Back-to-School: AdventureLied shares performance art with children across Nebraska

(This is the ninth of nine stories in UNL's 2009 "Back-to-School" package.) For most children, sitting in the plush red velvet seats at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln's Lied Center for Performing Arts provides a truly unique connection to live performance art. This connection to the arts may spark fresh ideas, free the imagination and open the doors wide for new dreams and beliefs.

But what if this experience didn't need to be contained within four walls? What if this sensation had no boundaries -- except perhaps the infinity of personal artistic expression?

For the last two decades, AdventureLied has offered children and teens across Nebraska an involvement in the arts that knows no boundaries to positive growth and artistic development. Not only does early exposure to the arts stimulate academic success, it also encourages community engagement and social development. At the heart of the AdventureLied program is the power of the arts to entertain, inform, educate, energize, connect and ultimately, change lives.

Petra Wahlqvist, assistant director of Community Engagement and Learning at the Lied Center, said that when the Lied Center was built 20 years ago, the mission of weaving education and outreach was embedded into the focus of AdventureLied.

"By dropping the artificial boundaries of the stage, AdventureLied brings artists into classrooms and classrooms to the artists," Wahlqvist said. Since that first year, she estimates that as many as 60,000 young people have been involved in an arts activity with the Lied Center -- and that every season more than 3,000 young people interact with Lied Center artists on a personal level -- through a matinee show, a before- or after-performance discussion, or a classroom performance.

"These students and teachers are given ways to connect the performance of dance, music or theatre to culture, art and history, to current issues, to classroom learning or to their own art making," she said. "The results of this interaction include a heightened feeling of belonging and the ability to express oneself creatively."

Early exposure to the arts can have a powerfully enriching effect on the lives of young Nebraskans, thanks to AdventureLied programs such as Arts Across Nebraska.

In the Arts Across Nebraska program, concerts and performances are brought to communities across the state. In the past two decades, more than 30,000 students and their families in nearly to 20 large and small Nebraska towns have experienced an Arts Across Nebraska performance in their own backyards.

Since the Arts Across Nebraska program began in 2000, those backyards have included theatre, music, dance and pop vocal performances in Albion, David City, Fremont, Norfolk, Scottsbluff, Kearney, Beatrice, Broken Bow, Burwell, Crete, North Platte, Seward, Holdrege, Geneva, Grand Island, Hastings, Hershey, Hyannis, Lexington, Maxwell/Brady, McCook, Minden, Mullen, Nebraska City, North Bend, Ogallala, Pender, Pierce, Stapleton, Sutherland, St. Paul, Thedford, Wallace, York and Omaha.

And the program continues to grow as more partnerships are created with schools, arts councils, churches, senior centers, dance studios and community organizations across the state.

This fall, the Rastrelli Cello Quartet will tour four communities outside of Lincoln Oct. 19-25: Omaha, Hastings, Scottsbluff and Holdrege. Musicians Kira Kraftzoff, Kirill Timfeer, Misha Degtjareff and Sergio Drabkine named their group after 18th century architect Bartholomew Rastrelli who designed the hermitage in St. Petersburg, Russia, where three of the four musicians live.

They are internationally known for the classical renditions of the masters ranging from Bach and Dvorak to Brubeck, Corea and Gershwin.

"The support from the Friends of Lied -- many of whom live in these communities -- makes it possible for us to provide this unique experience," Wahlqvist said. Other funding organizations include the Nebraska Arts Council, Peter Kiewitt Foundation and Omaha Performing Arts.

Taking the arts across the state "is a mission we believe in," said Ann Chang-Barnes, interim artistic director for the Lied Center. "The performing arts are relevant to our lives. It gives us a glimpse of the world by taking us to new places, learning about different cultures, and yet acknowledging our common history of art making and appreciation. AdventureLied believes that access to art is not a luxury -- it's a right for everyone."