♪ Hi, everybody.

I'm Felicia Curry.

Welcome to "WETA Arts," the place to discover what's going on in the creative and performing arts in and around D.C. Curry, voice-over: In this episode, an orchestra conductor fights stereotypes.

Woman: People are used to seeing what you show them.

Show them this is what a conductor's like, and they will become used to seeing this, too.

Curry, voice-over: Estela Velez de Paredez leads a double life.

Paredez, voice-over: By day, I'm a judge.

By night, I'm a flamenco dancer.

Curry, voice-over: We meet Rachel Goslins, Director of the Smithsonian Arts and Industries Museum, which is featuring an immersive art and technology exhibit called "Futures."

Goslins, voice-over: You can't imagine the future you want to live in, then you're not gonna be able to figure out how to get there.

All these stories coming up on "WETA Arts."

♪ Takoma Park's Victoria Gau is a conductor in demand.

Curry, voice-over: She's known for her work leading orchestras and choirs and for educating youth orchestras around the country.

But she never left the community orchestra she joined in 1997, the Capital City Symphony.

With them, she is bringing rarely heard classical music to Washington.

The Symphony is based at the Atlas Performing Arts Center on H Street Northeast.

It's the last rehearsal before the first performance of the season.

[Orchestra playing softly] Gau: Careful on the ending.

No.

Make sure that the notes not only begin together but end together.

Curry, voice-over: Gau leads the multi-faceted life of a freelance artist.

I have a number of organizations that I'm connected with.

So I'm Artistic Director here at Capital City Symphony, Music Director of Cantate... [Choir singing] I am the Music Director at Bethesda Presbyterian Church.

With the National Philharmonic, I conduct concerts for all of the 2nd graders at Montgomery County Schools.

[Bouncy music playing] Gau: Give me the strings!

Audience: Give me the strings.

They'll give you the strings.

Gau: They'll give you the strings.

[Strings playing a bouncy beat] ♪ Gau: For years, I thought that this job here at Capital City Symphony was one that I would be moving on from, and I found myself over the years manipulating other parts of my life so that I could stay here because this had been-- has been built into, you know, something that I really love.

Curry, voice-over: The Symphony was founded in 1967 as the Georgetown Symphony, originally in residence at Georgetown University.

By the time Gau started with the Symphony in 1997, it had no fixed performance location.

Then she crossed paths with Arts Manager Scott Kenison.

Gau: So I called this number, and he said, "Atlas Performing Arts Center."

And I said, "What's that?"

And so he said, "Well, you know, "this is this performing arts center, and it's coming in on H Street Northeast," And I said, "I want to come see it.

Can I come see this?"

And I put on a hard hat, then we saw the space, and I talked to Scott about the vision for the Atlas and everything.

And I decided at that time that that's what the Georgetown Symphony needed to do.

We needed to come here.

That's when we changed our name to Capital City Symphony and became a founding arts partner here at the Atlas.

These players that I have are people who have been serious musicians all their lives.

Man: I thought I was gonna be a professional clarinetist, then I got interested in foreign policy and other things, so... this is now something that I do as a hobby rather than a career.

I wasn't sure what I was 100% walking into when I came to the first couple rehearsals, but everyone is so competent, everyone's really excited to be here.

♪ Woman: Vicki is one of the first female conductors I've ever worked with.

And I think that's a little crazy, given that I've played in many, many orchestras over the decades.

I love playing with her because she knows that we come to rehearsal after a very long day of demanding jobs and we don't want to be yelled at.

My dad always played piano, and it was my favorite thing to do to sit under it and listen to the echo of all the sounds of the piano.

And a couple of really wonderful things happened to me.

There's this woman-- Florence Robertson.

She said, "Well, I'll give Vicki piano lessons for free for a year."

And then she never charged a dime, never took a penny from my parents.

The viola teacher charged probably about 1/2 to 3/4 of what he charged other people because I needed to have longer lessons and he knew my parents couldn’t pay for them.

Curry, voice-over: Playing the viola is what got Gau into music camp at the Interlochen Center for the Arts, one of the nation’s most prestigious schools for young musicians.

Gau: The first year that I went to Interlochen, I got a free ride because everybody needs a good violist, it turns out, and then I really wanted to go back the second year.

Somebody anonymously gave the money to pay for over half of the summer.

That’s kind of led to a really strong sense of paying it forward, giving people the opportunity to find expression because it is expensive to become a musician.

At Interlochen, I took a beginning conducting class.

And then we had a guest conductor one week.

Her name was Maria Tunicka.

I think she was the Associate Conductor of the Warsaw Philharmonic.

She was about 5 feet tall, and she was just a spitfire!

And I was hooked.

I think seeing examples of women doing something that... that was inspiring to me made me think, "Oh, I can do that."

So I applied to Oberlin Conservatory because they had a program where I could do a bachelor’s and then do a masters in conducting.

Curry, voice-over: After graduation, Gau moved to Washington and soon after, she started her journey with the Capital City Symphony.

When the Symphony made the move to Atlas, Gau changed the repertoire.

Gau: We were doing 4 concerts a year, standard orchestral concerts.

The first year that we came here, I titled our season DC Home Grown, and I wanted to focus on composers that had had a connection to D.C. because we were trying to embrace the community.

Curry, voice-over: In 2020, with the pandemic raging.

George Floyd was killed and the Black Lives Matter movement became nightly national news.

Like many arts organizations, Capital City Symphony searched for ways to respond.

Gau: When we were first having these racial reckoning conversations in the orchestra, I started reaching out to colleagues just saying, "I’m looking for information about new composers that I may not be aware of."

And my former boss said, "Carlos Simon.

You got to check out this guy.

Just check him out."

Curry, voice-over: Georgetown professor Carlos Simon is the composer in residence at the Kennedy Center.

Vicki emailed me out of the blue during the pandemic and she says, "I can’t believe I don’t know you.

"I’m in the D.C. area, and you're a composer "and you’re in the D.C. area and I would love to get to know you and your music."

Gau: I decided that I really wanted to do a lot of his music.

This year, with this orchestra, I’m doing 3 of his pieces: On the first concert, his "Elegy: A Cry from the Grave."

[Slow haunting music] ♪ Simon: "Elegy" is me expressing how I felt when Trayvon Martin was murdered in 2014.

♪ I remember the first time it was performed, I felt very vulnerable, almost naked.

Gau: It literally has this sense of pain and heaviness to it.

Just a beautiful, beautiful piece.

The first time we played "Elegy" was actually the very first time we came back together to play after having been apart for so long, and everyone cried.

Everyone’s wearing masks, and we’re just sobbing because it is gorgeous, but also such a moment of recognition of everything we had been through collectively.

♪ Mains: I was not aware of Carlos Simon before we started playing these pieces.

I love the music.

I think it’s not only very evocative of a certain moment of time and a certain set of challenges that this country is going through, but it’s also just really beautiful music.

Saund: It allows the African-American culture to expand more into classical music, which it hasn’t as much in the past.

I mean, as a minority in the arts, I feel that every single day.

I’ve had performers say, "I don’t play jazz," when everything is clearly notated.

Ha ha.

Or, you know, conductors who will say, "I don’t feel comfortable playing this piece with this orchestra."

Vicki’s amazing.

She’s been such a champion of my music, and I’m so grateful for it.

Thanks so much for coming.

Great to see you.

Can't wait to hear this orchestra.

I think you're gonna be happy.

Yeah?

Curry, voice-over: At the last rehearsal, Carlos Simon meets with the orchestra to provide feedback.

The triplet, you all have that with the cellists.

So if you could listen out for that triplet, you can play with that together.

Gau: I’m starting the entire season with this piece because of Black Lives Matter, processing that we weren’t able to do it in real time with our music.

What I was thinking about doing is talking briefly to the audience, asking them not to applaud at the end of the piece, finishing the piece, keeping silence... and holding that, leaving stage.

And then start, you know, like standard concert setting.

Honestly, I think that’s the best response for me.

Everybody is responding to this differently.

It allows the space for that.

♪ Gau: There really are a lot of women conductors around D.C. It’s a very open and welcoming community in that respect, but it was, and to a certain extent still continues to be, kind of a man’s world.

I was commuting down to Richmond once a week and conducting actually the community orchestra that I had played in when I was a kid, which is a very cool thing.

But one time the orchestra had given permission for a photographer to come in and to make some stock photos.

And my board chair kind of came sidling over.

And he said, "Well, the photographer wants to know "if you could step off the podium and one of the men in the orchestra could get up and pretend to conduct."

He said, "Well, the photographer says that’s what people are used to seeing."

And I said, "Of course, that’s what they’re used to seeing.

"They’re used to seeing what you show them.

"You show them that this is what a conductor is like, they will become used to seeing this, too."

Curry, voice-over: The Capital City Symphony's next concert on Sunday.

March 20th features 17-year-old pianist Alexander Suh from Fairfax.

Gau also conducts a choir called Cantate.

Catch their next performance, "Songs of Spring and Love," on April 3rd.

You can hear Carlos Simon’s latest piece.

"It All Falls Down" in a program called "Written in Stone."

Performances run through March.

Check the Kennedy Center website for dates.

[Flamenco music playing] ♪ Estela Velez de Paredez leads a double life.

♪ I’m Estela Velez De Paredez.

I’m the Artistic Director of Furia Flamenca Dance Company.

♪ We perform all over the D.C. metro area.

♪ We teach to all ages and all levels.

We have performed from the big stage to the little stage to somebody’s living room.

Name the festival, we've been in it, basically, but that was my way of bringing flamenco to the forefront.

[Cheering and applause] Everybody knows modern, contemporary, ballet, jazz.

Very few people know flamenco.

Flamenco is the dance of the people.

It was born in the streets.

It was born to communicate, to express, and so it’s a little bit more raw, less refined.

Man: ♪ How many charming people ♪ ♪ Can a [indistinct]?

♪ Paredez: I’m from San Juan, Puerto Rico.

Puerto Rico was a possession of Spain until the early 1900s.

And therefore, we are heavily influenced by the Spanish culture.

I may not have chosen flamenco as the dance that I wanted to do as I was growing up, but I certainly was surrounded by it.

♪ I wanted to be a prima ballerina like most little girls, right?

And that was my focus for many years.

15 years of my life, I dedicated to ballet.

My teacher at the time wanted me to audition for Ballet of San Juan.

She spoke with my mother, and my mother was very honed in education and making sure that we stayed in school.

My mother decided that I wasn’t gonna audition and not only was I not gonna audition, but I was not gonna come back to class.

So needless to say, that was a little traumatic at the time.

In college, I took some dance classes, but I didn’t go back to dance per se.

From there, I went to law school.

From law school, I joined the Navy.

And then when I was working with the Navy, I would come home and I would just be bored.

So then I was like, "Well, maybe I’ll go back to dance."

And at that point, I went back to ballet and every art style that I could potentially do.

Every dance, I always wanted to do-- tap, Middle Eastern.

I tried it all.

Flamenco truly stole my heart.

And I started doing both things.

Each one developed in their own way, at their own time.

Through the years, I went up the ladder in my legal career.

the Flamenco side of me slowly developed, and I was just a student.

I was a JAG for close to 10 years.

After that, I went to work for the Department of Veterans Affairs as an attorney.

I got the call to be a teacher in flamenco.

Then I became an Artistic Director of my own company.

I recently became a Veterans Law Judge.

By day, I’m a judge.

By night.

I’m a flamenco dancer.

Man: Ole!

Paredez: D.C. has a flamenco community, just like wherever you go and there’s flamenco.

My company has anywhere from 12 to 14 performers at a time.

[Tapping rhythmically] Our needs vary, obviously, depending on where we go.

The most crucial thing to have is a wooden floor.

We have to be able to have that percussive sound under us.

[Singing in native language] We always dance to live musicians.

We need to be able to hear them as we dance.

[Tapping rhythmically] And it gets loud!

♪ Most everybody who goes and sees a dance performance has been taught to be very quiet and respectful and wait until the end and then you applaud.

We need, as flamenco dancers, energy from the audience.

And our audiences are not supposed to be quiet.

Man: Ole!

[Audience shouting] Paredez: For us, if somebody is not yelling and screaming through the dance, we think we’re doing something wrong because we want that immediate reaction.

Part of what we do is educate, try to make sure audiences understand "This is what we want you to do.

"We want you to become part of the experience.

We want you to feel what we’re feeling."

[Cheering and applause] If it’s extreme sadness that we're conveying, we want you to go there with us.

If it’s happiness, then by all means...that, too.

[Cheering and applause] There is no bigger rush for me than to set foot... on a stage and look out at an audience.

There is a feeling that I almost can’t even explain.

You forget about life.

You forget about your worries, you forget about everything that is... oppressing you.

And life can be really hard and throw some really bad curveballs, but when you step on that stage, you’re free.

Man: Ole!

♪ Ole!

[Cheering and applause] Curry, voice-over: You can watch Paredez dance at the 2021 Kennedy Center Honors in her tribute to honoree Justino Diaz.

You can stream it on cbs.com.

She offers adult flamenco classes in D.C. and Fairfax, with virtual learning options as well.

Hi, Rachel.

Welcome to "WETA Arts."

We are so excited to have you.

Can we start by just having you give us your name and your title?

Sure.

My name is Rachel Goslins, and I’m the Director of the Arts and Industries Building here at the Smithsonian.

And that is where we are right now.

Tell us a little bit about the history of this building.

I understand it’s one of the oldest Smithsonian museums.

It is.

It’s the second Smithsonian built here on the National Mall, but it’s the first museum.

The Castle, which was built first, was our Administrative Center.

But when the Smithsonian decided to build the Arts and Industries building, that was the moment that they decided to get in the business of storytelling.

It opened in 1881.

Its first public event was the inaugural ball of President James A Garfield.

If you walked in that evening, you’d walk past the National Symphony Orchestra conducted by a 23-year-old John Philip Sousa.

And in the Rotunda was a statue of a woman in a toga holding up a torch.

In her hand, instead of a marble torch, she held an electric light bulb.

And that was actually the first time, as far as we can tell, that electricity was ever seen in Washington, D.C.

It was 9 months after Thomas Edison patented the lightbulb.

I like to think that’s the moment that the Arts and Industries building really was born-- this idea of showing the marvels of the world and the wonders of the universe to come.

Can you just tell us a little bit about some of the exhibits that would have been here in the 19th, 20th century?

One of the many nicknames for this building is the "Mother of Museums" because the Arts and Industries building has incubated so many of our Smithsonian museums.

In the beginning, it was full of taxidermied animals and a blue whale hanging from the rafters.

And eventually that collection grew and grew, and we built the Museum of Natural History.

And then it was full of first ladies' inaugural ball gowns and horseless carriages and the Star-Spangled Banner.

And eventually we built the Museum of American History.

And then it was full of rocketships and the Apollo 11 lunar landing capsule.

And eventually we built the Museum of Air and Space.

Now, I know in 2004, the museum had to shut down.

What happened?

The Regents became worried about the structural integrity of the building.

I was brought in to help the Smithsonian think about the future of the building and also to begin to animate it with exhibitions and installations.

And you just said "future," and we are sitting in the middle of a really special exhibit here called "Futures."

What exactly can we see here?

The beginning of the exhibition, past "Futures," around to and the concept that we are only the latest in a long line of future makers.

One of my favorite objects is the Bakelizer, this crazy sort of Steampunk egg- looking thing, which was invented to commercially produce plastic.

Plastic is this incredible Innovation that allows us to put hearts into babies and spaceships into space, but it’s also choking our planet.

So it’s important to think about what the consequences of these decisions are and understand those as we move forward.

There’s a beautiful big central rotunda with art installation called "me + you."

And then you can go into one of 3 different halls-- "Futures that Unite," "Futures that Work," and "Futures that Inspire."

Tell me a little bit about "Futures that Work" and "Futures that Unite."

We’re not gonna have a future that works if it’s not a future that's sustainable.

So this hall looks at everything from the Hypergiant, which is this BioReactive algae farm that eats carbon dioxide and spits out oxygen.

It can process as much CO2 as 400 trees.

We have the hyperloop, which can take you across the country in the blink of an eye and the BioSuit, which is a new way to think about how we might explore space.

Futures that Unite is looking at how we might live in a world that is more inclusive, that is more cooperative, that is more collaborative.

You can collaborate with AI to design your perfect city.

I read something about mobility and hand movements.

What’s that about?

When I think of the exosuit, and I think of Iron Man and superheroes and all that, but actually robotic- assisted movement has huge potential in helping people with different abilities, seniors, people recovering from injuries.

And so we have this cool robotic glove that helps people move their hands in different ways.

Tell us a little bit about "Futures that Inspire."

Where we’re sitting actually here, you can see the Bell Nexus, this crazy flying car, which has always been a staple of future thinking.

You can see a rocket jet pack.

You can see a robot that is programmed to try and put you in a state of creative daydreaming and where a lot of the kids spend a lot of time.

And we have an installation from Marvel as well looking at superheroes and movie storytelling and how that drives us to imagine different futures.

What’s the future of the Arts and Industries museum?

It’s overdue for a big renovation.

Whatever it does in the future, I think it’s gonna continue to inspire, awe, and wonder and delight at all the big exciting ideas that are out there.

Rachel, thank you so much for joining us on "WETA Arts" and for welcoming us into the Arts and Industries museum.

It’s really been a pleasure.

It’s been great to have you.

Come back any time.

The Smithsonian Arts and Industries building sits next to the Castle building on the Mall and admission is free.

But hurry.

"Futures" runs through July 6th.

After that, the building will close for years of renovations.

So be sure to get down there soon.

Here’s a thought to consider from the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

"Fight for the things you care about, but do it in a way that will lead others to join you."

Thank you for watching this episode of "WETA Arts."

Be well, be creative, and enjoy the art all around you.

I’m Felicia Curry.

Announcer: For more about the artist and institutions featured in this episode, go to WETA.org/arts.

♪