ABOUT THE APOLLON
The Apollon is Omaha’s multi-genre arts and entertainment hub where all are welcome to indulge their tastes in a place of welcome and warmth. The Apollon experience is co-created by a vibrant, well-supported arts community and an equally vibrant, well-rewarded audience.
In Greek mythology, Apollo was the patron of art and music and a revered and called upon source of artistic inspiration. Apollo was also the leader of the nine Muses - one each for epic, lyric, and choral poetry as well as one for music, comedy, tragedy, dance, astronomy, and history.
The Apollon seeks to be the physical realization of Apollo's expansive reach in the realms of music, arts, and culture by combining components for theater, cinema, music, literature, visual art, and digital media.
Redefining Collaboration
For years now, most of the arts world has been all a-twitter about collaborative efforts where Artist A goes off to his studio and creates something while Artist B parks it at a coffee shop and creates something else. When they’re both finished, we bring them back together on a stage and figure out how to fit A’s thing with B’s thing and we pat ourselves on the back for our commitment to cross-genre collaboration. Sometimes we settle for so much less than what is possible.
Collaboration using this model only rarely produces art that is impactful, much less art that is better together than the original pieces were separately. More often, the original works are degraded in some small way so that they will fit together for the collaborative performance.
On the hunt for a better way, Ryan spoke to a video game designer in California who explained to him how big budget gaming titles are created. “Designing a video game is like creating a whole new world. What does it look like? What are the fundamental rules of this place? What sounds will we hear when we visit? These and thousands of other questions have to be answered for a new video game to be born.
I always start by booking a big conference room and bringing in the experts. We’ll take graphic designers, animators, landscape architects, painters, musicians, choreographers, authors – whatever useful craftsman we can find – and we put them in a room together. Then I stand up at the front of the room and say, ‘We’re here to invent a new world together,’ and that’s exactly what we do. Every person in the room contributes expertise from their field and we find answers to our thousands of questions. People start riffing off each other and it all gains momentum and little by little we begin to see what this new world looks like. I don’t think I could create any other way.”
Even after years of talking about collaboration with anyone and everyone who would stand still long enough, we have never heard an example that embodies true cross-genre collaboration better than that. We believe that individual creation requires space, time, resources, and support. To that list we would only add proximity as a necessary ingredient for true collaboration. We use the word often enough, but when we use it at The Apollon what we really mean is co-creation. We mean a process by which any number of artists can work together, can contribute their individual expertise, can “start riffing off each other” to create something together that is a wholly original work that no one of them could have created without all of the others. In this way, we will discover together new heights of creative achievement and show each other, and the world,sincerely new things that none of us has ever seen before.
Core Values
-
Art consists of just three elements: the performer, the witness, and the shared experience between them.
-
The arts community is open to all.
-
The Apollon recognizes, encourages, and protects creation and real collaboration.
-
The Apollon will support artists and compensate them for their work.
-
Cross-genre collaboration is the new frontier of arts experiences.
Staff Bios
The official spiel: The co-creator of our collaborative art gallery concept, Ryan has been annoying his family and friends by talking incessantly about “his big idea” for every waking moment since June 2009. He is the primary business mind on our team, coming to us with a long (and we’re gonna guess dull) history of professional exploits in the fields of accounting, human resources, payroll, purchasing, and contract negotiation. Artistically, he gets his “street cred” from the literary community and his long-time involvement with Nebraska’s poetry slam movement. In 2008, he co-founded the Nebraska Writers Collective, a 501(c)(3) focused on supporting language arts education for middle and high school students. Ryan has previously served on the Board of Directors of the Nebraska Writers Collective, Nebraska Center for the Book, and the Backwaters Press.
What he wanted us not to tell you: He was also the 1992 City of Houston square dancing champion.
The official spiel: Other than Ryan, Elizabeth is one of the longest surviving members of The Apollon's leadership. What can we say? Ninety hour workweeks don't agree with everybody. We've had more than one tap out in favor of sanity. Not our Elizabeth. She'd rather have art than sanity. Currently a studio art and photography student on the long and winding road to an arts management degree - and because we can put two and two together, we decided to give her some art to manage. She's also a sculptor, a photographer, and a pretty bad ass installation artist, so there's that.
What she wanted us not to tell you: Elizabeth uses a bunch of skeletal remains and dead things to make art. She's definitely talented but sometimes the stuff she makes creeps us the fuck out. You've been warned.
The official spiel: Sticking with our creepy theme, I guess, we've recently added frequent contributor Nicole Roberts to the permanent staff. Not that SHE'S creepy, but that's how her work is most often described. We prefer to call it awesome - although she did get her degree in 16th century German art or something frighteningly obscure like that so maybe it's somewhere in the middle. She also speaks German so that makes her even more warm and cuddly. She's a painter and an aspiring comic book artist AND if you're working in our studio space she's also in charge so behave.
What she wanted us not to tell you: When Nicole grows up, she wants to be Goku from DragonBall Z. Ossu! Ora Goku!
