Since opening in October 2021, Capital One Hall has drawn an array of nationally recognized musical and comedy acts, Broadway shows and even a circus to Tysons, but the performing arts venue has also opened doors for many local community and nonprofit artists.
Thanks to a Community Arts Partnership with ArtsFairfax, Fairfax County’s official arts agency, Capital One Hall (7750 Capital One Tower Road) has hosted 48 local nonprofits so far have collectively drawn more than 61,000 attendees and generated $2.4 million in ticket revenue, officials shared at a July 14 reception celebrating the collaboration’s first five seasons.
“Partnerships like this continue to foster ArtsFairfax’s commitment to amplifying and recognizing and celebrating the importance of the arts,” ArtsFairfax President and CEO Stuart Holt said, thanking Capital One for including a performing arts space on its headquarters campus and the participating artists for “your creativity, your talents [and] your power of storytelling.”
Negotiated as part of Capital One Center’s development, the partnership reserves 15% of the venue’s bookings for Fairfax County-based arts and culture nonprofits, which can utilize both the main hall and black-box Vault at subsidized rates. Capital One Hall also assists with box office sales, marketing and event staging.
Being able to perform at Capital One Hall has been a game-changer for the Capital Wind Symphony, according to its artistic director, Dr. William Lake Jr., and board vice president, Scott Herman.
A volunteer ensemble established in 1991, the group typically rehearses at McLean High School and performs at churches, schools and other locations in the community across the D.C. region. It has secured a spot at Capital One Hall in all five seasons since ArtsFairfax made its first round of selections in 2020.
“Our audience and community engagement has just gone through the roof,” Herman told FFXnow. “It’s given us a kind of a central home that’s in a really great area, a very diverse area … It’s very central, being right off the Beltway. The advertising that we’ve gotten through here, the scope of our programs, we couldn’t afford a place like this otherwise.”
In addition to helping attract audiences an all-volunteer group might not otherwise be able to reach, the name recognition and formal setting of Capital One Hall have pushed Capital Wind Symphony to be more ambitious and creative in its programming.
The ensemble set a world record last November when it convened 239 piccolo players to perform “Stars and Stripes Forever” as part of a program celebrating America’s 250th anniversary, and for the upcoming fall concert, titled “Dias de Muertos: Vibrations from the Afterlife,” there are plans for a pre-show festival with salsa dancing, margaritas and other nods to Mexican culture to take advantage of the hall’s spacious foyer.
Lake noted that the symphony is now making a profit on its Capital One Hall events, and because they usually occur in the fall, typically the second weekend of November, the momentum carries through the rest of the season.
“It’s part of the history of our organization intimately,” Lake said of the partnership, “of elevating our organization to not just being a community ensemble, but a high-performing community ensemble that is definitely something that should be consumed by our area.”
The Reston-based Gin Dance Company has similarly seen new opportunities open up as a result of the Community Arts Partnership.
“There’s no way we would be able to be in a theater like this without the partnership,” co-founder and executive director Gary Cuff said, recalling participating in early discussions about Capital One Center to determine whether the development would provide a community center or a theater.
Like the Capital Wind Symphony, Gin Dance still performs at a variety of locations around the region, such as schools and senior centers, but Capital One Hall has become a reliable, convenient base that supporters can count on.
The venue’s lighting, set design and other equipment has enhanced the company’s productions, artistic director and choreographer Shu-Chen Cuff says.
It also allows for more collaborations with different artists, from the other dance companies involved in the now-annual Aurora Dance Fest to Fairfax County Poet Laureate Angelique Palmer, who provided words for a piece that will premiere at Gin Dance’s show on Sept. 12.
“We heard just enormous, great feedback from our patrons,” Shu-Chen Cuff said. “They would come and always [be] like, wow it’s so amazing to see the production that we’ve been continuing improving, continuing to build. So, yeah, absolutely, this partnership is so incredible.”
The support for nonprofit organizations is just one part of Capital One’s partnership with ArtsFairfax, along with an internal corporate art program to bring artworks to its workspaces, according to Erin Mical, the financial company’s vice president of global workplace services.
As the Tysons campus has evolved from a corporate headquarters into a more public-oriented development with restaurants, a hotel, entertainment and an elevated park, Capital One has been looking to expand the programs it offers with ArtsFairfax and other local groups, she said.
For example, the upcoming Celebration of the Arts, a free festival that will take over Capital One Center’s streets for a second year this September, is a collaboration with the Tephra Institute of Contemporary Art in Reston.
“At Capital One, any community in which we have associates serving our customers, we have a dedication and commitment to serve the communities, so it’s equally as important for us to add these types of programs and activations in Tysons, with it being our headquarters,” Mical said. “And we’re really looking forward to and very grateful that we have Capital One Hall that can just bring in so many different local nonprofits and community members here in Northern Virginia.”
