no mind to body types, and opened their doors to dancers of all abilities, limitations or not.

“Dance should not be an age, size or number,” the group says, “and Company 360 hopes to be an inclusive, no-shame environment for those passionate enough.” Their next performance, Bridges, a tribute to Paul Simon, will be performed April 26-27 at the Fredericksburg Academy.

Vincent said the company’s upcoming show will provoke a lot of emotion from the audience, and that the dancers have even cried in rehearsals after connecting to the material.

“This show follows three generations of women all having to make different choices and having to overcome being a woman, basically,” she said. “It’s not just a tribute to [Simon’s] music; it’s characters he’s hidden inside of his lyrics, or the different themes he’s stuck [in a song].”

“This show is very grounded in reality, with folklore and Americana.” In contrast, Vincent said that Company 360’s fall show, a tribute to the Dave Matthews Band, will be “pure fantasy and magic.”

PHOTO: AMT Photography

Vincent aims for her shows to have one cohesive, original plot and storyline across all the pieces, even though there are very different styles being performed throughout each show. She comes up with the story and chooses the soundtrack a year in advance. While ballet is featured heavily in the shows, Company 360 primarily focuses on contemporary pieces, and also performs pointe, tap, and jazz.

“We are not a ballet company,” said Vincent. “It really is a 360 of styles.”

Vincent started out dancing for various dance companies in Washington, D.C., even working as an assistant artistic director for some. For a while, she worked as a choreographer for Fredericksburg’s Christian Youth Theater. But she knew she wanted more.

“The whole time I was kind of quietly creating my whole list of, ‘If I had a company, this is what I would do to eradicate drama, or negative body image, etc’,” she said. Vincent had a vision for a company that was more inclusive, and would have none of the negative aspects of working in the dance world that seem to be all too prevalent.

She said she was especially concerned with how in some dance companies, women were being pitted against each other. She wanted to start a company that was different, that focused on the joy of dance and the way it can be empowering.

After a stem cell transplant, Vincent decided to finally try to bring her plans to fruition. Vincent, who has Cystic Fibrosis and is also deaf, had been on oxygen, and was constantly in and out of the hospital until the transplant. While she still spends a fair amount of time in the hospital, she says the transplant gave her a “resurgence of health.”

“That was what led me to take the leap with Company 360 because it felt like, well it’s now or never,” she said. “What do I have to lose? I’ve almost died like twenty times.”

PHOTO: AMT Photography

Vincent worked with her husband, who is now the executive director of the company, to figure out the logistics of starting this venture.

“I feel like, especially for women, we have more of a ceiling to get through when following our pursuits and passions,” Vincent said. “We often feel like we have to have a checklist of certain things we have to do before we take on something.”

But Vincent challenges that approach.

“My favorite metaphor for business is the bumblebee,” she said. “The bumblebee is aerodynamically too big to be able to fly, but the bumblebee flies, because the bumblebee believes in something and just does it.”

In a similar way, Vincent believes in all of her dancers, even if they violate the archetype of what a dancer is “supposed” to look like. One of her original goals with Company 360 was to empower dancers of all body types to perform, and she does not consider body size or type as a factor in casting.

“[The dancers] are measured by their talent, not by their measurements,” she said. “My goal is making the audience feel something, and I think that has absolutely nothing to do with the skeleton you were born with.”

“You can make someone feel something just as much if you look like Isabella Boylston or Misty Copeland, or if you have boobs,” she said. “It makes literally no difference. And to me that’s what we’re losing in the dance world. People don’t think that dancers of all sizes can move as beautifully, and they can.”

PHOTO: AMT Photography

Vincent said that while she is looking for dancers to have strong technique and training, she considers the dancer’s ability to emote and tell a story paramount when casting.

“You can tell when someone has to dance, when it’s their passion,” she said. “Not when they need to dance or feel that they must dance, but that they’ll do anything to dance.” To Vincent, it’s this quality that’s most important in a dancer. Ability alone is not enough.

“The world is full of good dancers. You watch So You Think You Can Dance and you’re like, ‘They can do eight pirouettes! How do all these people exist in the world?’” Vincent doesn’t see physical achievements like these as the best barometer of dance talent.

You go to dance competitions and everyone’s kicking themselves in the face with their leg. To me, that’s all been done.

“We’ve seen the most flexible people in the world, and we’ve seen the most proficient turners,” said Vincent. “The world is full of talented dancers, but it is not full of talented performers. And that makes an audience feel something.”

Vincent also runs a youth company for older children and a training company for teenagers. Every dancer in the training company is paired up with an adult company dancer, whom they shadow and understudy for the season to give them a taste of a professional dancer’s life. Vincent said she really wants understudying to be a positive experience for her young dancers.

“Growing up, it was always a negative thing to be cast as the understudy. But it’s an honor, it’s exciting, it’s a privilege,” she said.

In addition to her company, Vincent has attracted a large following as a health advocate and writer. She has over eleven thousand followers on her Instagram account, where she documents her life as a dancer with chronic illness. Vincent said that because of her advocacy, people around the world who are chronically ill have connected with the company. She is currently fundraising for two women from Nashville and Texas, whom she has endearingly nicknamed the “Bucket List Babes,” to fly out to see a Company 360 show.

“They were really motivated by seeing all sorts of women represented in the company,” Vincent said.

Vincent would like to be able to continue this practice for other fans of the company, and hopes to work with local organizations to raise funds for it. She also tries to collaborate with a different nonprofit for every show. Her international following has motivated her to livestream some of Company 360’s performances, and she is sensitive to the fact that it can be expensive to be a patron of the arts.

“I want dance to be accessible,” she said.

Vincent has also worked on dance films to bring awareness to certain issues, including collaborating with rapper Everlast on a dance film called “Love With Cystic Fibrosis.” Everlast, whose daughter has Cystic Fibrosis, found Vincent through her online advocacy.

Vincent’s main goal throughout her work is to make her corner of the dance world an inclusive and positive one. She hopes this can spread to the larger dance community, and encourage dancers who have been alienated from pursuing careers in dance and achieving success.

“I’d like to think that if you’re a dancer who comes to see our show, you’re not going to feel hateful about your body when you leave, or discouraged,” she said. “Or think, ‘Why try? I’m going to give up dance,’ because sometimes that happens when I go see dance shows.”  

“Hopefully, as more people come to see Company 360 shows and get lost in the story, they’ll leave and then never again have this stereotype of what they think a beautiful dancer should look like,” Vincent said. “All of our dancers are beautiful, and all bodies are beautiful.”

Company 360 will perform Bridges, their tribute to the work of Paul Simon, at Fredericksburg Academy on Friday, April 26 and Saturday, April 27. In addition to evening performances at 7 PM both days, there will be a 2 PM matinee performance on Saturday. For tickets and additional info, visit Company 360’s website.

Top Photo by AMT Photography

RVA #36 Is On The Streets Now!

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Spring is here, and so is this year’s first issue of RVA Magazine!

This week, RVA Magazine #36 is on the stands all over town, welcoming spring with our first brand-new edition of 2019. It’s chock full of arts, culture, music, politics, news, and more. From across the state to right here at home, RVA #36 brings you the first-rate coverage of central Virginia’s street-level culture that you have come to expect over RVA Mag’s 14 years of existence.

Richmond’s artistic community is drawing a lot of attention this year, and in this issue, we dug into the stories behind the art. From longtime local fave Chris Visions, who has caught the world’s eye with his work on Marvel’s Spider-Verse, to gothic princess Abigail Larson, who is currently involved in the creation of Neil Gaiman’s latest Sandman project, we’ve got some serious heavy hitters to introduce you to in this issue.

Richmonders getting out and exploring the world is also a big theme this issue. From local hip-hop sensation Michael Millions’s improbable experience performing in small-town Kentucky to our own Madelyne Ashworth’s travels around Europe and Asia, we bring the unique perspective of our home city to events all around the world.

There’s a lot more in store as well, from a GayRVA report on the queer resistance movement in rural Appalachia to an exploration of independent filmmaking in the river city with the creators of upcoming feature Last Call, which was filmed on location at Richmond’s own The Answer.

All of that is in store for you when you grab your very own copy of RVA #36, available in all your favorite local businesses around town. Get yours now… they’re going fast!

The VMFA’s ‘Congo Masks’ Exhibit Leaves Out Much-Needed Historical Context

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It was the Congolese people, and their struggle, that shaped the art of the Congo during the colonial period. And it is the context of these people and this struggle that is missing from the exhibit at the VMFA.

In 1876, King Leopold II of Belgium founded a private holding company called the International Association for the Exploration and Civilization of the Congo; it was formed specifically for the purpose of collecting African wealth. Only a few years later, this company founded a colony in the Congo — and by 1885, a Conference of European countries established the Congo Free State under the personal rule of Leopold and his private army.

As colonial ruler of the Congo Free State, Leopold II reigned with brutality and terror.

The invention of the rubber tire and discovery of latex in the Congo fueled Leopold’s savage greed: It is estimated by many that the human cost in terms of lives lost in the quest for rubber was as high as 10 million under Belgian colonial influence.

The Congolese died from violence, disease, and starvation.

Interestingly, the privately owned collection of art currently on display at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (VMFA), “Congo Masks: Masterpieces from Central Africa,” dates, for the most part, from the Belgian colonial period, and specifically to the savage rule of Leopold.

Under Leopold, the Congolese fought not only for their lives, but for their identities. A struggle against an oppressor who wanted to take more than just their sovereign wealth: Belgium was a colonizer who wanted to take their languages, their beliefs, and their very selves. It was these people, and this struggle, that shaped the art of the Congo during the colonial period. And it is the context of these people and this struggle that is missing from the exhibit at the VMFA.

When touring the exhibit, an occasional “Community” sign describes the influence of colonialism, but only just: mentions that knowledge of specific artists was lost, or that an entity called the Leopard Cult developed as a form of resistance to colonial power, were the only acknowledgments describing the actual Congolese experience as the context of this art.

The closing sign in the exhibit attempts to describe the “Lives of Masks,” pointing out that during colonialism masks were taken from where they were created by international collectors. While these are hints about the real background and context of these masks, it is a quote from the Belgian owner of the collection in the exhibit catalogue that speaks much louder:

“After 1885, the start of Belgium’s colonial enterprise in the Congo, the government encouraged resident Europeans to investigate traditional Congolese life, art, and ritual ceremonies. As a result, as early as the 1880s, masks were collected by Europeans (some of which are included in this book and exhibition).”

What a disingenuous way to describe the power of the colonist who was responsible for the deaths of millions of people. What is the VMFA thinking?

Perhaps there is more information in the exhibit catalogue if you read past the foreword (it is available in many of the exhibit rooms to read). Yet as soon as you open this book, you see the 11 contributing authors on the cover flaps: Nine white men and two white women. These are experts in Africa — experts in African art — but they are not African. Missing entirely from this exhibit is the voice of the Congolese themselves.

In a post-Wakanda world, we all know the words of Black Panther’s Killmonger to a European museum curator demanding a dialogue about who owns art:  

“How do you think your ancestors got these [pieces]? Do you think they paid a fair price? Or did they take it… like they took everything else?”

This exact conversation about who owns art — especially art collected during colonialism — is one that is happening more often, and rightfully so.

French museums are making progress towards returning art to their countries of origin, following French President Macron’s announcement that “African heritage cannot be the prisoner of European museums.” And the VMFA has been a part of a similar conversation: recently the board voted to return art stolen by Nazis. Even a Congolese art collector, Sindika Dokolo, insists that the responsibility of art museums to decolonize their collections is a need urgent and equivalent to that of repatriating collections looted from Jews during WWII.

And yet, as reported in the RTD, some of the Congo masks at the VMFA are likely worth 8-9 million dollars each. Visitors pay to see the exhibit that includes at least some masks that originated or were collected as early as the 1880s under Leopold’s reign. When does the continued exploitation of Congolese bodies, lives, and creativity enter this conversation?

The VMFA already knows the answer to this. Instead of acknowledging the lived experiences of artists of the Congo, persevering with their craft despite these colonial horrors, the exhibit instead reduces that story to a mere display of art. It is a dangerous precedent to set, when here in our city — and across this country and others — we struggle to reconcile brutal histories of oppression with truth, reconciliation, and justice. The Congo masks are not just masterpieces of art; they are symbols of bodily and spiritual resistance to one of the most brutal colonial invasions of Africa. It is truly disappointing that visitors to this VMFA exhibit will not learn this at the museum. 

*Dr. Amy Rector is a member of the VMFA. 

VMFA Repatriates Painting Stolen by Nazis

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The Board of Trustees governing the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (VMFA) announced today that they will be repatriating a painting from their collection that was looted by top Nazi Reich official Herman Göring in 1940.

The painting, Madonna and Child Enthroned with Saints Nicholas of Tolentino and Sebastian, was taken from the Goudstikker Gallery after the family of the gallery fled ahead of the Nazi invasion. Göring, the head of the German Luftwaffe, organized one of the greatest bouts of art theft in modern history. According to the Telegraph, he had stolen almost 26,000 railway cars worth of art from around Europe. German officials in 2015 alone found 1,400 pieces of his stolen art in a Munich apartment.

Observers of art the Nazis were typically anti-modernists, and held modern art up as a stylistic example to be discouraged — which is why the Madonna and Child Enthroned with Saints Nicholas of Tolentino and Sebastian would have been such a prized piece. The piece was owned by Jacques Goudstikker, a Jewish art dealer, and one of the wealthiest art dealers in Europe. Goudstikker specialized in Dutch and Flemish paintings. Married to a Viennese Opera singer, the Goudstikker family fled to the U.K. ahead of the Nazis, with Jacques unfortunately dying in transit. Göring made the acquisition of the Goudstikker’s collection a priority once the occupation of the Netherlands was complete.

Madonna and Child Enthroned with Saints Nicholas of Tolentino and Sebastian

Repatriating Jewish art has been ongoing since the end of World War II (WWII), yet in 1998, 39 countries signed a joint agreement to identify stolen art from families who perished during the Holocaust. Almost every single European country, along with Brazil, Israel, Canada, Russia, and Argentina, were signatories to the agreement. Also in 1998, the U.S. State Department hosted a conference which set forward guidelines requiring museums to analyze their acquisitions, with a specific focus on art looted by Nazis. Around the same time, the Germans set up a Lost Art Database that could act as a global repository for “lost cultural property” from the WWII years.

Luckily, the Goudstikker family kept meticulous records 0f their collection. Upon WWII ending, the painting was returned to the Netherlands, but the Dutch government chose to sell it to an unknown buyer instead of returning it to the Goudstikker family.

The painting was eventually bought in “good faith” by the VMFA in 1958. In the press release from earlier today, the VMFA’s Director Alex Nyerges was quoted as saying, “The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts is pleased to return this painting to Marei von Saher, the painting’s rightful heir and owner…It is simply the right thing to do.”

Bravo.

BustArt’s Pop-Graffiti Explosion in Richmond

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Swiss muralist BustArt has landed in Richmond, and his latest pop graffiti mural sits at the intersection of E Franklin St and N 18th St in Shockoe Bottom. Searching out a shady spot on the sidewalk during Richmond’s 85-degree heat, he sighed from relief on a break from working the wall.

“Too hot for a Swiss guy,” he said.

For the past few weeks, he’s been in Greensboro collaborating mural projects with Richmond’s Nils Westergard. Both have collaborated on multiple large-scale projects in the past — however, BustArt’s pop graffiti style contrasts with Westergard’s hyper-realistic black and white portraits to create a dualistic image. The two styles compliment each other as opposites, combining the playful and approachable with RVA’s famous dark and brooding pieces.

“I’m only here because I lost my passport in Greensboro,” said BustArt, as we chat about creating art in Richmond. Planning to paint his way up to D.C., he commented, “Nils made all these arrangements to get walls for me, so I can make my way up to D.C. to get my new passport.”

BustArt Paiting in Shockoe Bottom

Richmond may not have been the original plan, but BustArt said he is glad that he made it to the River City. The other sites he passed in the South have been underwhelming in comparison, and he admires Richmond for its murals.

“It’s always crazy, I like it,” he noted on painting in the U.S. versus Europe. “Way different, bigger.”

Street art in the U.S. is different for the European artist. It’s different, bigger, and even came with a delivery cyclist dropping off a little natural supplement while he painted.

“See, people make my life nice here,” BustArt said.

The delivery man responded, “Hospitality, man. Southern hospitality.”

BustArt noted that graffiti on the street often tells the life of the neighborhood. Seeing the youth out being active means something there is alive — there’s a little bit of revolution left in the people’s mind. Saying he saw a little revolution in Richmond, he added that there’s more happening in the U.S. right now than in Switzerland.

“Switzerland is not at all busy,” he said. “Here, I wouldn’t say it’s super busy, but everywhere something is constantly going on. It starts with the crazy cars, to the food places, to all the decoration, to those really old fucked up places, to the super crazy new stuff.”

Richmond, he said, is somewhere in between the old and new; the old buildings are appreciated because they’re more fun to paint. He prefers the older structures (largely due to their worn textures), but noted he likes the contrast of the newer buildings along the background in the cityscape.

The E Franklin St wall is part of an older building. When it’s finished, Spongebob, Road Runner, and a 1940s Juliet Jones-inspired female figure will all be staring into the street. Every one of BustArt’s pieces include a pop culture character. For larger projects, he asks the surrounding residents who their favorite cartoon characters are: In Greensboro, a neighbor’s request gave him the subject for his Marvin the Martian wall.

His process: There isn’t one. BustArt chooses his characters and rolls from there.

“Most of the time, I don’t know what I’m doing,” he said. “I plan basics like the characters, but the rest is just totally free style. On the spot.”

The method works, and for the most part, the results are the same.

“I always mix it up really colorful, really poppy, really mixed,” BustArt said. Since he’s been in the U.S., he can’t remember how many murals he has painted. He completes one a day, minus his massive collab piece with Westergard in Greensboro — but even that only took two days.

Keep an eye out for your favorite cartoon characters next time you’re traveling between D.C. and North Carolina. If you can’t find them anywhere, check out BustArt’s Instagram and website. Odds are, they’re nearby somewhere.

*Photos by Christina McBride. Cover photo by Landon Shroder

Atomic Cocktail: The Psychedelic Synthesis of Pop Culture

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A leading artist of the 1980s “Lowbrow” movement is visiting Virginia, and his exhibition at the Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) is his first solo show in almost a decade. Todd Schorr’s paintings are staples of pop surrealism, populated by classic cartoon and comic figures from the mid-twentieth century. Todd Schorr: Atomic Cocktail is Mickey Mouse, Mr. Peanut, and the fairytale grotesque like you’ve never seen them before.

“I was among a handful of artists in the mid 1980’s who began exhibiting paintings in galleries…that combined a common influence of imagery derived from old comic books, early cartoon animation, horror and sci-fi movies, hot rod culture, and psychedelic poster art,” Schorr said.

Atomic Vacation by Todd Schorr

Growing up in the late 50’s and early 60s, Schorr was inundated with the constant looming threat of nuclear warfare.  From “Duck and Cover” drills in school, to the culmination of the Cuban Missile Crisis, his work combines the tension of those decades with the popular visual culture of the era.

Fusing the influence of Renaissance masters like Salvador Dali, and early animated cartoons, Schorr created a cocktail of psychedelia and surrealism. These often autobiographical works take us into the looking-glass-esque world of the bizarre. He communicates through a synthesis of childhood experience, and the pervasive visual culture that shaped it. 

Schorr said that the basis for what we consider pop-culture began at the turn of the 20th century.

“This is the visual language that every generation since then has grown up in,” he said. “I do firmly believe that the cartoon is the strongest form of graphic art of this century.”

MOCA curator Heather Hakimzadeh, says that despite growing from the same 1950s roots as its creator, the exhibit will appeal to everyone. 

“He definitely does come from the viewpoint of someone born and raised in midcentury America. But I feel like so much of the imagery that he’s given us is universal, and has imbedded itself in our culture,” said Hakimzadeh. “Everyone can recognize things in the work that will build connections.”

Schorr’s exhibit contains a narrative flow that will allow viewers to connect the pieces within the context of their own stories, and provides a commentary on the endurance of visual art in our modern world. Our children are raised on popular iconography, and the generational consequences of these works bleed through decades. 

“I think about where we are now, in 2018, Western society, and the image production that we do right now: millions of images, created all the time, by everyone,” said Hakimzadeh. “I think about our own children and future generations, and what shapes them. These images, and the things [Schorr is] showing us created who we are. We’re looking back to look forward.” 

These early- to mid-century cartoons, comics, and classic films shaped our school principals, our heads of corporation, and the baby boomers who are in congress making policy, said Hakimzadeh. She wonders how the imagery our children see every day in our age will affect who they become as the next generation. 

Despite it’s universal, monumental implications, Hakimzadeh said one of the best things about the exhibit is that it is accessible to everyone.  

“Contemporary art can be intimidating. People come into the art space and they’re expecting white walls, no didactic and learning tools, to see something plain and simple on the floor and not understand it,” said Hakimzadeh. “Instead, people are going to go in and see things that resonate, that have meaning for them.”

The exhibition will show works new and old, from Schorr’s classics, to sculpture, to never before exhibited paintings. Among these is No Solar Power for Fairyland, which Schorr calls “a take on the distribution of available power sources,” and includes “a compressed history of graffiti which runs along the bottom portions of the fairy tale buildings starting with the earliest cuneiform characters.”

“When you go see a painting in person, you see things you’re never going to see in a little tiny screen. You’re going to have an experience that’s vastly different,” said Hakimzadeh. “I think people are going to come in and connect this this, and know work is being made about their life, and the imagery that has made their life.”

Alongside the show, Schorr is promoting his new monograph, Neverlasting Miracles. Todd Schorr: Atomic Cocktail runs through December 30 at the Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art in Virginia Beach.