Performing Arts Center in Dallas Includes Performance Park

On September 14, 2006, The Dallas Center for the Performing Arts, a new performing arts center for music, opera, theatre and dance, announced that it will create a ten-acre Performance Park that will surround the Center's four venues. The Center, which is scheduled to open in downtown Dallas in 2009, is the most significant new performing arts complex to be built since Lincoln Center in New York. Besides housing its five resident companies, it will host visiting music, opera, dance, and theatre companies from around the world.

Performance Park will consolidate the performing arts houses with hundreds of trees, large expanses of grass, and a series of gardens, fountains, reflecting pools, promenades and walkways. Stretching from Woodall Rogers Freeway to Ross Avenue, Performance Park will link the Center to The Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center to the west and connect with the Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts to the east.

The Dallas Center for the Performing Arts will include: 

• Margot and Bill Winspear Opera House and its Margaret McDermott Performance Hall—a 2,200-seat hall designed for performances of opera, ballet, Broadway and various traveling productions.
• Dee and Charles Wyly Theatre—a flexible 600-seat theatre for classical and experimental performances.
• Annette Strauss Artist Square—a home for the city's outdoor entertainment, able to accommodate audiences of up to 5,000 in a serene open-air setting.
• City Performance Hall—a main stage production space for Dallas' smaller performing arts organizations.

"The creation of the Dallas Center for the Performing Arts is an investment in the cultural life of our city," said Bill Lively, President and CEO of the Dallas Center for the Performing Arts. "Together with the Performance Park, the Center will become an exciting, seven-day-a-week destination that will animate Dallas and the region. This new Center ensures that future generations in Dallas and the region will have access to the best music, theatre, opera and dance from throughout the world."

The Center's resident companies will include:

• The Dallas Opera
• Dallas Theater Center
• Dallas Black Dance Theatre
• Texas Ballet Theatre
• Anita N. Martinez Ballet Folklorico

For more information about each company, please visit the appropriate link at the top of the article.

Sir Elton John and Dame Julie Andrews will join the Dallas Center for the Performing Arts at a fundraising gala, October 25, 2006 in The Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center. For more information please call 214.954.9925, x255. 

Photo 1 by REX
Photo 2 by Foster and Partners