All week long, I thought about the parable of the unclean spirit, by Sara Eliza Johnson:
“You can’t remember ... Your loneliness isn’t
welcome here, you know, but still you walk the dream-lit village, looking for
someone gentle enough…”
Walking through the city, along the concrete
streets, forgetting and remembering duel.
The green spaces remind me.
For years, we’ve encountered Earth Celebrations
of the East Village, art parades and dramas, dueling garden spirits and
machines, oil spills and renewable energy, an opera of urban conflict and models
of regeneration.
These are spaces where we find fellow souls in the
dream village Johnson sees.
I saw them in Brad Will and Elizabeth Meixell
in that Spring 1999 Earth Celebrations, dressed as garden creatures, marching
from garden to garden, welcoming and inviting us all into their nether reality.
Saturday 2021 was a similar kind of day.
There was Eric, who always participates, chatting
away as the puppets marched through the village streets, from garden to garden,
looking for something.
Its better to believe in and embrace that
abundance, says Eric, to offer that image of a dreamscape.
But this is also New York City, where kids
bruise their knees on the sidewalk and bulldozers pave over paradise, displacing
friends of the garden.
Still green spaces remain, taking shape out of
the ruble.
In a garden you always have a friend.
“Look a baby,” I said to the little one 15
years ago after she scraped her knee on Avenue B, pointing her at Eddie
Boros’ ‘Tower of Toys,” a 65-foot-high garden sculpture, full of toys, at 6B
Garden.
It was one of those moments when our quiet kid
found a bit of love of the whimsical in this concrete jungle.
“Man oh man speak up and tell us something true
and how are we to proceed to find the lost city,” writes Lawrence Ferlinghetti,
nearing his hundredth year in Little Boy.
I’ve spent the last two decades looking for that
lost space, as the city reinvents itself, neighborhood after neighborhood, developers rezoning away their distinct details.
The tower in the garden, the green spaces seem
to evoke a lost world.
Some days, I think I’m getting closer to finding
it, sitting contemplating the ecological city we find in the gardens of the
East Village, bikes and gardeners zipping to and from, ideas moving,
mixing their own distinct models sustainable urbanism.
I certainly felt it outside the 6th Street
Community Center greeting friends getting ready for the parade, greeting Chelsea
and Dee Dee and their compostable cargo bike, along with the other
participants.
Standing at the 11th Street Garden, listening
to NATE & HILA sing their
compost song, “Get wormy....don’t throw away
that food waste...make it compost....”
I felt it walking through the streets with the
others carrying puppets, thinking about the garden heroes, exploring the eco
metropolis, the gardens created out of sweat equity. They seem to represent the best of what the
city can be, with eyes on the street, classrooms for urban ecological education,
community organization, and green development. The irony of course is that each
garden that improves the city, makes it more livable, and marketable.
These are spaces where we learn from each other,
create art, sleep, dream, and find something else for ourselves.
The dance performances are more majestic each
year, dueling bodies in the garden, a swirl of red, purple, green, and yellow,
battling tides and spills, outrageous fortune.
It’s a long majestic march.
After two and a half hours, I have to peel off,
dropping my puppet off at Howard’s Community Center, where other volunteers
were leaving materials and recharging.
A three-hour tour would be ideal for us.
The opera of the ecological city has to be
sustainable itself.
After the rain, the teenager, who used to be
scared of the old Gaia vs the machine dance performances in the parade, joins
me at 6B, walking through the garden, looking at the flowers, wondering about
the space where the old garden Tower of Toys used to stand.
It was there from from 1985 until 2008 when the city tore it down.
The eco city is always opening and closing, repelling and renewing, inviting us
to find something here, something of ourselves, even when we forget. Sometimes
a green map or a procession helps remind us.
They help us remember in this dream village.
ECOLOGICAL
CITY 2021 – SITE PERFORMANCES & VISUAL ART CREDITS
Earth
Celebrations’ ECOLOGICAL CITY Art & Climate Solutions – POP-UP PAGEANT
CLIMATE
SOLUTION SITES & PERFORMERS
EARTH CELEBRATIONS – 638 East Sixth Street (btw Aves B & C)
11th STREET EAST SIDE OUTSIDE
GARDEN @ 11th St. NE Corner btw. 1st and Ave. A
PERFORMANCE – Compost Song – Nate
& Hila
GARDEN – CLIMATE SOLUTION –
Compost
NATE & HILA – Nate
and Hila are
an artistic duo creating music videos and live shows about environmental
philosophy and social justice. They’re based in NYC, and are the resident
rappers at Brooklyn’s House of Yes. 2020 saw the debut of their original live
show Naughty for Nature, a musical exploration of the sexual behavior of
animals…
EL SOL BRILLANTE GARDEN @ 12th Street btw. Aves A &
B
PERFORMANCE – Dance to the People
“Birth of a Garden”
GARDEN – CLIMATE SOLUTION –
Upcycling & Sustainable Solutions
DANCE TO THE PEOPLE is a female and immigrant
led collective of dancers and other collaborators who work in non-hierarchical
forms of art making to address social and environmental injustice. With each
project we discover innovative ways to develop content and structures of movement
research, choreography, training, performance and sharing, fostering
horizontality in the exchange of resources in our community. We create together
because we believe revolutionary art can only manifest itself through
collective processes.
Performer Credits: Maira Duarte, Michelle Applebaum,
Joanna Stone, Nicole Touzien, Annie
Hudson.
CHILDREN’S WORKSHOP SCHOOL
@ 610 E.
12th Street (btw. Aves B & C)
CLIMATE SOLUTION – Art
& Science Education
PERFORMANCE – “Scrappy the Compost Monster”- By Susanna Brock, Jessica Cortez,
and Emily Baldwin
Susanna, Jessica, and Emily, Susanna, Jessica, and Emily, are theatre artists
who are passionate about creating interactive and educational experiences that
address social justice issues. Susanna is a teaching artist and theater
maker specializing in puppetry and early learning. Jessica is an educator,
fiber artist, and performer. Both Susanna and Jessica are graduates of the
CUNY School of Professional Studies MA in Applied Theatre program. Emily
is a native New Yorker and will be starting the MA in Applied Theatre program
at the Central School of Speech and Drama in London this fall.
CAMPOS GARDEN
@
12th Street btw. Aves B & C
PERFORMANCE – Poem For Sustainable
Urban Agriculture by Steve Dalachinsky
In memory of Steve Dalachinsky (9. 29. 1946 – 9. 16. 2019)
Performed by: Mindy
Levokove
GARDEN – CLIMATE
SOLUTION – Vertical Farming & Sustainable Agriculture
STEVE DALACHINSKY. Poet & Collagist. He wrote
poetry, haiku, music criticism, CD liner notes, travelogues & had a long
running column: Outtakes in The Brooklyn Rail. His publications include The
Final Nite: A Complete Notes from a Charles Gayle Notebook 1987-2006 (Ugly
Duckling Presse); Superintendent’s Eyes (Autonomedia); Reaching Into The
Unknown (RogueArt); Flying Home (Paris-Lit-Up); Fool’s Gold (Feral Press);
Black Magic (New Feral Press); Where Night and Day become One (great weather
for MEDIA) & others along w/ many collaboration CDs w/ musicians such as
Matthew Shipp, Joëlle Léandres & The Snobs. He received PEN Oakland
National Book Award; Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et Lettres; Acker Award;
Kafka Award & Benjamin Franklin Award
https://www.facebook.com/steve.dalachinsky
MINDY LEVOKOVE a
long time friend of Steve and Yuko’s, is honored to read Steve’s poem, today. A
multi-media performance poet; a member of the writing groups: Brevitas, and
Heresies, she sings for peace and dances for water. Mindy studies and
teaches qigong and Tai Chi, and tutors writing students. A 20-plus-years member
of the 6th Street and Avenue B Community Garden, she curates Poetry and Prose
in the Garden. This year she published a poetry collection, Mount
Eden Avenue.
9TH STREET COMMUNITY GARDEN
PARK
@
9th Street & Ave. C (NE corner)
PERFORMANCE – ‘Song for Solar
& Sustainable Earth’ by Stephan Said
GARDEN – CLIMATE SOLUTION –
Solar Micro Grid
STEPHAN SAID is an internationally
acclaimed musician and activist whose songs have helped build movements for
peace, human rights, and global justice across the world. He is also the host
of “borderless,” a docs-series and global movement
lifting the voices of people doing amazing things to make a better world.
Stephan has been featured in the New York Times, Time Magazine, The New Yorker,
NPR, PRI, BBC, NBC, CBS, Democracy Now!, Al Arabiya, ORF, Deutsche Welle, and
more.
LA PLAZA CULTURAL GARDEN
@
9th Street & Ave. C (SW corner)
PERFORMANCES: Birth of Climate
Solutions– Global Water
Dances, Martha Eddy
PERFORMERS: Martha Eddy, Dafna Soltes-Stein,
Patti Miss Vernam, Lucy Passaro, Wendy Joseph, Jeonghae Jones.
Birth of a Garden Dance – Dance
Entropy – Valerie Green
Pollution Pirates – Museum of Reclaimed Urban Space with
Time’s Up, Jim Simopoulos
Battle – Pollution & Covid
Monster – Keith Saari
Orator – Armand Ruhlman
GARDEN – CLIMATE SOLUTION –
Sustainable Community Culture
VALERIE GREEN – DANCE ENTROPY –
“Birth of a Garden” Dance
Valerie Green has been an active dancer, choreographer and teacher
in the NYC dance community since 1995. She created her own company, Dance
Entropy in 1998, adding a permanent company home in 2005 called Green
Space. To date Ms. Green has created 40 dances and 10 evening length
works. Her choreography has been seen throughout NYC and Internationally
she has taught and performed in Azerbaijan, Armenia, Georgia, Austria, France,
Italy, Greece, Poland, Russia, India, Serbia, Bosnia, Slovenia, Croatia,
Albania, Slovenia, Sweden Guatemala, Cuba and Canada.
www.DanceEntropy.org
MARTHA EDDY – GLOBAL WATER
DANCES NY / Marymount Manhattan College Martha Eddy, CMA, RSMT uses
body consciousness to enhance our capacity to protect water and the planet. She
is a co-founder of the biennial worldwide environmental dance event www.GlobalWaterDances.org that brought 120 sites registered
(and growing) on 6 continents. GWD 2021 is June 8-13. Martha created
Moving For Life in NYC, which offers free movement and wellness classes in
libraries, centers and hospitals in all five boroughs and throughout the world.
Current online attract older adults, and people of all ages in treatment
or recovery from cancer or other chronic diseases. Martha leads movement choirs
for conferences and brings Global Water Dances to environmental justice actions
that focus on local or global issues. She is author of Mindful Movement. DrMarthaEddy.com
DE COLORES GARDEN
@ 8th
Street btw. Aves B & C
PERFORMANCE & GARDENER –
Bio-Swale Serenade by Elizabeth Ruf
GARDEN – CLIMATE SOLUTION –
Bio-Swale
ELIZABETH RUF MALDONADO is
a director, actor, writer, educator, and maker of socially engaged performances
across the U.S., Europe, and Latin America. With Karl Bateman she is a
co-founder of the guitar-and-vocal duo the Head Peddlers. Her work is
frequently seen at Theater for the New City (TNC) and in NYC Community Gardens.
She is a professor at Boricua College. She holds a Ph.D. in Theater from
Columbia University and wrote her dissertation on the theater of Cuba, where
she lived for a year. She recently acted as music director and choreographer of
“Live Free or Die” from Michael Shenker’s masterwork, A Squatter’s Opera,
performed at TNC. A member of the former ABC Garden and Co-founder of De
Colores Community Yard on East 8th Street, she has been collaborating with
Earth Celebrations as the Community Spirit, Iris the Rainbow, and other roles
since the early 1990s and is the mother of one of the Butterfly Children. https://www.facebook.com/elizabethlesnyc
CARMEN’S GARDEN
@ Ave C
btw. 8th & 7th St.
GARDENER CEREMONY: Sustainable
Garden by Carolyn Ratcliffe
GARDEN – CLIMATE SOLUTION –
Permeable Paths
