Illuminaires 2007

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Illuminaires 2007

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This weekend we trucked out to the annual Illuminaires Lantern Festival, put on by Vancouver's venerable participatory art-and-ritual organizers, the Public Dreams Society. Like every year, I frantically pasted together a papier-mache lantern intended to impress my friends and inspire my neightbours. And, like every year, after almost 8 hours of lantern making, my family in all its incarnations gathered on the grass of Trout Lake to take part in this dependably chaotic and crowded free public event.

I am not sure what happened, Public Dreams, nor am I sure where all the cool people who used to populate your events with music, costume, and spontaneous theatre went. I'd like to find them - and I used to be able to find them in midsummer at the lake. The Illuminaires is going through an awkward pubescence and can't quite decide what it's going to be.  

Let's talk about the features of the festival that were, for the last ten years, the main draws:

1. Romanian Singers in white grecian gowns, singing gently in the willows

2. Fairies in a lantern boat, drifting in a fantasy and, in later years, gently blessing small children

3. An organic procession led by the Carnival Band, beginning promptly at dusk and leading everyone around the lake  in a seemingly spontaneous parade

4. Absolute darkness punctuated by bobbing and floating lanterns, both in people's hands and on the lake

5. Lots of imaginative and unusual installations and even more walking lanterns

6.  Firework show at 10:00pm

7. Dancing to live drums and spontaneous music for the rest of the night, as the mushroom and grass eaters let loose in the night

8. People in costumes, on stilts or not - even the medieval dancers!

What do we get this year? The same installations as last year. I was shocked at the lack of imagination. The event is going to limp on for a few years yet, the least they could have done is put up new installations.  We also got a disorganized and awkward moment with the Carnival band, as they began to play and walk around the lake but no one followed. Apparently, the event has become so sedentary people don't realize they are supposed to leave their picnic sites and actually participate.

Which leads me to the essential problem with this festival and why I am unlikely to attend next year: The Illuminaires has become a spectator event.  The fashion is now to set up a square or three of blankets, surround them with luminaires, and then sit and watch the world go by. Except, if no one is actually going past you, then there's not much to watch. Fortunately, though, all these spectators came loaded with booze, so they seem to be having a great time. 

This event used to be a great way to get away from the Fireworks yahoos.  The Illuminaires has its own yahoos now, and they're driving away the really magical parts of the festival, like the participants. Instead, Public Dreams somehow thought it would be a good idea to have the baseball diamond floodlights as if lighting a carnival, without the ironic, borderline mysticism the society usually flirt with. The light pollution was blinding. So much for the floating dream of lanterns on the edge of consciousness. Instead, we have a party in the park justified and funded by a thinly veiled arts mandate and well-meaning volunteers who, no doubt, believed this would be a fabulous year. This late-summer organorave at Trout Lake even had firedancers spinning glo-sticks before getting into the flame. 

 To its credit, there were a couple items worth mentioning. One was the square-dance-to-marimbas scene, the other was the shadow puppet multimedia story that held us raptured. Absolutely sublime. Please, come back with something just as groundbreaking, next year. Please note, neither of these were lanterns. 

Here is my suggestion:  Store the old lanterns for a few years and come up with whole new concepts. Yes, this even means you, wishing well. I noticed the line was virtually nonexistent this year. Time to put that one away and do something new. Call for volunteer musicians to station themselves at intervals throughout the park. Get the costume promotion started early, get more stiltwalkers and jugglers to wander the scene and create spontaneous public theatre. When it's time for the parade, a group of mysteriously costumed, magical visitors should float into the park, led by the Carnival band. Then, the Stiltwalkers and performers join, and  the procession travels around the park, a motley crew of pagans and commedia dell'arte characters. The spectators will get a show as the procession goes round. Those who still enjoy a good old-fashioned lantern parade join in as the spirit moves them. Otherwise, they can hang out and enjoy the sangria.