White confetti fluttered Friday onto the hot downtown Charleston pavement to celebrate the start of festival season.
Area resident Pat Votava, engulfed by the paper storm, cheered along as the Burke High School marching band helped to kick off this year’s Spoleto Festival USA and its sister festival, Piccolo Spoleto, with a boisterous performance of “Celebration.”
Votava said she has attended every Spoleto opening ceremony since 1981. She said this year’s felt briefer than usual, but it will always be a part of her annual Spoleto “ritual,” and something she suggests everyone attend at least once in their lifetime.
“I love contemporary performances, so a mix of the old and new is really important,” she said. “The idea of continuing to evolve is really important, especially now. The idea of art making political statements is incredible.”
Festival organizers and local government officials delivered four short speeches to more than 100 attendees from the portico of City Hall. Each of the speeches followed a common theme — the necessity of the arts amid the current digital age and the rise of artificial intelligence.
Phil Smith, chair of the Spoleto Festival USA’s board of directors, began the ceremony following a rendition of “The Star-Spangled Banner” by a Spoleto performer, the “Dido and Aeneas” star Leroy Yoshuro Davis. The other speakers were Mena Mark Hanna, Spoleto’s general director and CEO; Rochelle Riley, the director of Charleston’s Office of Cultural Affairs; and Charleston City Council member Mike Seekings.
The theme of this year’s Spoleto Festival, “Freedom of Expression,” honors America’s 250th birthday and the many freedoms enjoyed here in America.
“We believe that the arts are not ornamental to civic life, they are constitutive of it,” Hanna said. “The arts are integral to a strong, safe democratic society.” Read more of his related comments in this week’s City Paper cover story.
The inclusion of Piccolo Spoleto marked a notable change from recent opening ceremonies. Riley, who joined the city’s Office of Cultural Affairs in March, said she found importance for the arts to be especially important to Charleston, a city she described as one of the world’s strongest hubs of arts, culture and history.
“Art is not a thing, It is the way we live,” she said. “It should be part of every conversation about education, tourism, workforce development, love and life.”
The opening ceremony gave attendees a taste of both local performers and Spoleto acts. Students from the Charleston Jazz Academy performed as attendees took their seats, and the Burke marching band – complete with brass players, a baton twirler and a small danceline – filled Broad Street afterward.
Hanna said this season’s opening ceremony looked a little different from years past. The four speakers took the microphone for only a few minutes before the Burke performance.
Attendees danced under white paper parasols as the high school performers played a three-song mashup. And less than an hour later, the official Spoleto programming kicked off with the first performance in the Bank of America Chamber Music series, just around the block at the Dock Street Theater. (Votava said she also attends the chamber music series every year.)
During remarks, Smith emphasized the authenticity the festival offers. He encouraged attendees to unplug from the constant cycle of “troubling headlines” and AI.
“Your mind and most importantly your heart will say, ‘This is really authentic. This is something that authentically speaks to me,’” he said. “There’s nothing artificial about Spoleto Festival.”
Madelyn Taylor and Remi Turner are arts journalism and communications graduate students of the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University.
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