City: Norfolk, VA

Category: Annual Events & Festivals

Telephone: (757) 282-2800

Address: 200 Boush St.

Description: Introduced in 1997 as a way to provide locals and tourists with a more varied cultural menu, the festival has been deemed “an unprecedented flowering of the arts” by a writer in the New York Times. The festival begins in late April and runs for six weeks, staging hundreds of events in 10 Hampton Roads cities. The lineup that includes dance, theater, and all kinds of music. Performances truly are world-class—participants have included Itzhak Perlman, the National Symphony Orchestra with Leonard Slatkin, the Boys Choir of Harlem, the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra, the Russian National Ballet, and modern dance’s innovative Mark Morris Dance Group. Each of the events is separately ticketed; prices have ranged from free to a $150 orchestra seat at a world-class performance.