Up Close and Personal
The Future of Arts Programming
Where: Hickory Choral Society Rehearsal Hall
When: Sunday, March 15, 2026, 3:30 – 5.30pm
Up Close and Personal Embodies the values of The Center for Creative and Compassionate Communities by providing literary arts programming for community members seeking a unique and rewarding cultural experience.
This experience includes enjoying the blending of the performing arts with the literary arts and deepening the audience’s experience by expanding the opportunities to interact with the writers and performers.
HALEH LIZA GAFORI
Is a poet/translator of the 13th century Persian mystic Rumi.
“There’s a rich fluency here not just in idiom but in gesture, in spirit. It’s uncanny to encounter eight-hundred-year-old verse this urgent. Gafori’s Rumi teaches me how to wander into mystery—“humble as soil”—without galloping toward some hasty and inorganic conclusion. What a gift this is, what gold.” —Kaveh Akbar
LIAM BAILEY
Plays the Violin/fiddle.
Liam Thomas Bailey is a singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist based in Hickory, North Carolina.
SALLY FANJOY & JAMES LABRENZ
James Labrenz and Sally Fanjoy are conceptual artists and photographers (Hickory, North Carolina) weaving art and life for 45 years. Sally studied at the International Center for Photography in New York City. James is self-taught and both are life long learners.
Their work explores the physical and spiritual connection with light – how it talls, retlects, transmits, connects and has been exhibited throughout the US. They were selected for the 2025 and 2023 NC
Artists exhibit at the Contemporary Art Museum in Raleigh, N.C., the ArtPop Street Gallery Class of 2023 and the ArtFields 2024 in Lake City, S.C. Their Seeing Light at the Hickory Museum of Art (September 2019-January 2020) was an artist mash up using Corning Optical Communications fiber glass to create both individual work and a team immersive environment within the gallery of the Hickory Museum of Art.
“I’ll play it first and tell you what it is later.” Miles Davis
BRITTANY BAILEY
East Coast based dance performer, choreographer, and teacher.
Brittany Bailey’s background is an eclectic mix of education, culture and environment, from training with the Merce Cunningham company to appearing in live performance art at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City to learning about the movement of Whirling Dervish practitioners, to a degree in Anthropology from Columbia University.
Graduated high school in 2008 from the University of North Carolina School of the Arts. Completed a B.A. at Columbia University in 2023. Trained with Merce Cunningham as well as whirled with the dervishes of the Mevlevi Order. Worked with Marina Abramović at MoMA in 2010, as well as on numerous projects with Robert Wilson, and was a member of the Michael Clark Company for performances at the Tate Modern in 2011. Authorized to teach, stage, and perform Yvonne Rainer’s Trio A. Currently on faculty at the Washington School of Ballet.