The Southern Agenda: Feb/March 2012

On the Ropes
Lansing, West Virginia
Part ropes course, part canopy tour, and part circus school, the TimberTrek aerial adventure park from West Virginia’s Adventures on the Gorge represents the next level of vertical exploration. Elevated challenge centers are hugely popular overseas (there are more than seven hundred in France alone), but the West Virginia attraction will be among the first of its kind in the States when it opens in March. Built on a scenic five-acre expanse of woods next to the New River Gorge, the park is essentially a treetop obstacle course: Bridges and tightropes connect aerial platforms, and zip lines, swings, and trapezes send adventurers soaring from hemlock to poplar, red oak to maple. There are loops for every age and skill set, but if the mere thought of leaving the ground gets your palms sweating, don’t worry: Watching first-timers careen through the course is almost as much fun as doing it yourself. adventurewestvirginia.com

Alabama
ALL THAT JAZZ

From the sanctuary of Fairview Baptist Church in New Orleans to the stage at Lincoln Center in New York to the Emirates Palace in Abu Dhabi, Wynton Marsalis’s career has taken him around the world and back. This year, the trumpeter hits the road again with the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra to celebrate his fiftieth birthday. Alabamans can catch Marsalis at the Alys Robinson Stephens Performing Arts Center in Birmingham (March 2) and at the historic Saenger Theatre in Mobile (March 5). The tour is packed with Southern stops, so check for additional performances this spring. wyntonmarsalis.com

Arkansas
TALENT SEACH

The Arkansas Art Center in Little Rock houses works by such masters as Rembrandt, Picasso, and Andrew Wyeth, but one of its most buzzed-about exhibits focuses on the lesser-known talent of homegrown artists. Considered one of the top regional showcases in the country, the annual Delta Exhibition (January 27–March 28) highlights mixed-media artists from Arkansas and six surrounding states. This year’s juror, Tom Butler, the director of the Columbus Museum of Art in Georgia, sifted through nearly a thousand submissions, from painting and sculpture to video and photography, before whittling his selection down to just fifty-four works. arkarts.com