Immersive BELLA GAIA Looks At The Earth Through Dance, Music, Multimedia

An immersive experience unlike any other, a performance of Bella Gaia fuses stirring performances of world music and dance with high fidelity NASA imagery of Earth. Time-lapse nature photography and cultural heritage footage meets NASA supercomputer data visualizations, creating an unprecedented audiovisual experience inspired by astronauts who spoke of the life changing power of seeing the Earth from space.

Bella Gaia comes to the Harris Center on Wednesday, April 3, 2019 at 7:30 pm. Tickets are $22-$42; Premium $48. Children & Students with ID $11-$24. Tickets are available online at www.harriscenter.net or from Harris Center Ticket Office at 916-608-6888 from 12 noon to 6 pm, Monday through Saturday, and two hours before show time. Parking is included in the price of the ticket. Harris Center is located on the west side of Folsom Lake College campus in Folsom, CA, facing East Bidwell Street.

When violinist, filmmaker and music producer Kenji Williams met NASA astronaut Edward Michael Fincke, he asked him how living on the International Space Station changed him. Fincke replied that seeing Earth from space gave him a much greater appreciation for the planet.

"Mike Fincke lived on ISS for over a year: the first time he looked out the window and saw the living, glowing blue bubble of Earth in the blackness of space, he had a complete transformation," said Williams. "He came back with a much greater appreciation for the planet which sustains us. It got me thinking, 'How could I bring this transformative experience that he had to those of us who can't go to space?'"

Bella Gaia combines beautiful visuals projected above on a huge screen with live music and dance from cultures around the world. It's a complex, layered look at the Planet Earth from an astronaut's perspective, an artist's perspective and an environmentalist's perspective-all on one stage, all in one evening. A unique meeting of science and the arts, Bella Gaia bills itself as "beyond words," and there's truth to that.

"I began taking data and static maps from NASA and the United Nations and making them into engaging, beautiful, immersive - even emotional - data realizations," said Williams. Data as art, in other words. You've never seen anything like it. "How do we deliver the message that the earth is alive and breathing without saying a single word? That is the methodology and language of Bella Gaia."

Neuroscience has actually found that people learn when the right and left brain are activated simultaneously so the music is actually part of what makes people able to process the scientific information on intellectual levels as well as making it emotionally compelling, cinematic, and human.

Through the multimedia technology, Bella Gaia visits India, Japan, Egypt, and New York City. The five-person company includes Mr. Williams on violin.

"Bella Gaia transported me back into orbit, to feel the beauty and power of the Earth" (John Grunsfield, a NASA astronaut who flew four missions with the Space Shuttle).

An immersive, multimedia experience, the Folsom performance of Bella Gaia comes just before Earth Day 2019, which marks the 50th anniversary of the Santa Barbara oil spill, and just after the 50th anniversary of the Earthrise photograph-the famous picture of Earth and some of the Moon's surface that was taken from lunar orbit by astronaut William Anders on December 24, 1968, during the Apollo 8 mission. Nature photographer Galen Rowell declared it "the most influential environmental photograph ever taken." Both elements-environmental awareness and NASA photography-are deeply interwoven into Bella Gaia.

Great Shows. Up Close. In Folsom!

The Harris Center for the Arts at Folsom Lake College brings the community together to share in cultural experiences featuring the work of artists from throughout the region and around the world. Built and operated by the Los Rios Community College District, the $50 million, state-of-the-art regional performing arts center boasts three intimate venues with outstanding acoustics, an art gallery, a recording studio, elegant teaching spaces, plenty of safe parking and all the other amenities of a world-class performing arts venue. Each year the Center hosts over 400 events attracting more than 150,000 annually.

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