Around 50K attend 'Aurora' in the Dallas Arts District

                                 Photo: NATHANAEL REHLANDER

Crowds attending Aurora-Powered by Reliant in the Dallas Arts District set a new record for attendance. Early estimates indicated 50,000 people poured into downtown to take in the expansive light, sound, performance and new media event that stretched across the 68-acre district.

“This is fast becoming a signature cultural event for Dallas, where visitors can see unique and top quality artwork unlike anything they’ve experienced before,” said Doug Curtis, president and CEO of the Center. “The response from our community has been tremendous. As we go forward, we see it has the potential to be a major tourist draw for North Texas, something all of us can be proud of.”

This year’s event featured 80 international, national and local artists. The 19-block Dallas Arts District was divided into sections, curated by six renowned artists. One section included art created by the talented students at Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts, whose campus sits in the district.

This is the first year that Aurora was co-presented by its co-founders, Shane Pennington and Joshua King, and the nonprofit AT&T Performing Arts Center.

The Center and the founders joined forces to create a sustainable platform so Aurora could grow in scope and quality this year, and in the future.

“Aurora has entered a new stratosphere,” says Mr. King. “The sheer amount of extraordinary talent drawn into one place for one special night is something you don’t see very often, and continues to redefine the cultural reputation of Dallas in a major way.”

Among the major installations was a new version of the video projection by German artist Leo Kuelbs and the artist collective 3_search. To the voice of an opera singer performing below, the images projected onto the Wyly Theatre made the cube-shaped building appear to contort, rise, and fall.

At nearby mixed-use, high-rise One Arts Plaza, artist Memo Atkin projected a series of beams two miles into the sky, which created music when the lasers crossed and amazed the audience below.

And a few blocks away, visitors could walk down “Memory Lane,” a long line of projected images of Dallas in the last century, provided by people from across North Texas.

This year’s Aurora included installations at a number of neighboring cultural and commercial institutions including the Nasher Sculpture Center, Crow Collection of Asian Art, Dallas Museum of Art, Meyerson Symphony Center, Dallas City Performance Hall, Klyde Warren Park, Trammel Crow Center and the new HALL Arts. Installations were also created in the Cathedral Shrine of the Virgin of Guadalupe, St. Paul’s Methodist Church and First United Methodist Church.