Performance Artists Take To The Schuylkill River
By Hadas Kuznits
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) - The 3rd annual Invisible River Festival took place along the Kelly Drive Saturday.
A drum line kicked off the festival along the Schuylkill River featuring aerialist and other performance artists.
"Invisible River is two things," says the festival's artistic and executive director Alie Vidich. "It's an organization that creates outstanding performances that are water based that fly, float and bring audience members onto our local rivers and it's also a festival that takes place annually on the Schuylkill in Fairmount Park."
She says the idea started about five years ago with a smaller performance called "Constance" which was a tour on the Schuylkill through history.
"After working on that for two years, I wanted to do something about the future and how to make the river more of a public space for gathering."
Vidich says the festival has grown over the years:
"We started in 2013 with only a 30-minute performance which included aerial dance from the bridge and we definitely branched out into programming; everything from food vendors to exhibitors to teach us about the river."
Vidich says the goal of the festival "is to demonstrate how we can create more recreational opportunities and make this a space where more people hang out and not just a space that we pass by on bikes or in boats, but that we can actually make it a community gathering space."
Saturday was a half-day event, with even more programming planned for next year.