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The newest addition to the campus area of Black Bottom is the recently opened Hathian Performing Arts Centre, or ‘HPAC’ for short. Columtreal University offers an excellent liberal arts academic education and HPAC is delighted to be able to offer some hands-on spaces for students, faculty and the general public to use to further their creativity.
I’m Daiyu Tang. I manage the Hathian Performing Arts Centre, and I also edit the Observer, so consider this your full disclosure. I’m biased. I’m also usually right. Fact.
HPAC isn’t a hushed museum of “do not touch.” It’s a working organism: sprung floors that thrum under choreography; a textile and costume lab where hems, armor, and fever dreams get stitched into being; rehearsal rooms and a live room where verses are tested on your ribs before they’re tested on a crowd; easels, plinths, and walls that rotate through shows as fast as the city rotates through scandals. We’ve built a Creator Lab with a full green screen and edit bays, because in this town if you don’t control your own narrative, someone else will.
Why here? Because Hathian chews on people. Storms, sirens, shrugging institutions… Half the time the only thing that keeps us from rusting through is the stubbornness to make something anyway. Art isn’t a luxury item; it’s community maintenance. I’ve watched a performer get their first ovation and walk out taller and I hope away from the arms of a gang. I’ve watched a tired EMT sit through a figure-drawing night and leave with their shoulders relaxed for the first time in weeks. That’s infrastructure, too. The community kind.
Some of you remember the last venture I helped steer, the museum/art space we said goodbye to with a loud, loving wake earlier this year. We lost a building, but not the habit. HPAC is my second chance, my redemption arc (thank you management) doubling down on that promise: if a door closes in Hathian, we’ll paint another one on a wall and walk through it anyway.
Inside the big arch, you’ll find a black-box that we hope meets your creative needs. Outside, the courtyard is shamelessly photogenic: foliage, sculpture, string lights, and just enough mischief to feel like Hathian. Do not break my statues. Breaking art, is not making art, unless you’re Banksy and even I can’t claim that fame.
We host premieres, album listens, charity auctions, awards nights, yes, those HPD awards, and every variety of “let’s try something” between. Bring your dancers, your bandmates, your sketchbook, your camera, your tangled spool of an idea. We’ll give it power, space, and just enough pressure to turn it into something real.
House rules are simple: consent isn’t optional, respect isn’t performative, and harassment gets the door. Art is freedom; safety is how we keep it free.
If you want to book the space, drop by the front desk or slide into the HPAC inbox with dates, headcount, and the shape of your chaos. Students and non-profits get friendly pricing; we can bundle AV and crew into the deal, myself included if you really want some sass at your events. If you just want to look around, come to an open-studio hour and kick the tyres ok?
I manage this place because while Hathian is a stage and all of you are the players, we need a smaller stage, a more intimate one. Come make something reckless and beautiful. If the city tries to swallow you, spit paint back and dance away the night terrors with us.
((Available for event hire – 100 – 250 prims capacity. No charge. Reach out to Daiyu Tang in-world OOCLY or ICLY. Otherwise, please use the space any time for ad-hoc and enjoy it! SURL: HERE))
