Hi, everybody, I'm Felicia Curry, and welcome to "WETA Arts," the place to discover what's going on in the creative and performing arts in and around D.C.

In recognition of Women's History Month, we're bringing back some of our favorite stories that feature local trailblazing women in the arts.

In this episode, we feature the founder of a museum that celebrates language...

Words you use matter.

Don't take them lightly, because they do have so much power.

Curry: an orchestra conductor who counters stereotypes... Woman: People are used to seeing what you show them.

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

Curry: and a choreographer who is preserving West African dance traditions.

Woman: I bring in the community to fill up the stage because we all matter.

And so that's what my company is about.

All these stories coming up on "WETA Arts."

Curry: Ann Friedman is the founder and CEO of the museum Planet Word.

Located in the historic Franklin School Building at 13th and I Streets NW, Planet Word educates and entertains visitors with the history and wonders of language.

We sat down with the former reading and writing teacher to get the story in her words.

Hi, Ann.

Thank you so much for being here today with us at "WETA Arts."

Well, thank you for inviting me, and it's great to have this opportunity to share Planet Word with everyone.

So could you tell us where we are right now?

We are in the magical library of Planet Word.

And this is a place where language truly does come to life.

That's our tag line: the museum where language comes to life.

The front entrance is the backyard of the original Franklin School that was built in 1869.

It was a flagship of the D.C. Public Schools.

We have black-and-white, marbled, diamond-shaped landings.

We have cast-iron railings and trim that are full of design.

The Franklin School operated until the 1920s, and then this building became the offices of the D.C. Board of Education.

It was abandoned and shuttered from 2008-2018.

I got the lease from the District of Columbia, 99 years at $10 a year, in return for restoring and rehabilitating the building.

What made you decide to craft a museum specifically around words and language?

I started working on ideas for Planet Word in 2013.

I thought it was going to be mostly about books and reading and inspiring a love of words and language, but words started to be the focus of attention in politics.

How do you define the meaning of hero?

How do you define an insurrection, a mob, a riot?

So there was all this focus on words and language like never before.

And we have so many very complex issues nowadays that voters have to decide about.

Without a literate population, we will have a hard time supporting our democracy.

I was just trying to think of, how can we create a nation of readers?

I want to start with coming into the museum.

Outside, you have a speaking willow.

Can you tell me a little bit about that?

Friedman: When people walk under the branches of this sculptural metallic tree, motion sensors trigger the speakers to go on.

[Overlapping voices] They speak 364 languages representing 99.9% of the language spoken in the world today.

In this case, with your motion, and you're making things happen with your voice.

Curry: The interactivity starts right outside.

I love that.

I'd love to ask what you hope people take away from the exhibit with the speeches.

In the Lend Me Your Ears gallery, which is about oratory, we highlight what the speaker is doing, with the hope that when you go into our recording studio that you can recreate and use those techniques, and the same with our karaoke gallery.

Karaoke's my favorite.

And you're going to have to sing.

Here's our playlist of all the songs you can choose from.

Press that pink button, "Add to playlist."

Get ready.

And then we just walk up to the microphone?

Here's your chance.

[Music] ♪ The snow glows white on the mountain tonight ♪ ♪ Not a footprint to be seen... ♪ Songwriting was an obvious topic that we had to cover in a museum about words and language.

And also I wanted to show how words could be fun and playful and meaningful.

Curry: And what about painting with words?

Friedman: An important concept is how you can describe a setting and make it come alive with words.

That was basically the direction I gave to the exhibit designers.

This is our Word Worlds gallery.

It's really cool.

You've never seen anything like it.

No, I have not.

It's the most fun you can have learning vocabulary.

So take one of our smart paintbrushes.

OK.

It's in a word palette right now.

What is the word?

Magical.

OK. See what happens and what that word must mean.

[Chuckles] When the plane flying overhead flew through your magical scene, it turned into...?

A magic carpet.

A magic carpet.

There's a word in that gallery that almost every adult who comes in here says, "What does that mean?"

I'll say, "Hmm, well, what did it do?

How did it transform the walls?"

I'm not going to tell you the definition of that...

The teacher's still teaching.

Yes.

Ha ha!

So let me ask you, what's your favorite exhibit?

You're sitting in it.

Ha ha!

Tell me why.

Friedman: I set out to bring language to life, and it happens right here in this library.

All the books with their jackets facing out have chips in them.

And when you lay them in one of our special cradles on this story table, the chip will trigger projection technology with sound and beautiful artwork.

And the idea is to make someone want to read that book.

Can you tell me about Spoken Word?

It's the great hall of the original Franklin School.

It's the space that's adequate for a topic like the diversity of the world's languages.

Namaste.

I'm Priya.

I'm from India, and I speak Hindi.

Friedman: In the middle of the gallery is our 12-foot-diameter globe covered with almost 5,000 LED lights that respond to your talking to our language ambassador.

We have 28 language ambassadors speaking their native languages and two who are signing.

So, for instance, this man on the iPad, he's Gus, and he's from Brazil, so he speaks Brazilian Portuguese.

In Brazil, "little cat" is gatinha.

What you find out is how important language is to people.

[Speaking Quechuan] Imaynalla.

Allianchu.

My name is Elva... Friedman: I've had two people from Peru come up to me with tears in their eyes and say, "Thank you for including Quechua."

It was important that we have a diversity of content in every gallery.

[Speaking native language] Friedman: And in there, that meant endangered languages have to be part of it.

What's the thing you want people to leave with after they've gone through your museum?

One day at the beach in Montego Bay, there was a magician named Popsi... Friedman: Before you go out on the street, we want to make sure that you've gotten our central message that the words you use matter.

Don't take them lightly because they do have so much power.

Also, how language, in particular English, is always evolving, and we want to celebrate that.

It's exciting!

There's a renaissance of rhyme and word play today.

It's really a great time to be using the English language.

Curry: Your idea and how you brought it to fruition here is really exciting.

Congratulations.

Thank you so much for visiting with us here at "WETA Arts."

My pleasure.

Planet Word has a new exhibit called Lexicon Lane.

It's full of wordplay surprises and mysteries to solve.

You can do your sleuthing solo or as a team.

Reserve a set of games and puzzles as well as timed passes to the museum on their website.

[Orchestra playing, choir singing] Meet Victoria Gau, a conductor and educator based in Tacoma Park.

Gau is in demand to lead orchestras and choirs and for training youth ensembles across 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 D.C. 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: You can catch Victoria Gau and Capital City Symphony on April 2, preforming Songs of Hiawatha at the Atlas Performing Arts Center on H Street NE.

And Gau's vocal ensemble, Cantate, is partnering with the Montgomery College Chorus to present "Karl Jenkins, The Armed Man, a Mass for Peace."

The performance is on April 16 at the Montgomery College Cultural Arts Center in Silver Spring.

Check out the ensembles' websites for details.

Sylvia Soumah is the founder and artistic director of Coyaba Dance Theater, one of the resident companies here at Dance Place in Northeast D.C.

The troupe presents the dance traditions of the diverse ethnic groups in West African cultures.

While the company has performed around the world, Soumah's focus is on giving back to her community while preserving the legacy of West African dance in D.C. [Drums playing] Soumah: I'm Sylvia Soumah, head of the African Dance Program here at Dance Place.

My company is a contemporary company.

It's Coyaba Dance Theater.

Ah!

Yah!

Soumah, voice-over: I started the company because I just wanted to be a head of a dance company that's doing work that's partly from Africa but also about the African American experience.

Keeping that energy going.

Soumah, voice-over: I do Coyaba not for the money, not for the labels, not for the prestige, not for the award.

It was always about the work, and it was always about community, and it was always about love.

♪ Birthday girls, do your dance ♪ ♪ Go, Maggie, oh, girl ♪ ♪ 4, 5, 6 ♪ Soumah, voice-over: I started doing African dance classes in 1993, and we have live drummers during the class.

It's all races, all ages, all ethnic groups.

For me, it doesn't matter, you know.

It's, if you want to do it, if you want to learn and you want to be respectful and you want to learn our culture, what better way it is through dance and music?

We add 'em up.

♪ 2, 3, 4, 5 ♪ ♪ And 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 ♪ Soumah, voice-over: Nobody wants to sit and read a book about history.

You want to dance.

You want to move.

When you can really experience it and dance it...

I think it's the best way to downplay stereotypes because then all that goes out the window.

I grew up in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Carla Perlo was a student at the University of Cincinnati, Ohio, and the director of Dance Place, and she started an inner city dance program in Cincinnati, so I met her when I was 10 years old.

That was my first introduction to modern dance or dance with some structure.

I had learning disabilities, so, you know, so dance was that outlet.

It was something that I can really shine in that I didn't have to work so, so hard for, but, you know, in academics, I kind of struggled.

[Cheering and applause] What I loved about modern dance is, you can tell your own story, as opposed to ballet, and you can be barefoot, and you can wear whatever you wanted.

In my twenties, I moved here to Dance Place to pursue modern dance.

I got into traditional West African dance after the birth of my son because I had brought my son.

He was two years old, and I brought him to a modern dance class, and I was trying to get him to sit down, you know, stay in his umbrella stroller.

That wasn't happening, and he wanted to get up and move, and I was like, "Oh, God, I'm doing plies.

Can you sit down?"

The person who was doing the class, he was like, "Bring your son to a African dance class."

I was like, "He can make all the noise he wants because there's a million kids there," and I was like, "OK. Well, Yeah.

I'm gonna bring him," and so that's how I got hooked.

[Drums playing] I've seen people come in, finish dancing, and they are sitting down there crying.

They go through this whole emotional thing that draw and bring out whatever, what's going on in their life or at the moment what happened, and then to be a African dance teacher, you're a therapist.

I keep my company very small... Go.

Do your thing.

Yeah.

Soumah, voice-over: but I bring in the community to fill up the stage because that's important because it's not about the professionals.

It's about a feeling.

It's about conveying a message that community matters.

People matters, and it's doesn't matter what economic base you come from.

We all matter, and so that's what my company is about.

It is also important for me to make sure that the people who work with me have opportunities to be directors, choreographers, teachers.

It's not just about me.

I want them to be able to do everything that I could do and to push, you know, this art form forward.

It's important for me to pass it on because if I try to keep everything, then it's gonna get lost.

I was one of those skinny, little girls who got picked on.

I got bullied.

You know, I got bullied about my skin color, you know, about my hair, so, like, for me, I'm always pulling for the underdog.

I got a good eye for spotting, like, "This kid needs a little bit of something, some inspiration.

"This kid, I'm gonna make this kid shine so everybody can see how special this kid is," or, "I'm gonna make this woman shine because I want everybody to know how special she is."

There's something about those drums and, you know, rhythm, your heartbeat, right?

You know, when you hear your baby cry when it's born, that's a great sound, right?

To me, sound is love.

Through Dance Place, Coyaba offers classes to kids ages 4 and up and to adults as well.

Coyaba also performs full-length dance concerts, as well as works tailored for local schools.

Check Dance Place's website for upcoming events.

Thank you for watching this celebration of trailblazing women in the arts in Washington.

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

I'm Felicia Curry.

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