On June 20th, at approximately 6 pm, Summer began. The marker for the beginning of the summer is called the Solstice. It is the longest day and the shortest night of the entire year. And my beloved performance collective Team Lexington (www.teamlexington.org) was there in full force to bring it in. We began in Dolores Park at noon on Friday with a barbeque, bounce house, and ballroom dancing to Steven Tritto's lovely concertina melodies. Cody Gianotti (pictured above) and Christina Lowery spearheaded this project, and I have never seen such organization amidst the chaos. A group of rowdy, frattish Irish kids joined us for the majority of the day. Our pagan festival was littered with red balloons, tarot readings, cheap beer, hot dogs (vegan ones, too!), impromptu song and dance, interactive performance, and general bacchanalia. Gianotti's created one of his exquisitely bizarre and entertaining headphone shows. Four audience volunteers were chosen to wear headphones and follow the directions on them. It created a sort of 'dance.' They moved in silence for a while, until Cody whipped out his positively mad flute beatboxing skills. Christina Lowery taught us all how to "roll down a hill like a modern dancer." Tom Lazur demonstrated a unique method of repelling mosiquitos which included breathing firem and I held a very silly solstice ritual. Six pm saw about 50 adults rolling down the hill on the South side of the park. At 8 pm, members of the dance group Artface showed up to teach us some simply choreographer with which to make a ruckus on the J-Church metro line. And ruckus we did, up to Church and Duboce where we were met by a marching band who paraded us up to the Caretakers community space at 848 Divisadero for an all night performance salon and dance party! Exquisite! My favorite part was the ridiculous and rigged slow motion race, which I won. Either that, or when two ballet dancers, stripped down to their skivvies because the room was so hot, just started GOING OFF to Evergreen, a band from Sacramento. It was magic to watch.I am realizing that, though I am (and may always be) poor, I am living the life that I have always wanted to live. And I am able to do so because of my community. We are singers, artists, writers, actors, activists, people who live in the gray areas, who slip in between the lines, who slither through the cracks. We dare to think our ideas are good enough to execute. We challenge failure by not only pulling it off, but rocking it! We tear the roof off the building! We are the new ideas, the comedians, the clowns. We are the clay and graffiti, and we just don't seem to care if the mainstream world thinks our way of being in the world is silly or stupid. We invite them to join us. We invite them to try it. And we invite you, too, to be ridiculous for a day.
Go Team Lexington!
