Arts & Ideas returns to live performance with dance, jazz, world music and drag shows

The International Festival of Arts & Ideas is going live again, with some of its more than 200 events. The festival’s full schedule, including a concert by the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, a dance performance by Ronald K. Brown’s socially conscious modern dance troupe Evidence and a high-fashion “hair art show,” all on New Haven Green, was announced Tuesday.

Festival staples, upended by by the coronavirus pandemic last year, have resurfaced, the biggest one being free concerts on New Haven Green. Walking tours and bike tours are also back, though the satellite “neighborhood festivals” which supplement the main festival by bringing local talent to four key sections of the city will be done virtually for the second year in a row.

Many events, including the entire “Ideas” slate announced earlier in the month and the neighborhood festivals, remain virtual. Like last year, the events are spread out over several weeks. Virtual programming is accessed through the festival’s own “Virtual Stage” on its website, as well as through Facebook Live, YouTube and Twitch.

Live events include:

• a “first glimpse” of Ronald K. Brown and Evidence’s work-in-progress “Equality of Night and Day, June 20 at 8:30 p.m. on the New Haven Green mainstage. Collaborators on the piece include composer Jason Moran, activist/author Angela Davis and photographer/historian Deborah Willis. “Equality of Night and Day” has been described on Brown’s website as “examining the concepts of balance, equity, and fairness in light of the conflicting present-day issues that young people, women, and people of color now face in a world where exploitation, gentrification, racism, and xenophobia are on the rise.”

• A “StorySLAM” spoken word event June 26 at 6 p.m. with the winner crowned “top Festival slammer.”

• “The Legend Drag Show,” June 27 at 8 p.m., starring La’Diva Monet (known for a devastating Fantasia impression) and hosted by Pride New Haven’s Patrick Dunn.

• a beekeeping clinic with the Huneebee Project, June 19 and 20 at 11 a.m.

• New Haven Symphony Orchestra performing Vivaldi’s “The Four Seasons” June 23 at 7 p.m.

• nine separate in-person bike tours, including a Connecticut Freedom Trail Ride on Juneteenth, not to mention three boat tours and half a dozen walking tours.

Live shows on New Haven Green that will also be livestreamed include:

• “Imagine Beginnings,” a multimedia festival kickoff event, June 18 at 7 p.m.

• the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, June 18 at 8:30 p.m. The orchestra formed in 1988 and has visited New Haven many times over the years, but a free outdoor and livestreamed show is a big deal.

• the female Latin pop fusion quartet Ladama, June 25 at 8:30 p.m.

• A multipart “Art & Hair Show” June 19 from 5 to 10 p.m. with performances by Durand Bernarr, Dawn Tallman and Mwenso & The Shakes and headliner and hair fashions by Jon Shawn.

• A version of “Romeo & Juliet” with a street violence theme, a collaboration between the gun-violence-prevention non-profit Ice the Beef and the Elm Shakespeare Company June 26 at 3:30 p.m.

• A “Gospel Brunch” on Green with Kevin Monroe & Devotion with Pastor Danny Bland.

• The Puerto Rican music ensemble Los Pleneros de la 21 June 22 at 8:30 p.m., one of several weekday events on the Green.

Among the virtual-only offerings:

• “Where We Belong,” a solo performance piece by internationally known writer/director/performer Madeline Sayet about her experiences as a student in England, examining the country’s legacy of colonialism and its Brexit decisions. Sayet, a Mohegan native, was raised in Connecticut, where she’s worked with UConn’s Connecticut Repertory Theatre and New London’s Flock Theatre, and just this year created a radio-style drama about Mohegan history for HartBeat Ensemble. On demand June 24-27.

• “Food of the Future” with regenerative ocean agriculture company GreenWave and the Olmo restaurant making a bagel feast, June 11 at 7 p.m.

• The four traditional “Neighborhood Festivals” celebrating The Hill, West Rock, Newhallville and Dixwell sections of New Haven. The once-live neighborhood festivals were converted to an all-virtual, multi-act variety show style last year.

Of the 10 food-themed events, six are virtual (including “Chocolate Truffle Making for Kids with chef Avi Szapiro”) and four are in-person (including a brew and barbecue event at Bear’s Smokehouse).

Many of the performing artists turn up elsewhere in the festival, in panel discussions, workshops and other events. A hallmark of the festival has been to make the creators accessible to audiences. There is even crossover among events, as when “Where We Belong”'s Sayet hosts a conversation with current U.S. Poet Laureate Joy Harjo May 20 at 5 p.m.

The festival, in conjunction with New Haven’s Mayor’s Neighborhood Vitality Grant Program, is also hosting a daylong multifaceted live-and-virtual Juneteenth celebration on June 19.

The dozens of “Ideas” events are all virtual this year, with topics ranging from “Black Futures” (with Black Lives Matter co-found Alicia Garza), “Visionary Science Fiction and Liberation” (with musicians Toshi Reagon and Hanifa Nayo Washington), “Listening to Earth: Indigenous Wisdom & Climate Futures” and “Reimagining Economies: Entrepreneurship and building a solidarity economy.”

Arts & Ideas notes that it is working closely with a COVID compliance company, has adopted its own safety plan, and that “if at any point federal, state, or local guidelines become stricter than the safety measures outlined in the safety plan, the Festival will adjust to whichever directives are most strict.”

Tickets went on sale early to “Festival Insiders” members on April 26 and to New Haven residents on April 28. Tickets go on sale to the general public May 3.

The full schedule, in several different formats including a daily calendar, is at artidea.org.

Christopher Arnott can be reached at carnott@courant.com.