Calendar of Events

The signature event is sure to delight guests once again with a live symphony orchestra playing classical pieces to the choreographed movements of extraordinarily gifted dressage riders and their Grand Prix horses.

This year, Brooke USA inaugurates its own musical ensemble, the Dorothy Brooke Orchestra, dedicated to promoting the welfare of working horses, donkeys and mules and the people they serve across the globe. Named after Dorothy Brooke, the founder of the Brooke family of charities, the orchestra, directed by Kyle Elgarten, Assistant Conductor for the Palm Beach Symphony, is comprised of leading musicians from North and South Carolina.

“The experience of live orchestral music with musical freestyle dressage is simply captivating and unlike anything else I had ever seen. Last year, I had the privilege of attending the event and fell in love with Divertimentos & Dressage, not to mention that Brooke USA is a charity very close to my heart,” said Sharon Decker, Chair of this year’s Divertimentos & Dressage and President, Carolinas Operations, Tryon Equestrian Partners at Tryon Resort/Tryon International Equestrian Center.

Starting with registration at 6:00 PM, guests will enjoy a pre-performance reception with cocktails and hors d’oeuvres. Promptly at 7:00 PM, guests will be treated to a one-hour performance. This year for the evening of music and freestyle dressage, individual adult tickets are $90 per person. To purchase individual tickets, a ringside table at $1,150, or to learn more about other sponsorship and ticket opportunities, please visit BrookeUSAevents.org.

Divertimentos & Dressage is an exciting event that supports the life-saving work of Brooke USA. Brooke USA strives to alleviate the suffering of working horses, donkeys and mules, and the people who depend on them for survival in vulnerable communities across the globe. In fact, 100 million working equines support the lives of 600 million of the poorest people on earth. These animals are the backbone of communities and their best means of making a living. Without healthy working horses, donkeys, and mules, they would not be able to put food on their tables, send their children to school or build better futures for themselves and their families.

“Divertimentos & Dressage is a fantastic opportunity for Brooke USA to expand awareness for our organization while providing the community with an exciting and unique event,” stated Sally Frick, Chair of the Brooke USA Foothills Advisory Council, a member of Brooke USA’s Board of Directors, amateur equestrian, and professional flutist. “The event is so successful that Brooke USA has made a commitment to replicating Divertimentos & Dressage in other markets. This last Spring, we held it for the first time in Wellington, FL and it was a resounding success,” added Frick.

About Brooke USA Foundation (Brooke USA): The mission of Brooke USA is to significantly improve the health, welfare and productivity of working horses, donkeys and mules and the people who depend on them for survival worldwide. We are committed to sustainable economic development by reducing poverty, increasing food security, ensuring access to water, providing a means to education, and raising basic standards of living through improved equine health and welfare. We accomplish this by raising funds and responsibly directing them to the areas of greatest need.

Brooke USA strives to alleviate the suffering and vulnerability of developing communities by funding and implementing programs that improve the quality of life and health of working equines and thereby positively impacting their economic sustainability, protecting the planet, ensuring gender equality, and guaranteeing life on land resilience. We want to see healthy, happy people and equines that work in partnership to achieve sustainable local economies.
www.BrookeUSA.org

Still from McCall’s Bauhaus Dances, Formentanz (Form Dance), photo by Debra McCall.

The Lecture and Film: Bauhaus Dances

As Master of the Theater Workshop at the Dessau Bauhaus in the 1920s, Oskar Schlemmer delivered a series of avant-garde lecture dances on the body in space, his lifelong opus. Schlemmer’s revolutionary ideas for a humanistic theater in the new technology age were transported to the US  with the arrival of Bauhauslers Josef and Anni Albers and Xanti Schawinsky, a Theater Workshop performer, to Black Mountain. Their ideas impacted the work of Robert Rauschenberg, John Cage, and Merce Cunningham at Black Mountain, who in turn disseminated Schlemmer’s emphasis on  pedestrian movement and “chance composition” to shape work of the Judson Dance Theater and New York’s downtown performance scene.

Believing Schlemmer’s Bauhaus lecture dances to be the tabula rosa of avant-garde performance art and dance of the late 1960s-70s, Debra McCall set out to East and West Germany in 1981 in search  of Schlemmer’s original notes and sketches for the dances, and to walk the stage of the then recently restored Bauhaus. She was challenged to complete these two tasks by the only surviving performer of Schlemmer’s pieces at the time, Andreas Weininger, and by Ise Gropius, Bauhaus founder Walter Gropius’s widow, who insisted McCall could only understand the architectonic nature of Schlemmer’s work by walking the stage Gropius designed for him. A series of fortuitous and occasionally harrowing events led to the premiere of her reconstructions, “Oskar Schlemmer’s 1920s  Bauhaus Dances,” at The Kitchen in New York in 1982. With the addition of more reconstructions, a second premiere occurred at New York’s Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in conjunction with  the exhibition, “Kandinsky: Russian and Bauhaus Years 1915-1933.” Critical acclaim and sold-out houses led to tours of major museums and venues in the US, Europe, and Japan, including the first International Biennale de la Dance in Lyon, France, and a return to the original Dessau Bauhaus stage in 1994.

A narrative within a narrative, McCall will present the story of her reconstruction followed by a screening of a film of the reconstructions, premiered at New York’s Goethe House in 1987, featured  in American Dance Festival’s First International Festival of Film and Video Dance, and presently  residing at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center.

Debra McCall is a dance historian, choreographer, Certified Movement Analyst, and performer best  known for her reconstructions of Oskar Schlemmer’s 1920s Bauhaus Dances. Recipient of  fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the  Humanities, she also received the Rome Prize in Design from the American Academy in Rome and a Fulbright-Nehru Professional and Academic Excellence Award for her documentation of medieval  reliefs of sacred dancers at the Thillai Nataraja Temple in Chidambaram, Tamil Nadu. McCall served  on the graduate faculties of New York University and Pratt Institute where she was Mellon Lecturer. Her Bauhaus work has been presented in a variety of venues including Performa 09, Artissima 17  Torino, and Harvard University’s “The Bauhaus and Harvard: 100 years.” She also directs  Performing Matters (www.performingmaters.org), an organization dedicated to the preservation of  endangered dance and dancers’ rights.

Watch a recording: vimeo.com/142663982

https://www.blackmountaincollege.org/film_screening/bauhaus_dances/

The World Trails Film Festival is a unique event showcasing the best short and feature films centering the stories of trails from around the globe. Join us as we bring it to UNC Asheville (premiering for the first time on the East Coast of the United States) to celebrate why trails matter.

This community-building event will support trails locally and globally by fundraising equally for two leading trail organizations, the first of which is the Southern Appalachian Wilderness Stewards, a local nonprofit equipping people to steward our wild landscapes, and the World Trails Ambassadors, a program of the World Trails Network.

Doors open at 6 pm, Program begins at 7pm and entry will be limited after 7:15 pm, during the screening. Program will include an intermission and ends at 9:30 pm.

Asheville FM Fall Fund Drive is Coming Soon!
Help us Raise $35k During The Week of Oct. 13-20.
New T-shirts, Open House, Special Programming & More!

Women Helping Women serves as a source of funds to offset the costs of diagnosis and treatment of cancer affecting underinsured and uninsured women served by the UNC Health Pardee health system who could not otherwise obtain and afford such diagnosis and treatment.

This celebratory event always sells out and tickets are going fast. I encourage you to get yours today before they are gone!

Your $125 ticket includes lunch, pre-event shopping at Retail Row and an opportunity to hear inspiring stories of how the Women Helping Women fund is changing lives in Western North Carolina. The average cost for a mammogram is now $562, so every ticket is making a difference!

Our program will also feature New York Times bestselling author, podcast host and Duke University professor Kate Bowler, PhD.

For more information about the luncheon, email us or call 828-233-2700 and we’ll be glad to assist you.

Tickets on Sale Monday Sept 11 at NOON

Today in Western North Carolina, more than 155,000 people are facing an empty bowl every month. But you can help fill those bowls and become part of a collective effort to end hunger in WNC at MANNA FoodBank’s 22nd Annual Empty Bowls event!   

A fusion of creativity and compassion, Empty Bowls serves as a poignant reminder that, while art has the power to uplift and inspire, it can also serve as a platform for raising awareness about the very real problem of hunger across our mountains. Guests select a bowl handmade by local artisans and take with them a seasonal meal of delicious soups, breads, and dessert. The souvenir bowl that guests take home reminds them of the many WNC neighbors that are currently struggling to afford groceries.

Almost every part of the event is donated, including the event space, food, and local pottery and art. This allows MANNA to use event proceeds for our critical food distribution programs, which are currently reaching 155,000 food insecure neighbors every month across our 16-county service area, including the Qualla Boundary. Every dollar raised can help provide food for 4 meals. Since 2002, the collective generosity of our Empty Bowls guests, potters, sponsors, culinary partners, and everyone who has ever had a hand in the event, has allowed MANNA to provide the equivalent of 3.6 MILLION MEALS across Western North Carolina.

COLLECTOR’S CORNER

In addition to the souvenir soup bowls that ticket holders select, guests may purchase special works of high-end craft and art at the Collector’s Corner. Collector’s Corner items are both functional and gallery-quality pieces selected by the artists. 100% of the proceeds from Collector’s Corner sales go directly to supporting MANNA’s mission of ending hunger in WNC. The public is invited to shop the Collector’s Corner, even if they are not able to attend the Empty Bowls event.

TICKETS

MANNA hosts its annual Empty Bowls event in a walk-through format. Guests choose a one-hour time window that best suits their schedule, then arrive at the DoubleTree during that time window to select their bowl, choose their soups, and pick up bread + dessert. Guests can choose a one-hour time window any time between 10 AM and 6 PM, and can arrive any time during their chosen one-hour window. Both limited seating for those who would like to enjoy their meal in person AND limited curbside service for those who wish to remain in their cars are available.

Adult Ticket: $45 (includes your choice of one souvenir pottery bowl handmade by a local artist, your choice of three soups/stews/chowders packaged to go, and bread + dessert packaged to go)

Kids Package: $10 (includes one souvenir kid’s bowl handmade by a local artist and other pint-sized goodies)

Fur Kids Package: $30 (guests choose a dog or cat package; includes one souvenir pottery pet bowl handmade by a local artist, yummy treats for your furry friend, and other fun surprises)