Seeing Strange Fruit

Every year I vow that next year I will take my girls to the Lotus Festival of World Music.

Think of the cultural stimulation! The excitement! How it will deepen their understanding of the world, and increase their love of all music! Besides, I really want to go, and we don't do babysitters.

Then that next year rolls around, and I look at the ticket prices compared to the short attention spans of my babes, and the fact that each of them STILL throws the occasional tantrum when over-stimulated and denied their way, and I think...next year. I will definitely take my girls to the Lotus Festival next year, when they're a little older, can appreciate the expensive music, and can be certain not to embarrass me and/or ruin the performances for everybody.

Fortunately, the Lotus Festival does so much community outreach that we do still get quite a bit of cultural stimulation and excitement and global understanding and world music, generally in outdoor locations with lots of other families with small children around and plenty of playground equipment or fountains or trees with falling acorns to entertain those with short attention spans.

Campus is a lovely hike from our house, so one afternoon this week we had a lovely hike there, stopping to gather acorns and black walnuts and pinecones and interesting sticks, to watch Strange Fruit perform on the lawn of the IU Art Museum.

It was the perfect performance. It was the middle of the day on a weekday, so while there was a good crowd of college students and families and a few grade school groups, it wasn't overwhelmingly packed. It was a nice day, so everyone was able to lounge on the grass, enabling even the littles to see everything. And, because it's a small town, we found a few friends to sit with:


Do you know Strange Fruit? They're Australian dancers who climb tall flexible metal poles, strap themselves to the tops of the poles, costume themselves, then use the poles as extensions of their bodies to perform gigantically swaying, twirling, bending choreographed dances:

It's really something that you have to see to believe:


Yep, that's my kid. SUPER immersed. Good thing I didn't pay thirty bucks for her to happily dig in the grass while women dance high overhead. Actually, she did engage when the dancers began to really show off how they could bend--

--so much so that she asked for my camera, and these next few photos are hers:

In the end, both girls agreed that the performance was wonderful, and they behaved excellently and were proud to be there:

Next year, I'm definitely going to take them to the full Lotus Festival.

Definitely.