New Haven Independent

In a fitting grand finale for New Haven’s two-week on Saturday night, hundreds gathered — and danced — on the city’s most prominent public space to celebrate its past, relish its present and, most important, sanctify it for all time.

The means? Prayers, of course. And not only one, but 13,000.

As 13-year-old Zhang Liu (pictured at right in photo) of Bethany explained that the event — inspired by Liz Lerman’s 613 Radical Acts of Prayer — “is bringing the whole community together,” Luanne Benshimon (pictured in top photo) of Mystic practiced on Temple Street nearby for the culminating moments when she would twirl hundreds of prayer ties.

“I just had to join in,” she said later as she spun her wall of prayers (or what organizers dubbed the “hopes, dreams, prayers, wishes and demands of the community.”)

So, too, did many others apparently: religious residents, the spiritual, artists, athletes, the disabled and, ultimately, the audience.

With a declaration from the emcee that “this is not going to be a traditional performance” as well as a reminder that the “Green historically has been a place of movement,” the wheels began to turn.

Wheelchairs and their occupants circled the Green’s fountain, dozens of prayers attached to each seat. A hypnotizing chant of “Ooh!… Ahh!… Ohh!” grew louder. Children blew bubbles. A woman ran counterclockwise on a ledge. Everyone dressed in white.

Soon, skaters joined in. And kids (pictured above). And mothers. And even elected officials.

Downtown Alderwoman Rachel Plattus (pictured), for example, jumped up when the emcees challenged residents to run under one of the several dozen “archways” that formed when official event participants joined hands to create portals that would lead the crowd toward the stage.

“It’s exhilarating,” she said afterwards.

Before long, the mass movement — which was at once extremely unnatural in its calculatedness and markedly natural in its spirit — was over: about 13,000 12-inch strips of fabric and tyvek submitted, by way of public movement and group synergy, to a higher power — or at least for a higher purpose. For the blog chronicling preparations for 613 Radical Acts of Prayer, click here.

But similarly high-reaching movement carried on on stage as dancers offered a performance ostensibly inspired by the Green and New Haven. A video on screen produced for the occasion featured interviews with residents who offered candid assessments of the Green’s importance to them and outlined its history — as well as the city’s founders’ desire to achieve religious perfection.

The video also juxtaposed local memories of the Nazis taking away Jews in Germany in the middle of the night and firsthand accounts of the U.S. government apprehending illegal immigrants in the notorious Fair Haven raids. The dance troupe then offered an interpretive demonstration of last June’s early-morning events.

Earlier in the evening, a decidedly more literal dance took place on the other half of the Green as youngsters and adults alike, dressed in traditional South American garb as pictured, performed traditional Peruvian dances to an entranced audience of parents sporting video cameras and passers-by lured in by the upbeat music.

A “City Full of Eccentrics”

Soon, the two-week festival was over; the next will be held between June 13 and June 27, 2009. But for West Haven resident Bob Marra (pictured), the evening had only just begun.

After all, he reasoned, the experience of witnessing art in New Haven could not be considered complete in 2008 without first visiting 118 Court Street, the first-ever permanent home of Ideat Village, an offbeat — and free and unjuried — arts and music festival.

Marra emphasized that he did not see the festival, which prefers local, uncensored expression over screened, international art, as an adversarial reaction to the Arts and Ideas Festival a block away.

Instead, he said, it was simply a “continuum” of the moving art he witnessed minutes before on the Green. “Art for me is a continuum - a way of expressing in non-prosaic ways,” he explained as he surveyed a piece featuring dozens of couples from around the world kissing.

(For Sarah Vanderbilt’s report on the opening of Ideat Village on June 16, click here.)

Nancy Shea and Bill Saunders (pictured), who have co-directed Ideat Village since founding it seven years ago, certainly found reason to celebrate Saturday night. They estimated in interviews that Ideat Village saw record-breaking turnout this year: more than 2,700 viewers at 21 events featuring over 400 artists.

“People just have been pouring in,” Shea said. “And it’s all self-regulated,” added Saunders, emphasizing that artists, for instance, hung their own art at a show in which no apparent pecking order reigned. “There’s been no conflict.”

Todd Lyon, a longtime volunteer for Ideat Village, chimed in with her justification for the event: “New Haven,” she said, “is a city full of eccentrics, and this is the core. It doesn’t get more eccentric than this.”

And for her part, Ellen Cochise Volpe (pictured), the artist behind the wall of French-kissing photos, jumped at the chance to spread her message — the theme of the night not only at Ideat Village but on the Green — to the public. Looking this reporter straight in the eye, she recited the mantra she repeated to every couple before they embraced.

“There is more love in the world than hate,” she said. “There are more good people than bad.”

There may be no such thing as absolute truth in the interpretive world of art, but Saturday night in New Haven may have come close to — could it be? — proof of her audacious claim.