Dallas — On Dec. 6, a group of 200 North Texas performers will come together for a one-night performance at the Winspear Opera House for A Gathering: The Dallas Arts Community Reflects on 30 Years of AIDS.
"It's a huge event and it's never been done here in Dallas, which is really cool," says Charles Santos, whose presenting company TITAS is one of the creators of A Gathering. "There's some audio visual stuff and some actors are doing scenes. There's a little bit of poetry, but there's a lot of singing and a lot of really, really good dancing."
A Gathering will feature a dozen area cultural groups, including Dallas Black Dance Theatre, the AT&T Performing Arts Center, Dallas Wind Symphony, CharlieUniformTango, SMU Meadows School of the Arts, Booker T. Washington High School of the Performing and Visual Arts, Bruce Wood Dance Project, The Dallas Opera, Dallas Theater Center, Texas Ballet Theater and the Turtle Creek Chorale, as well as individual artists such as Denise Lee, Gary Floyd and Patty Breckenridge.
The event will benefit Dallas Resource Center, AIDS Arms, AIDS Interfaith Network and AIDS Services of Dallas, with 100 percent of the proceeds split four ways between them.
2011 marks 30 years since the Centers for Disease Control reported the first cases of AIDS in the U.S. The infected were five men in their 20s and 30s in Los Angeles. All were initially diagnosed with pneumonia at Los Angeles hospitals. Two of them died.
Since then, an estimated 1.7 million Americans have been infected with HIV. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation Fact Sheet, 583,298 have died of AIDS-related causes through 2007. More and more people are living with the disease. 1.1 million Americans are living with HIV roughly half of those people are living with AIDS.
"The history of AIDS over the past 30 years has been intertwined with the history of the Turtle Creek Chorale," says TCC Executive Director David Fisher. "It shaped us as an organization as it galvanized our love and care for each other as a singing brotherhood—and for the community as a whole. We have lost nearly 200 members to AIDS, and while the funerals are not nearly as frequent as they were at the peak of the crisis, it is still a big part of who we are and why we sing."
In Dallas County, around 1,000 people are diagnosed with HIV/AIDS every year. That number is down from 2002, but what has risen over the past couple of years is the number of very young people contracting the disease. According to the latest data from Dallas County Health and Human services, last year, more than 200 people aged 14-24 were diagnosed with the disease. Young people in that age group made up about 25 percent of all of the AIDS/HIV cases in Dallas County in 2010.
"These AIDS service organizations that we're benefitting, these guys are really on the front line," says Santos. "They're doing these amazing things and nobody hears about it."
"I want to raise a bunch of money for these organizations," adds Santos. "Honestly, though, I'm also very interested to see what happens going forward—the by-product of these groups working together for the first time on a project like this. I'm very curious to see what comes of this, what new relationships are forged." 
