The Rialto Theatre Gallery Project, which opened to the public in April, showcases the wide variety of performers the Rialto and its affiliates have hosted, as captured by their house photographers C. Elliott and Mark Martinez.Â
The gallery archive contains more than 5,000 photographs detailing shows since 2004. Rialto and their affiliate venues like 191 Toole hosted more than 400 shows in 2018 alone. From this massive collection, the Rialto Theatre Gallery Project shows 75 images from their shows, as well as concerts they produced at the University of Arizonaâs Centennial Hall, and a dozen concert posters designed by Ryan Trayte. Featured artists in the exhibit include Childish Gambino, Daveand Phil Alvin, Michael Franti, Tom Jones, Elvis Costello, Snoop Dogg and Durand Jones. Photos are available for purchase, and if bought, the gallery slot will be replaced with another image from the archive. The gallery will also play a soundtrack of some of the artists on display, cura
Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz) visited the Rialto Theatre this week to highlight federal funding designed to get local music venues open again. The federal government allocated more than $16.2 billion to the Shuttered Venue Operators Grant for live venues, live performing arts organizations, museums and movie theatres, as well as live venue promoters, theatrical producers and talent representatives. But when the Small Business Administration opened the portal for the first-come, first-serve program on April 8, the demand crashed the system. Two weeks later, Kelly and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz) joined many of their Democratic colleagues to send a letter to SBA urging them to reopen the application portal before “more independent businesses are forced to shutter permanently or file for bankruptcy.” SBA announced it would reopen the portal on April 24 and the Rialto Theatre was one of the
Ballet Tucson Pop-Ups. Last November,
Ballet Tucson dancers, who had not performed since March 2020, did a brief but magical nighttime concert at the Tucson Botanical Garden. They went on to dance in other unconventional venues, including the Reid Park Zoo, the St. Philip s Farmers Market, and a Tucson Museum of Art patio. The shows were a hit, and this month the dancers will once again perform a series of short outdoor concerts. This weekend, they ve got a gig at Brandi Fenton Memorial Park. Two company choreographers, associate director Chieko Imada and Balletmaster Daniel Precup, have created five new dances to be performed in all three concerts. Each show will feature nine dancers. Imada s Shall We Dance? is a comical duet about relationships, and her Trio is a contemporary jazz piece. Precup, formerly a full-time dancer in the troupe, will dance a romantic pas de deux with prima ballerina Jenna Johnson in his piece Rhapsody. (The two are married in real life.) He also choreogr