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Culture

New Arts Center Debuts

RCW Sets the Performance Stage

    The mix of anticipation and nervousness that a performer feels before going onstage is what Janet Koike probably feels on the eve of the opening of her new community cultural center in Alameda. Koike is no stranger to those emotions, having been a Bay Area performing artist for the better part of her life.
    Married to a member of the San Francisco Mime Troupe, Koike began performing with San Jose Taiko, a Japanese-style drumming group, more than 16 years ago. She also formed her own nonprofit world-music ensemble, RhythMix, in 1997. With funds that she inherited from her father, Koike has now embarked on her most ambitious project ever—an Alameda community arts center she has named Rhythmix Cultural Works.
    Her project, opening June 2, is a multimillion-dollar warehouse conversion on the northern waterfront in Alameda, the first work/live conversion approved under Alameda’s 1998 ordinance. In the former site of the Clamp Swing factory, a small manufacturing company on Blanding Avenue, RCW will house a 16,000-square-foot combined-use space that Koike hopes will attract artists and art lovers from all over the Bay Area—and the world.
    The building contains seven work/live units, a 200-seat theater, an art gallery and a multipurpose classroom. The living units each have an attached garage, along with office space on the ground level. The second level has artists’ lofts with high ceilings, exposed-brick walls and large industrial-style windows. There is already a waiting list for the units, which were rented out before construction was completed. Koike sees the center becoming an “artists’ community,” similar to those in which she lived in Oakland and Berkeley while she honed her craft.


    “I’ve personally invested,” she says, “on behalf of my dad.” Her father, a working-class Japanese-American, ran a wholesale produce business in Los Angeles for many years. “He was a real example of the American dream,” she says. Her goal is to extend and expand that dream by providing a place where artists can share their talents with the East Bay community.
    “The Bay Area has so much diversity,” she says, “and so much talent.” Koike observes that many “mid-career artists” like herself have been forced to give up on the arts because of everyday demands. This will be an opportunity, she says, “to do the work we believe in—and share it.” Koike believes that communities come together through the arts. And she doesn’t mean just localities like Alameda; she means the world.
    Her group, RhythMix, has traveled to Cuba four times for cultural exchange and performances, dating back to 2000, and members have traveled to Japan three times in the last six years. “It’s very different to experience the music of another culture while you are in that country,” Koike says. During trips to Japan, RhythMix stayed in the Kodo Apprentice Center on Sado Island, where members lived communally and trained in traditional Japanese arts. “In the morning, we would run,” she says, “then we would clean.” Literally. They scrubbed the bathrooms and kitchens, and then went to class to study song, dance and taiko drumming.
    “It was a two-sided exchange,” Koike says. “They were thrilled to have us there.” While the American group gained the knowledge and experience of the culture and the music, the Japanese also grew from the encounter. “They got to experience a different culture, and be appreciated.”
    Kioke wants to offer that sort of opportunity to artists from around the world by making the new performing arts center a cultural crossroads, hosting visiting performers in the new Alameda structure. Once construction is complete, Koike says, her biggest challenge will be sustaining RCW as a community arts space. Like any other new business, RCW will need strong support from the community. Koike points out that while the San Francisco Mime Troupe has thrived in the Bay Area for 35 years, even receiving a Tony Award, the company still struggles financially.
    Koike intends to bring even more energy to the project by involving artists in all aspects of the endeavor. Renowned photographer and filmmaker Kate Kline May will run the visual-arts gallery. George Peterson, editorial director of MIX Magazine, will assist with sound in the theater. Other artists from Koike’s circle of friends will help in other ways, and her husband, Ed Holmes, will emcee the grand opening.
    The grand opening, scheduled for early June, will begin with a Friday night donor reception at the new facility. Food vendors and food artists will be on hand to display their works with a gallery show entitled the Art of Food. After the Alameda Chamber of Commerce holds an official ribbon-cutting ceremony on Saturday, free performances and workshops for families and kids will fill out the day. Vendors from the nearby Alameda Marketplace will serve food and refreshments. In the evening, paid performances will take place in the theater.
    Family programs director Barbara Krummel is designing a host of ways to get kids interested in the arts. “Alameda is a wonderful community for extracurricular activities,” she says, but RCW will be unique because it offers “so many different things in one place.” Kids and teens will be able to learn taiko drumming, the Brazilian martial arts form Capoeira and Latin street jazz. They will be able to engage in many other activities, too. Crafts such as book arts—the actual techniques for making and personalizing books—and filmmaking will also be taught. Krummel intends to have family-themed events, including kid-oriented performances and workshops, once a month on Sundays. After-school classes and weeklong summer camps are in the works, as well, with RCW planning extensive outreach to Alameda schools through assemblies and performances.
    Proposing to partner with other Alameda arts groups, including the Virago Theater Company and the Alameda Children’s Musical Theater, Krummel promises activities for everyone from preschoolers to adults. In the summer months, Alamedans will be able to rent the theater when it’s not in use.
    Koike’s vision to “create a place that gives people the opportunity to experience art on a daily basis” is an ambitious one, to be sure, but she looks forward to joining and enhancing the Alameda arts community.
    And what about those opening-night jitters? “Nerves of steel,” Koike says with a wry smile. “I get that from my dad, too.”