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First Night
Ring in the New Year with "The Wonders of Boston"
BY NINA MACLAUGHLIN

Twenty-eight years ago, a group of Boston artists and community activists agreed that typical New Year’s Eve activities — cheap champagne toasts and shouldering one way’s through strangers in packed clubs and bars — were an absolute yawn. So they came up with an alternative, an arts-orientated evening known as First Night. What started as a gang of artsy types straggling in a parade through the streets of Boston has become an event that includes more than 1000 artists taking part in more than 200 performances and exhibitions at more than 40 indoor and outdoor venues all over downtown with roughly a million expected attendants. And that’s only in Boston. More than 200 cities and towns worldwide replicate Boston’s premiere celebration. Herewith, the highlights.

First Night began with a procession, and that remains the crux of the event. This year’s theme is "The Wonders of Boston." Participants have been divided into four sections to reflect Boston’s wonders, each designated with its own color(s): the Emerald Necklace (green); Boston Harbor and the Charles River (blue); "City Life" (multi-colored); and "The Future" (silver, gold, and white). A thousand persons representing 30 groups, including the Cycling Murrays, Boston Duck Tours, Dinoman (who marches with three life-size dinosaurs and his pet raccoon), the Theater Offensive, the Boston Minstrel Company, and Punk Rock Aerobics, will march in the Grand Procession, which begins at 5:30 p.m. in front of the Hynes Convention Center, 900 Boylston Street, and ends at Charles and Beacon Streets.

Ice sculptures represent another First Night trademark. In progress all day and illuminated at night, these weigh in at a glacial 15 to 40 tons each. In Copley Square, there’s "Revolutionary Boston" and "Cinderella." "Indomitable," at Boston Common’s Frog Pond, finds Atlas holding the world on his shoulders. The Serengeti seems an odd subject for ice, but "Out of Africa," on the Common’s Lafayette Mall, features a sunset, mafuti trees, lions, giraffes, and gazelles. Near the Parade Ground, the Japan Society of Boston celebrates its centennial with "Edo Castle."

Also on the Parade Ground, there’s "Between Rock and an Art Place: Celebrating Visual Art by Musicians." Echoing similar shows at the Paradise Lounge and Zeitgeist Gallery, the exhibit includes large-scale sculpture installations by Boston rockers Asa Brebner, Winston Bramen, Dave Tree, Joey Pesce, and Wayne Viens, and more.

There’s no shortage of aural art. At 7:30 and 9:30 p.m. at the Orpheum, 1 Hamilton Place, folk-pop-rocker Josh Ritter opens for the Pernice Brothers with their learned licks and lyrics. Over at the Hynes Convention, the Tarbox Ramblers bring their blend of bayou blues and gritty guitar to traditional American music at 7:30 p.m. Kris Delmhorst, a Boston-based folk-rock songstress with a burgeoning reputation, follows at 9:15 p.m. Jazz siren Karin Parker sings at 6 and 7 p.m. at Emmanuel Church, 15 Newbury Street; Donal Fox and his trio follow at 9 and 10:15 with "Blues on Bach," an exploration of the connection between improvisational jazz and the Baroque master. And as part of the day-long kid-tailored Fleet Family Festival at the Hynes, Laurie Berkner who’s been hired by the likes of Madonna and Sting to play their kids’ parties, performs at 1 and 2:15 p.m.; at 3 and 4:45 p.m., Elizabeth Mitchell, founding member of the band Ida, plays her acoustic kid versions of folk songs.

The Tami Machnai Ensemble, which fuses Israeli, Middle Eastern, and Jewish traditional music in Hebrew, Ladino, and English, performs at the Boston Public Library, 700 Boylston Street in Copley Square, at 7:30 and 8:45 p.m. And Mohamed Kalifa mates traditional West African music with a contemporary American pitch at 7:30 p.m. at the Hynes.

The Society for Historically Informed Performance (SoHIP) presents Baroque Italian music at 9 p.m. and German music from the 1700s by Telemann, Christoph Graupner, and Bach at 10:15 p.m. at the First and Second Church, 66 Marlborough Street. Also at the First and Second Church, the Generations Ensemble, a chamber group that’s part of Project STEP, which trains and educates young string players of color, performs at 1 and 2 p.m. And Old South Meeting House, 310 Washington Street, hosts Juilliard viola student and Acton native Caroline Johnson at 3 p.m.

Running all day at the Coolidge Corner Theatre, 290 Harvard Street in Brookline, the First Night Film Festival includes The Adventures of Robin Hood and a sneak preview of Robert Altman’s Joffrey Ballet docu-drama The Company. "Flippin the Lid: Live Rock Music in Boston 25 Years Ago," screening at the Hynes on a 45 minute loop between 1 and 6 p.m. and 7:30 and 11 p.m., has earned a well-deserved buzz. Between 1978 and 1982, Jan Crocker filmed documentaries of performances by local bands and national acts playing in Boston; the result: hundreds of hours of never-before-screened footage of Mission of Burma, the Lyres, Human Sexual Response, the Cure, Unnatural Axe, and the Buzzcocks, and more. Also at the Hynes, the Roxbury Film Festival presents "Mid-Winter Repeats," with work by filmmakers of color. At the Museum of Fine Arts, 465 Huntington Avenue, Bo Smith curates the annual "Festival of International Short Films." Afternoon screenings are kid-appropriate; evening programs may include adult themes. And teenage filmmakers screen their work at Copley Square’s Cloud Place as part of RAW Art Work’s "Real to Reel" program from 1 to 5 p.m.

The Hynes has a broad selection of spoken-word, comedy, and theater. The wordsmiths and wordsmackers of Boston Poetry Slam compete at 7:30, 8:15, 9, 9:45, and 10:30 p.m. In what’s sure to be some form of therapy, True Story Theater urges audience members to recount experiences and emotions and then performs them at 7:30 and 9:15 p.m. Comedian Tony V. presents a recap of the "events, stories, and shoe styles" that shaped 2003. Harvard grad Baratunde Thurston joins Tony V. at 7:30, 8:45, and 10 p.m. Improv Boston gets its skit ideas from members of the audience from 7:30 to 11 p.m. And Leeny Del Seamonds tells stories with Cuban-American ebullience at 8, 9, and 10 p.m.

There’s also plenty to dance about on First Night. Boston Ballet presents "Classical Moves," an interactive look at what it takes to be a dancer, with costumed performances and several short ballets at 1 and 2:15 p.m. at the Hynes. Karen Krolak’s Monkeyhouse assigns skips, sways, and swirls to weird words that have slipped from common parlance in "Anablep and Other Oddities" at 9:30 and 10:30 p.m. at John Hancock Hall, 40 Trinity Place. Also at John Hancock Hall, OrigiNation, which is made up of young women from Dorchester, Mattapan, and the South End, does hip-hop and the young women of O’Shea Chaplin perform traditional Irish stepdancing; these two groups appear separately at first, then come together for some dance fusion. That’s at 7:30 and 8:30 p.m. At the Hynes, the Chu Ling Dance Academy presents "Between East and West" at 8:15 p.m.; the Frederick Hayes Dance Company performs African, Afro-jazz, and liturgical dance at 7:30 p.m.; and the All Stylz Crew does hip-hop, old school and new, at 9 p.m. At the Park Plaza Castle, 64 Arlington Street, you can get sultry with the Boston Tango Society at 7:30 and 8:45 p.m. or "Swing in the New Year with Marie Lawlor" at 10 and 11:15 p.m.

At the Fleet Family Festival at the Hynes, from 1 to 4 p.m., you’ll find master Czech puppeteer Dusan Petran and his hand-carved marionette theater. The Airborne Comedians, stuntsters with acute hand-eye coordination, juggle things like electric guitars, birdbaths, and lawn chairs at 1:40, 3:10, and 4:40 p.m. The Maximum Velocity team showcases its skating and riding skills at 1, 2:30, and 4 p.m. And at 1:20, 2:50, and 4:35 p.m., the acrobats of the Skyriders bounce and leap on trampolines while incorporating skis, snowboards, and hula hoops.

The festivities culminate at midnight with a 10-minute fireworks display above Boston Harbor by Zambelli Internationale; best view is along the waterfront near the Aquarium T stop. And if midnight’s too late to wait for the pyrotechnics, you can catch a 12-minute display in the skies above Boston Common a little after 7 p.m.

Admission to all First Night events and performances is covered by the $15 First Night button that’s available at a variety of retail locations including Star/Shaw’s Supermarkets, Store 24, and Borders Books & Music. For complete information about events, locations, and times, call (617) 542-1399 or visit www.firstnight.org.

 


Issue Date: December 26, 2003 - January 1, 2004
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