STATEWIDE – NJN’s State of the Arts looks at the creative work that takes unusual directions in Out There. Out There is devoted to the curious and the fascinating from Weird New Jersey to a new ballet inspired by the music of The Lounge Lizards. State of the Arts, NJN’s award-winning, half-hour weekly arts magazine, airs Fridays at 8:30 pm and 11:30 pm; and is web cast on the NJN web site. The program can be seen in high definition on NJN’s JerseyVision and on Time Warner Cable on channel 750 in New York.

Weird NJ
First there was Weird NJ, a homegrown magazine and travel guide for people interested in things like abandoned asylums, backwater roadside attractions and other hallmarks of modern folklore throughout the Garden State. Then there was Weird NJ: The Exhibition at the HERE Art Center in New York City, featuring 17 artists whose work is specifically inspired by and connected to all things Jersey – from the industrial landscapes surrounding the New Jersey Turnpike to the mythologies of the Pine Barrens. State of the Arts talks to magazine founders Mark Sceurman and Mark Moran, curator and frequent Weird NJ contributor Phil Buehler, and one of the weirdest of the Weird NJ artists: self-proclaimed “techno visionary king of art” Stephen “Hoop” Hooper.

Vista
Graham Lustig has created a physical, colorful, jazzy, multi-movement new dance work called Vista, choreographed especially for the elite professional dancers of the American Ballet Theater based in New Brunswick, New Jersey, where Lustig is the artistic director. The work is set to the music of the eclectic jazz group The Lounge Lizards.

Ebony Hillbillies
Wait until you hear the Ebony Hillbillies – a modern country string band that plays old-time dance music on banjo, mountain dulcimer, fiddle, string bass and Ricky Gordon's homemade percussion set consisting of a washboard, an array of cymbals, triangles and chimes, and a pair of tambourines strapped to his feet. State of the Arts caught the Ebony Hillbillies recently at a program at The Newark Museum.

Funding for State of the Arts is provided by the New Jersey State Council on the Arts and the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation. The series producer is Susan Wallner and the executive producer is Nila Aronow.