You Can Learn from Famous Artists at the FSAF

The Fairbanks Summer Arts Festival (FSAF) is an annual event in the community where you can learn from famous artists. They come into town to teach. Read what kind of classes typically are offered, and more about the events.

Important note: Terms indicated with * are explained in the High Latitude Style glossary (link in sidebar).

Fairbanks Summer Arts Festival – a Festival to Learn from Famous Artists

Summer time is festival time. One looks forward to great music, hopes for sunshine, and thinks of what to wear for outdoor concerts. Whether the outfit is a casual plaid shirt with Tee and jeans or a cool Bohemian Style look, it is not fun to dance in the rain, even when the song suggests the opposite. 😉

The Fairbanks Summer Arts Festival that started yesterday, doesn’t care about rain or sunshine for most of its events. Many performances take place in the comfortable seats of the UAF Davis Concert Hall, Great Hall, and Salisbury Theater, at the One Riverview Plaza, or at the Gold Room of the Westmark Hotel in downtown Fairbanks. Jazz concerts take place at the Pump House which is a historic place in College, or in a tent out in Fox at the Silver Gulch, which is one of Alaska’s breweries.

Two Weeks of Events

The Fairbanks Summer Arts Festival brings together artists from various places outside of Alaska, like Gary Gibson, Bohuslava (Slavka) Jelinkova, Caitlin Warbelow, or Dongsheng Wei. At the beginning of the festival, the festival guest artists give performances in the evenings. Towards the end of the festival, the students will exhibit or perform what they learned during the classes taught by the guest artists. students pay fees for the classes. Private lesson can be arranged among request, too at a festival rate.

Classes Encompass Various Arts

There are classes, among other things, in jazz, fiddling, Celtic, Irish, flute, pipe, tin whistle, steel pan, orchestra, pop, chamber, and symphony music. Students can join various vocal classes like, for instance, gospel choir, vocal jazz, A Capella, and opera.

There are also classes for those who like comedy, theater or cabaret. Dance classes cover classical ballet at all levels, ballroom dancing, Milonga style tango, swing, Irish, Latin, Afro and Cuban dance.

When you are into yoga, you may try out to add a third dimension taking a class in aerial yoga. Sounds fun. 🙂 If you are into the recent Pilates trend, there are classes for you too. Of course, Thai Chi is on the schedule as well as healing arts.

Some of the classes take advantage of the great outdoors that Alaska has to offer. There are watercolor landscape or botanical garden painting, and some photography classes.

The fashionistas may love the sewing classes. Unfortunately for me, they are at the beginning and low advanced level covering things I already learned in middle school. There are many reasons why you should learn to sew.

My fellow bloggers may find it exciting that the festival also offers creative writing classes.

Are you into culinary arts? What about learning to prepare delicious Indian, Italian, or Spanish dishes  at the Fairbanks Summer Arts Festival?

How to Attend to Learn from Famous Artists

This festival is annually always in the last two full weeks of July. While there are also events on the weekends, there aren’t classes. Thus, you could use the weekends to explore places farther away from Fairbanks, like Denali Park (two day trip when you want a bus tour in the park), travel on the to the Arctic Circle (one-day trip), or do a round trip from Fairbanks using the Parks Highway, then the Denali Highway to Parson, and the Alcan to Delta Junction and then drive back to Fairbanks (two-day trip). Be aware that the Denali and Dalton Highways are unpaved roads. In other words, you should rent a four-wheel drive at a car-rental that permits driving unpaved roads. And, yes, you better buy the broken windshield insurance. 😉

The Festival Ends with Dances and Music from All over the World

The last day of the Fairbanks Summer Arts Festival presents dances and music from all over the world. The performer are students and/or instructors of the festival. This year, my husband and I presented an Argentine Tango. We picked La Camprasita, and Argentine Tango, as the music for our performance at the Fairbanks Summer Arts Festival.

What I Wore Performing at the International Dances

My husband dressed as a gaucho and I wore this floral dress with tail, sequins and lace.

Sorry, I have no movie of our performance. I was a bit nervous about our performance. The stage was pretty sticky. One of the dancers was wondering whether they had cleaned it with coke or beer. 😉 At the dress rehearsal, I landed on my bum instead of my feet when my dance partner threw me out like the figure dance do with their partners. But it worked perfectly in the show. I landed one foot after the other as supposed. Interested in seeing me dancing? There is a dance movie in the post at the link.

Want to see more of my dance dresses? At these links, you can see the dress I wore at Dancing with the Fairbanks Stars, and my chartreuse burgundy dance dress with fishnets.

What to Wear When Attending a Fairbanks Summer Arts Festival Concert?

The dress code for concert or event visitors is Fairbanks Formal. Read more on what is Fairbanks Formal or take the next photos as an outfit inspiration of what to wear.

Other Entertainment in Fairbanks during the Festival

One of the festival weeks overlaps with the Golden Days which is a week long event celebrating the striking of gold by Philip Pedro*. These festivities end with the Golden Day Parade.

Read more about festival tips or the Fairbanks Summer Arts Festival.

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Photos: G. Kramm

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