Rites of Spring Pageant

The annual "Rites of Spring: Procession to Save Our Gardens" is a three month collaborative environmental art project engaging more than 5,000 gardeners, artists, and community people, from the culturally diverse community of the Lower East Side of New York City. The project fosters awareness of the importance the community gardens, the need to preserve them, and their unique contribution to the ecology and diverse cultural life of the neighborhood .

The day-long theatrical pageant celebrates the network of over 50 community gardens in the neighborhood and tells the story of the gardens' struggle to survive in the city, through oral history presentations, performance, ceremonies,music, dance, and poetry at each of the garden site visited throughout the day.

These tranquil gardens tucked between city buildings have been transformed by the community from garbage strewn lots into enchanted oases of weeping willows, birds, ponds, vegetable and flower gardens. Some of these gardens have been in existance for over 20 years providing millions of dollars worth of educational, cultural, environmental, and health services to thousands of people in the community free of cost to the city. While the gardens provide an invaluable resource for the community, many remain endangered by proposed development.

The pageant is an annual collaborative performance art event, as well as a unique community building effort, fostering alliances among the people of diverse cultural backgrounds and from special interest groups, to work together creatively for common goals.

The Rites of Spring pageant creates and presents 8 hours of performance, dance, music, art, and poetry throughout the network of Lower East Side gardens. The spectacular day-long pilgrimmage features giant puppets, mobile sculptures, ceremonial art objects, costumed garden characters, and Brazilian, African, and Dominican bands, weaving throughout the neighborhood to visit the network of gardens. The diverse cultural traditions and history of the neighborhood gardens are honored with collaborative presentations by the gardeners and artists at each garden site.

Throughout the day a mythic drama is enacted, in which Gaia(who represetns the gardens) is born, married, kidnapped, and then saved at the end of the day. The closing ceremony at the Green Oasis Garden celebrates the victory of the community and the preservation of the gardens with music, poetry and the release of 50 live butterflies for the protection of the gardens.

The Rites of Spring: Procession to Save Our Gardens is a collaboration that celebrates and creates the neighborhood's own representation of its' eclectic culture, history, and community pride. Three months prior to the pageant, artists working in a variety of media, conduct residencies and art & ecology workshops workshops throughout local public schools, community centers, gardens, and at the central Earth Celebrations workshop space, to create the many giant puppets, costumes, performances, and group art projects, presented at particular gardens throughout the day. The pageant provides a conceptual framework in which participants every year contribute new ideas, stories, characters, puppets, costumes, myths, local history, performance, music, dance, and poetry to honor their past history and current issues, struggles, heroes, and achievements

The Rites of Spring pageant provides an innovative forum for artists to communicate beyond museums and galleries, creating art that brings the culturally diverse community of the Lower East Side together, to honor and preserve the ecological wonder they have created. The procession has over 5,000 participants and 10,000 spectators. It has established itself as a new artistic and diverse cultural tradition on the Lower East Side

It is our hope that art can empower communities through the spirit of celebration to effect change on local social and ecological issues. The Procession to Save Our Gardens is an experience of nature within our city, through which we rediscover a harmonious relationship with each other, and the urban and natural world.

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