Headlights Theater to feature fewer but larger shows, expand community programming

Madison Elliott doesn’t have to come back to Sioux Falls. 

She did in 2020, when the pandemic shut down the beginning of the South Dakota-born New Yorker’s career as a professional dancer, and a move home made the most economic sense.

She’s back in Brooklyn now but still returns to Sioux Falls in the summer. Today, there are other motivators: continuity and community. 

Elliot is the founder of Headlights Theater, whose fifth season of shows in Sioux Falls launches Saturday at 108 S. Dakota Ave. with a dance performance, soundtracked by local band Thought Patrol. The show also will feature live painting from local artist Joe Schaeffer. As usual, the show will be lit by the headlights of attendees.

What started as a way to keep the arts alive in the time of social distancing has grown since that first 2020 season into a full-fledged nonprofit with designs on a long-term future in the community. 

“It’s getting bigger than any one person,” Elliott said. “Yes, I am the one who started it and put in the initial work, but now it’s a team, and we’re trying to figure out how it can be bigger than any one of us.”

There are a few key differences between the shows this summer and the shows of the past few summers. The differences are mainly about scale and frequency: as in fewer but larger shows. 

Elliot and the nonprofit’s board of directors want to do two major things by adjusting the approach. First, they want to make sure the outfit can continue if its originators move on. Organizing shows is a lot of work to do for any volunteer, and Headlights doesn’t want to burn out anyone. 

Second, Elliot said, they want the events to be, well, events.

“We want it to stay this kind of rare, special gem, first off, but it’s also asking ‘How can we make one night freaking incredible rather than have a bunch of nights be kind of mediocre?” she said.

After the Saturday’s premiere, the troupe will bring back a group of dancers who, like Elliot, left Sioux Falls to pursue professional careers but now want to showcase their talents for their hometown. 

The music for the Aug. 10 performance will come from Soleil, and the dancing will be complemented by performers from South Dakota Aerial & Arts.

The local aerial arts group also has partnered with Headlights to offer a bungee dance class, billed as a sort of boon to those who want to move their body without the wear, tear and impact of dance. Those classes are a new addition to the Headlights’ catalog of workshops. The group has courses for aspiring dancers and young artists, as well as a set of dance at home educational videos.

For Andy Howes, a Headlights board member, bringing together different groups of artists in Sioux Falls is important for the city as a whole. A group like Headlights helps cultivate the kind of cultural scene that draws people to a community and opens doors for performers who might think they need to leave to pursue the arts. 

“In the past, people doing interesting, creative things in Sioux Falls are the folks that maybe would have left and not come back,” said Howes, who owns the local record label Different Folk. “And what we’re seeing is that there are a lot of creative, immensely talented artists and people who operate in that space that are choosing to call Sioux Falls home, or they’re choosing to do interesting things here, even if they don’t live here year- round.”

That’s a message that resonates for Joe Schaeffer. The University of Sioux Falls graphic arts professor will paint on multiple canvases throughout the Saturday performance, and the pieces will be sold after the show. 

The proceeds will go back to Headlights. Schaeffer feels strongly about the importance of artists getting paid for their work, but he feels just as strongly about the need for creatives to be generous and support one another. 

“I talk to my students about putting in the work but also believing in generosity,” he said. “And I think that sort of giving aspect always sort of comes back to you.” 

Schaeffer has never painted to music like the spastic indie rock of Thought Patrol, but he’s looking forward to it. In the past, he has painted through performances from jazz artists and the South Dakota Symphony Orchestra, always with a canvas spread out across the stage. 

This time will be different as the paintings will be upright and visible, and also because of the unique venue and coalescence of art forms.

“The Headlights folks are very much about intuitiveness and also the chaos that unfolds with short or limited time,” Schaeffer said. “So I’m kind of rolling with that to see what may work out in the end.”

Elliot also feels strongly about generosity and community-building. Brooklyn is once again the home base for her professional dance career, but she feels compelled to carry on with Headlights and the impact it has had on the Sioux Falls arts scene.

She moved to New York at 15 to pursue dance, but her experience with Headlights has shown her the value of coming home and giving back. 

With any luck, teenagers like the one she was will see a place for themselves in their own community – and perhaps get a glimpse of the ways their community contributes to the wider world of art.

“ Regardless of where my home is, I will always be a Sioux Falls artist,” she said.