Virginia Arts Festival

The Virginia Arts Festival is a Norfolk-based non-profit arts presenter which serves southeastern Virginia, offering dozens of performances during the spring and throughout the year. Virginia Arts Festival performances have included international ballet companies, along with modern, contemporary, and ethnic dance companies; world-renowned soloists and ensembles in musical genres including classical, jazz, world, folk, rock, blues, bluegrass, country, and pop; opera; theater and cabaret; and collaborative productions with local arts organizations like the Virginia Symphony Orchestra.

City of Norfolk and a group of arts patrons, seeking to increase local tourism during the spring “shoulder season,” approached Robert W. Cross in 1995 to create a performing arts festival that would serve as a cultural destination for the region. Cross produced the first Virginia International Waterside Arts Festival on 1997, presenting an 18-day festival featuring such performers as Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra, the Mark Morris Dance Group, contemporary composer/performer Steve Reich, and jazz legends Ramsey Lewis and Billy Taylor. The 1997 Festival also saw the creation of the first Virginia International Tattoo, an international display of military bands, drill teams, and pipe and drum corps.

After four successful years, in 2001 the name was officially changed to the Virginia Arts Festival.

The Washington Post has called the Virginia Arts Festival the “Tidewater Tanglewood.” From a two-week festival in its first year, the festival has tripled in size and attendance. In 2016, the Virginia Arts Festival celebrated its 20th Anniversary season, presenting 72 ticketed performances throughout the region from mid-April through June, with patrons traveling from 49 states and 13 countries.

Reaching tens of thousands of students every year, the Virginia Arts Festival offers year-round arts education programs, presenting special student matinee performances and aligning visiting performing artists with area schools for master classes, in-school workshops, and demonstrations. According to their 2016 Annual Report, the organization’s education programs reached 39,644 area school children during the 2015-16 season.

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