TICKETS NOW ON SALE FOR THE MÉLANGE
$20 TICKETS
The Florence, at The Academy of GHDT,
329 Gradle Drive, Carmel, IN 46032
Saturday, January 11, 2025, at 5:00 pm & 7:30 pm
Sunday, January 12, 2025, at 3:00 pm
Mélange: concoction, mixture, combination. In this new series of performances, audiences will
experience art coming to life in front of their eyes in an intimate theatrical setting. Each series
will feature a musician (a vocalist or instrumentalist), a dancer (from Gregory Hancock Dance
Theatre), and a visual artist. Together they will create art at The Florence (Carmel’s newest
black-box theatre space), in a collaborative and organic manner. The musician will present a set
of music, while the dancer creates choreography inspired by the music, as the visual artist creates
art inspired by the movement of the dancer and the music of the musician. Audiences will
experience live art in a new manner, bringing groundbreaking and creative art to Central Indiana.
After the overwhelming success of the first season of The Mélange Series, installment, we are
excited to welcome three new artists for the first performance of The Mélange Series this season.
ACTRESS – JEAN ARNOLD
Jean Arnold has been a performer her whole life. She performed in her first play at age 8 with her Girl Scout Troop, made the parents laugh and was hooked. She grew up on the Children’s Museum Lilly Theatre stage, attended Broad Ripple School of Performing Arts, studying with David Neighbors, Cindy Paul and Laura Byram. She attended Otterbien College, interning in NYC with Stuart Howard Casting Associates her senior year. She toured with ARTReach, starred at Miami University Summer Stage and then moved to NYC. Her O-Broadway credits include Bianca in The Taming of The Shrew with Riverside Shakespeare and Fairy Godmother in Cinders, a traditional Cinderella Panto. She worked with 1010 Players, Alainthus Grove Serial, and other smaller plays and serials in Greenwich Village and the East Village, at the time when artists could afford to live and rent space there. Jean and husband Richard moved back to Indy in 1995 with their first child and after playing Fan and several others in the revival of Tom Haas’s adaptation of A Christmas Carol in 1996, Jean shifted to training to become a childbirth
educator, prenatal and postnatal yoga teacher and generally advocating for safer birthing. When the opportunity arose to return to the theatre she re-entered the Indy scene in 2010 and has been active ever since performing with Indianapolis Civic Theatre, Phoenix Theatre, Fonseca Theatre Company, Southbank Theatre Company, Play Zoomers, Inc., Betty Rage, No Exit, TOTS, Bard Fest, and the IRT. Jean’s short plays have been performed at Indy Fringe 2015 in Four Square produced by Ansley Valentine, In A Very Phoenix Christmas 2016, 2018 and All three Boo La La’s at FTC. She directed her Noir piece, Lost Angela for Play Zoomers in 2022. Jean is forever striving to create reverence and to help us reclaim the sacred in our daily lives.
DANCER – THOMAS MASON
Thomas James Mason, from Denver, Colorado, began dancing at Premiere School of Dance and is alumni to the Sweatshop Dance pre-professional program. He is trained in Tap, Jazz, Ballet, Lyrical, Modern, Hop Hop, Contemporary, Commercial, and Aerial, and continues to expand into other styles of dance. He graduated in 2015 from the Dance and Movement program at Denver School of the Arts and then moved to the United Kingdom. Thomas graduated in 2018 from Falmouth University with a BA (Hons) in Dance and Choreography. After graduating in 2015, Thomas worked professionally as a freelance dancer traveling around the world performing, teaching, and choreographing in different projects. Also, while at Falmouth University, Thomas was a company member at Yskynna Vertical Dance Company where he dived into the aerial arts. In 2019 he moved back to the United States to join Gregory Hancock Dance Theatre. Since joining GHDT Thomas has originated iconic roles such as The Boy in
THERE’S NO PLACE LIKE HOME and Cleopatra in ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA. He has also had the wonderful opportunity to choreography work for the company, most notably, THE ALLEY OF THE KISS, which premiered in October of 2023. He is always thankful to be involved in art community and looks forward to what’s to come.
VISUAL ARTIST – ROBERT SMITH
Robert Maurice Smith is a painter and draftsman based in Indianapolis, Indiana. Formerly a construction worker and metal fabricator, Rob is currently a student at the Herron School of Art and Design pursuing his Bachelor of Fine Art in Painting and, prospectively, his Master of Fine Art in Painting.
Before returning to school full-time, Rob mentored in the centuries-old atelier style of art instruction under Kerry Holsapple of Atelier Indiana. This training coupled with attending workshops taught by some of the most recognized contemporary masters such as Steven Assael and Robert Liberace has provided Rob with a solid foundation in traditional realist methodology. Along with years of technical training, Rob also possesses a curious mind. He views the artist’s role in society as a philosopher and a translator/curator of the visual language. Often with the human figure as the center of focus, Rob integrates observational imagery with abstract symbols to generate deeper inquiries into the human condition. The interplay between realism and more conceptual motifs empowers the viewer to further query how much people (individuals or communities) are affected and shaped by forces outside our control that we can’t comprehend. Rob regularly exhibits work in Indiana’s regional juried shows such as the Richmond Art Museum Annual Art Show and the Hoosier Salon. He maintains a studio at the Stutz Building in Indianapolis and is a member of the Stutz Artist Association. The Mélange Series at The Florence has been created by GHDT, Executive Artistic Director, Gregory Glade Hancock and is presented by Gregory Hancock Dance Theatre.
