2019 Festival Events
2019 Visionary Leadership Award Luncheon
Honoring Rosanne Cash
Join us on Tuesday, February 26th for the 9th annual Visionary Leadership Award Luncheon and Conversation. The Award Luncheon, which draws over 400 attendees from across the region, raises money for the Festival's diverse roster of programming presented in June each year. The award, established in 2010 in honor of Festival co-Founder Jean M. Handley, is awarded to a Visionary Leader whose trailblazing work is impacting the world.
History of the Cocktail
presented with Ordinary
Travel through the history of the inception of the cocktail in New Haven and around the world. Then, join mix master Tim Cabral of Ordinary for specialty drinks.
The Storytelling Body
presented with Ad Infinitum
Multi-award-winning company, Ad Infinitum, is running a workshop for professional and semi-professional actors, directors and theatre practitioners. Together we will explore performance via a Lecoq-style method that will push the physical limits of the actor as a creative theatre maker. The workshop will look at how the actor in an empty space can bring to life an abundant world of characters, spaces, colours, emotions and atmospheres –with the body alone.
State Street Wine Walk
presented with Oak Haven Table & Bar, Cave á Vin, August, Hudson Leroy
Take a short walk down State Street and visit the neighborhood's wonderful wine bars. Sip, savor and learn about what makes each one unique and memorable.
Dorrance Dance Body Percussion
presented with Dorrance Dance
You are the rhythm! Use your body to produce a wide variety of rhythmic sounds from clapping to stomping and everything in between. Discover the percussive possibilities of your unique instrument and help develop your body’s relationship between music and movement.
New Haven Renaissance
WordFest Spoken Word Class
This participatory workshop uses spoken word to challenge and confirm New Haven’s identity. How are we dealing with Yale’s increased presence? And the police presence that follows? How do these dynamics alter our spaces? Who are they altered for (and away from)? Let’s talk about it. And then change.
Circus Tricks, Foundation of Circus
presented with Circa
Experience everything from acrobalance to handstands and tumbling. An encouraging, creative environment that’s challenging and loads of fun, participants will have the potential to work with specialist trainers to learn new skills, refine technique and to work towards devising acts for the stage.
Silkscreen/Serigraph Printmaking with Creative Arts Workshop
presented with the Creative Arts Workshop
Come to this workshop and learn about the art of silkscreen. Take home a silkscreen/serigraph print you will make with this nontoxic, highly versatile stenciling process used to transfer multicolor images onto a variety of surfaces, including paper, fabric, and wood.
New Haven Hip-Hop Conference Interactive Workshop
presented with the Artsucation™ Academy Network
The Artsucation™ Academy Network presents the New Haven Hip-Hop Conference Interactive Workshop. Explore the origins of Hip-Hop through live reenactments of the basic elements of Hip-Hop Culture through Hip-Hop history, turntablist/DJay, Emcee, Dancers/B-Boys & B-Girls, and a live graffiti artist creating a mural on the Green with special guest Hip-Hop pioneers! Co-founders Ms. Hanan Hameen, MSEdL and Dr. Siobhan Carter-David, Ced Gee of Ultramagnetic MC's, DJ LoKash, and Eddie Prim Graffiti Artist
Made possible with help from the Mayor's Neighborhood Cultural Vitality Grant Program.
From/To Nothing
Dancer/choreographer Sarah Xiao and composer/musician Liam Bellman-Sharpe create work that is experimental and constantly in flux. By combining improvised and precomposed vocabularies and syntaxes, and never making it clear which is which, their work draws attention to the performative frame itself, and so to the unconscious subconscious lenses we view life through. By deliberately cultivating elements that change performance-to-performance, they embrace their capacity as performers to surprise themselves and each other. In other words, their work is concerned with what you choose and what you don’t; what you control and what you don’t. A work is never finished; there is no final form, no final artefact, and material is freely repurposed and reconstituted between projects.
Grand Avenue Gastronomy Tour with Lee Cruz
presented with Chatham Square Neighborhood Association
Enjoy the cultural and culinary diversity of Fair Haven with a tour led by Lee Cruz. Taste the cuisines of Mexico, Peru, Puerto Rico, and more while learning the history of New Haven's most eclectic and ethnically diverse neighborhood.
Keeping the Culture with Ms. Hanan
presented with Artsucation™ Academy Network's Ms. Hanan's Dance and Beyond
Join Ms. Hanan, Founder/Director of the Artsucation™ Academy Network, for a Master Dance Class experience that will bring you on a journey through the evolution of Black dance from traditional African to Hip-Hop. Through the spirit of Juneteenth, join us as we explore the strength of a people through the love of dance as communication, salvation, and celebration.
Writing Workshop with Toto Kisaku: One square, Billions of lives... which seeds for the green?
Who has nothing, yet has everything? Who has everything, yet has nothing? These are questions of materiality versus humanity.
Toto Kisaku, award-winning Congolese playwright, actor, director, producer, and Arts & Ideas Artist in Residence, will guide writers to consider who truly is empty, who is not, and the gaps we each have to fill. Through this workshop on the Green, find balance in a society that often lacks perception, empathy and warmth.
World Refugee Day Food Bazaar
presented with the Sanctuary Kitchen and CitySeed
Join Sanctuary Kitchen for a World Refugee Day Food Bazaar at the International Festival of Arts & Ideas - an evening of cuisine and culture from around the world. Enjoy multicultural food and drink prepared by recently resettled refugees, and celebrate their contribution to the diverse and changing face of the Greater New Haven Area. Mix and mingle, create connections, and feast while listening to a world music concert on the New Haven Green.
Friday Night Beer Garden
presented with the local CT Breweries
Join us for a concert on the New Haven Green while sampling beers from regional breweries. Purchase a ticket and receive a commemorative cup to enjoy tastings of a variety of palate-pleasing brews.