As many of our blog readers may already know, we are VERY excited about our upcoming involvement in Scotiabank Nuit Blanche this weekend from Saturday, September 29th (7pm) to Sunday, September 30th (7am).
Nuit Blanche is an all-night arts festival which transforms a huge area of downtown Toronto into a giant contemporary art museum. This year, amazingly, a 12-hour hour kirtan will be part of their programming and we will be involved!
The city has given a big commercial lobby, right near Yonge and Queen (2 Queen Street East), and is allowing it to be transformed with lights and sound and taking participants back 500 years when the experience of sound and kirtan brought people together! The kirtan is expected to draw tens of thousands of people, according to contacts at the city and the festival overall draws over a million people!
Because the kirtan will be oriented more to new people and encouraging the public to join in, we are humbly asking devotees from our community to wear regular, day-to-day clothing (i.e. pants, shirts, etc). While we would love to have everyone in dhotis, kurtas and saris, we want to make sure this kirtan is accessible and understandable to all the newcomers.
You can check out more information about our involvement in the kirtan on the Nuit Blanche website at: http://www.scotiabanknuitblanche.ca/project.html?project_id=1069
Here is the the basic information you need for this incredible 12-hour kirtan:
— DATES AND TIMES: Saturday, September 29th at 7:03pm to Sunday, September 30th at 7:00am
— LOCATION: Commercial Lobby Space (Indoors) at 2 Queen Street East
— DRESS CODE: Regular, Non-Devotional Clothes (Pants, Shirts, Long Skirts, etc)
— PRASADAM & REST: If you would like to come for the full duration of the program and may require a place to rest along with prasadam, feel free to contact us via this form.
— HELP OUT: if you would like to help out, please contact us via the same form.
— HIGHLIGHTS: the kirtan leaders will be hooked up to a heartbeat monitor which will be projected onto a screen and there will be a second projection which will display a thermal heat shot of the entire crowd!