At first it looked like a small, simple concert in a carefully controlled environment: jazz musician Jon Batiste seated at the piano in an auditorium at the Javits Center on the West Side of Manhattan, performing for an audience of about 50 seated health professionals in evenly spaced rows – some wearing uniforms, others in Army uniforms.
The dancer Ayodele Casel started to beat, without musical accompaniment, except a recording of her own voice, her amplified cramp rolls filling the room. And opera singer Anthony Roth Costanzo performed “Ave Maria” in angelic tones of countertenor.
But about half an hour later, the artists got off the stage and left the room, transforming what had started as a formal concert into a joyful music and dance procession that ran through the sterile building – the convention center was transformed into a hospital for campaign at the start of the pandemic and is now a mass vaccination site – where hundreds of hopeful people came on Saturday afternoon to get their vaccines.
Batiste switched to the melodic, a portable reed instrument similar to a toilet with a keyboard, and the troupe of musicians – which expanded to include a section of woodwinds and percussionists – paraded through the escalator and through the convention center, finally reaching a high ceilinged room where dozens of people waited in silence for the necessary 15 minutes after receiving the vaccines.
This show that turned into a traveling party was the first in a series of “pop-up” shows in New York with the aim of shaking the arts, giving artists paid jobs and the public the opportunity to see live performances after almost a year of darkened theaters and concert halls. Governor Andrew M. Cuomo announced plans for the series, called “NY PopsUp”, last month, declaring that “we must bring the arts and culture back to life” and adding that its revival would be crucial to New York’s economic revival York City. The programs are underway while he is under attack by the state to deal with the deaths of residents of nursing homes by Covid-19.
As the program avoids attracting crowds, most presentations will be unannounced, appearing suddenly in parks, museums, parking lots and street corners. The idea is to inject a dose of inspiration into the lives of New Yorkers – a time when they can take a break from their programmed lives and witness art during a pandemic year that limited human contact and imposed strong restrictions on people’s activities. .
“We need more spontaneity; that’s the beauty of it, ”said Batiste in an interview. “You don’t know what’s coming.”
As the troupe of musicians moved through the Javits Center, the audience of health professionals followed, clapping their hands to the beat and recording the show on their phones. Batiste, who is the leader of the band in “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert”, propelled his musicians through space (most of them have played with the band from the house of the show, including Endea Owens on bass, Tivon Pennicott on saxophone and Joe Saylor and Nêgah Santos on percussion).
Bre Williams, a 35-year-old nurse in a blue uniform who came from Savannah, Georgia, to help in New York, looked up with wide eyes.
“Do you do these things all the time here?” she said, laughing.
Just before the song ended, some of the health professionals ran out to continue their workday (after all, this show was happening during the break).
The series is organized by a public-private partnership led by producers Scott Rudin and Jane Rosenthal, along with the Empire State Arts and Development Council of New York. Zack Winokur, the interdisciplinary director and artist responsible for programming, said the group plans to hold more than 300 pop-up presentations during Labor Day, in all neighborhoods and in the state. Interpreters are chosen by a board of artists – including Batiste, Casel and Costanzo – who are asked to access their own networks to find participants.
“I haven’t seen a live performance in a long time,” Winokur said in an interview. “It is a deeply needed experience now.”
After their first performance at the Javits Center, the musicians headed to Brooklyn, where they started another flash mob-style street jam, starting at Cadman Plaza Park and meandering through Dumbo to end up at a skatepark, where teenagers stared at them curiously before jumping off. back on his skateboards. The free and mobile shows are called “riots of love” by Batiste, who previously planned them on social networks. It traveled along sidewalks and muddy snow, sometimes reducing traffic.
Barred from tap dancing in the street, Casel beat the rhythms by tapping the metal plates on his tap shoes with his hands; Costanzo danced with the band and at one point took the megaphone to sing “Somewhere Over the Rainbow”.
Although the music was intended to provide a spontaneous display to passersby, the march itself was as tightly regulated as any pandemic-era event. Security personnel guided members of the musical entourage through uneven terrain and dog waste. Another official asked viewers to spread out when they began to break social detachment guidelines.
Despite the logistics involved, the plan managed to be a spontaneous curiosity for the dozens of people who unexpectedly found the music. Going down narrow alleys and shopping streets, the band made people stop, look and sometimes dance a little. Children peered through the windows of Washington Street; a porter shot out of an apartment building to see what all that noise was about; Pharmacy workers leaned out the door to film the procession on the sidewalk.
However, not everyone seemed to like the music. At one point, someone inside an apartment building started throwing objects at the multi-storey protesters (one of the security guards said he saw a container of orange juice and a trophy fall into the snow).
Used to improvising, the band simply dodged flying objects and marched a little faster, the music never stopped.