Gowanathon Festival Returns To Raise Funds For Local Artists

Arts lovers, rejoice! Spoke The Hub's second annual performance festival Gowanathon is back with a new lineup of choreography, theater, music groups, arts, crafts, cabarets, and other multi-media acts to raise funds for local artists, community groups and neighborhood arts centers.

Spoke the Hub’s first 12-hour “art-a-thon” took place last year, raising $18,000 to purchase and install a new HVAC in the Hub’s penthouse theater in the Gowanus Arts Building at 295 Douglass Street between Third and Fourth Avenues.

This year, the event has been expanded to fill an entire weekend—Friday night, March 2 through the evening of March 4—and will range from musical acts such as Bob Goldberg & The Famous Accordian Orchestra to workshops including "Movie Magic: Drawing on Film," in which participants will learn how to paint and scratch images onto bona fide film reels from known movies.

More familiar art forms will be on offer as well.

"I will be performing a modern dance solo," said Victoria Benzinger, whose eponymous troupe will feature additional works by The Todd Henry Movement, Molly Durham, Jen Painter, Anna Folckomer-Williams and The Tara Lynne Band. "Half of what we make Sunday evening will go to Spoke the Hub, so they can keep providing artists will affordable and clean rehearsal spaces. The other half will benefit my new projects this season."

Tracy Eisenberg, another of Victoria Benzinger Dance's performers, said she looked forward to Gowanathon as both a participant in the weekend and an attendant at other events.

"I plan to stop by the STH Young Artist’s Spa & Beauty Shop!" Eisenberg enthused, "and Mozart Meets Metal sounds like an experience I wouldn't soon forget."

As a musician, vocalist and guitarist Tara Lynne said the Gowanathon afforded her the opportunity to rearrange her songs in a new way.

"The Tara Lynne Vocal Experience is an acoustic version of my regular group The Tara Lynne Band," she explained. "We will perform mostly original songs in three-part harmony backed by me on the guitar. I've heard comparisons to The Mamas & The Papas as well as Fleet Foxes—but with girls."

For a complete list of the weekend's schedule, visit the Gowanathon mini-site on SpokeTheHub.org. Interested parties can purchase individual tickets for each event, a $250 Fun Pass for the entire weekend, or simply make a direct donation to The Hub.