Arts Festival Coming To UWS Open Street: Dancing, Drawing, Music

Gus Saltonstall
Updated ·1 min read

UPPER WEST SIDE, NY — An art festival is set to take over an Open Street section on the Upper West Side this Thursday, with dance and music performances, chalk-art, mask making, and more.

The festival will take place on Thursday at 2 p.m. within the Open Streets between 88th and 93rd on West End Avenue.

The occasion is PARKing Day, an annual international event where artists, residents, and activists temporarily transform curbside parking spots into public spaces. However, due to the Open Streets implemented for the coronavirus pandemic, organizers have more room to work with in 2020 to brings the arts right outside your door.

The event has quite the lineup of fun socially-distant activities to take part in and watch, with dance and music performances, temporary parklets, chalk-art, tai chi lessons, mask-making, streetscape visioning projects, and civic engagement classes.

Maybe the most eye-catching item on the schedule is a new dance choreographed by Jody Sperling called "Plastic Harvest." It is themed around plastic pollution on West End Avenue between 91st and 92nd Street, and will feature dancers wearing plastic bags.

One dancer will take a bath in a large cardboard tub filled with a hundred plastic bags, while other dancers take turns scootering around the avenue, "serving up fantastical plastic antics."

There will also be a performance by a string quartet from the Metropolitan Orchestra.

Here's a collection of the groups sponsoring the arts festival:

  • The American Society of Landscape Architects

  • Community Board 7

  • CB7 Broadway Task Force

  • Met Orchestra Musicians

  • UWS Open Hearts Initiative

  • Streetopia UWS

  • West 80s Neighborhood Association

This article originally appeared on the Upper West Side Patch