Warehouse Arts performance stage is unveiled

To the portentous strains of “Also Sprach Zarathustra,” the ceremonial ribbon was cut Monday morning on the Warehouse Arts District’s outdoor performing arts stage.

The 23×13 foot aluminum stage, standing three feet off the ground, is located on the reverse side of the Rise St. Pete monument, near the intersection of 22^nd Street and 5^th Avenue S. According to Markus Gottschlich, executive director of the Warehouse Arts District Association, it’s meant to signal the community that his organization – headquartered amongst art studios, galleries and classrooms on the Warehouse Arts “campus” – is dedicated to more than just paintings and sculpture.

A New Orleans-style jazz quartet opened Monday’s ceremony. From left Jim Stewart, Alex Malkovich, Jevon Falcon and David Manson.

“It marks a new period for us,” Gottschlich said before the dedication. “We are unifying the visual and the performing arts. For 10 years, the organization has been, of course, known for the visual arts.

“We’re opening new doors to new possibilities, to hopefully become the kind of hub that we envision for ourselves in the next five or 10 years.”

The vision includes a massive re-design of the campus, to encourage and support more involvement and attention from every corner of the community.

Last month, the 54-year-old Academy of Ballet Arts, which was about to lose its downtown lease, became a tenant, utilizing the campus building’s sprung dance floor and classroom spaces.

Additional construction continues inside the facility.

Chris Booth’s design for the stage includes a slight-of-hand magic trick: At the push of a button and the turn of a lever, the entire aluminum construct can be raised horizontally, revealing a large area where a specially-built flat movie screen, 23 feet wide, can be attached.

And voila, outdoor movies.

Gottschlich and company will debut the screen April 28 with Lift, a lauded documentary about the unlikely rise of New York Theater Ballet artistic director Steven Melendez; the screening is part of the 2023 Sunscreen Film Festival.

A Q&A with Melendez, and the film’s director, will follow.

On April 30 – International Jazz Day – the St. Pete-based Brazilian band O Som do Jazz will play followed by a screening of Sincopa, an independent film from Mexico that explores one man’s relationship with jazz.

Cinematographer and producer Antonio Mata, director Alan Gutierrez and actor Antonio Monroy will be in attendance.

On May 14, jazz musician Bria Skonberg will perform on the “Instrument of Hope,” a trumpet partially made from spent bullet casings. The instrument is meant to continue the conversation about school shootings.

Nine months ago, when Gottschlich was interviewing for the executive director job, he and association board president Mark Aeling were walking the campus and tossing ideas back and forth.

“And I remember we said ‘wouldn’t it be great to have a stage right here?’” Gottschlich recalls. “And then many months of fundraising followed. And it was built in pieces, by the artists Chris Booth and Eric Higgs.”

Aeling, too, contributed to the design, and machine-cut the metal in his on-campus sculpture studio.

For Gottschlich, adding a performing stage to the WADA palette was a no-brainer. “I just never saw the arts separated,” he said. “For me, it was always one. And when you come to the gallery openings, there are musical elements. When you see a concert here, there will be visual elements.

“I don’t think we can afford to think and live in these silos. And I don’t see how you could be successful, in 2023 and beyond, just doing one thing and leaving out the other avenues of the arts. I just don’t see how that’s possible.”