FREE performance festival comes to West Beach
Mark your calendars, because this September, West Beach will come alive as Save the Dunes will be partnering with the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore on the 2016 Dunes Blowout: A Festival of Performance and Ecology.This FREE family-oriented festival will take place from 12-7 pm on September 24 and 25, 2016 at the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore’s West Beach in Porter County.
The festival is inspired by the historic Pageant of 1917, a large outdoor event that galvanized the movement to protect the Indiana Dunes. The Pageant brought together many different walks of life to show just how much the dunes meant to people in the area.
The 2016 Dunes Blowout will once again bring many people together for two days of performance and exploration of the dunes. This year, the blowout will feature many exciting things, including:
- Indiana Ballet Theatre dancing on the beach in the historic style of the 1917 Pageant
- South Shore Dance Alliance in an original contemporary ballet depicting the struggles of the dunes with music by Indiana native Kenneth Ware
- No Exit Performance of Indianapolis guiding audience members through the trails during a family friendly ecology based adaption of familiar fairy tales
- Pine Elementary Magnet School for the Arts in an original dance performance focused on native plants of the dunes
- Emerson Jazz Tornadoes in a musical performance
- Sacred Sands Reader’s Theater in a performance based on “Sacred Sands” by Ron Engel written by David Hoppe and directed by John Green, the chair of the theatre department at Columbia College
- Patti Shaffner with an original song about the dunes and an interactive improvisational singing circle
- Serena Sutliff of the Westchester Township History Museum presenting the history of the 1917 Pageant
- The Duneland Plein Air Painters will be painting all along the trails
- There will also be many family-friendly interactive activities brought to you by Save the Dunes and the National Park Service
- Local food trucks will be on hand with a variety of different food
The 2016 Dunes Blowout is sponsored by ArcelorMittal, NIPSCO, Efromyson Family Fund, and Gaylord and Dorothy Donnelley Foundation. It is a signature project of the Indiana Bicentennial Commission, and is made possible, in part, with support from the Indiana Arts Commission. More information can be found here or on Save the Dunes Facebook event page.
The pageant of 1917 brought many people together. This year they hope to do the same!
The mission of Save the Dunes is to preserve, protect and restore the Indiana dunes and all natural resources in Northwest Indiana’s Lake Michigan Watershed for an enhanced quality of life.
More than 20,000 National Park Service employees care for America’s 412 national parks and work with communities across the nation to help preserve local history and create close-to-home recreational opportunities. Visit them at www.nps.gov, on Facebook www.facebook.com/nationalparkservice, Twitter www.twitter.com/natlparkservice, and YouTube www.youtube.com/nationalparkservice.
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