Port Chester Fest Brings Together a Diverse Village

The Rye area community came together Saturday for the third annual Port Chester Fest, an event on the waterfront that featured diverse music, art and poetry from a range of cultures.

The event was only a dream three years ago, when the nonprofit Council of Community Services learned from focus groups that Port Chester was an "unwelcoming" village, its residents feeling disconnected from the rest of the community. 

The village of Port Chester is impressively diverse—65 percent Hispanic, with significant White and African-American populations and frequent waves of immigration, most recently from countries like Brazil and Guatemala. 

The Council of Community Services decided to harness the many rich cultures of the village to "bring everyone together through the universal language of art and music," Executive Director Daniel Lipka said.

Port Chester Fest was sponsored by many organizations, including the United Way, the Helen Andrus Benedict Foundation, and the local Rotary Club. Though the event was centered on the waterfront, there were busses running every half-hour to open artist studios around the village. 

Across the street from the festival, the Copacabana Restaurant hosted a reading by poets such as Spoken Word artist Professor Arturo, Argentine writer Anahi Rossini, Poet Laureate Emeritus of Greenburgh, Brendan Connor-Bey, and Port Chester High School student Rene Malasquez. 

The heart of the event, however, was the cluster of vendor tents, where Sandra Fuller and her husband sold arrangements of silk flowers, Serwaa Anokye sold fudge, brittle, and her daughter's hand-beaded bookmarks, and local artists displayed their work.

Visitors to the festival also took part in the creation of a community work of art—a chalk mural, overseen by Tova Snyder.

"The important idea is creating art live," said Snyder, a muralist, Rye resident, and member of the festival's planning committee. The project is based on the Italian tradition of painting the streets in front of churches. Snyder herself was a street-painter in Italy.

The connections forged by residents went beyond even art and culture. Non-profit organizations had booths that informed residents of assistance for which they could be eligible. For example, immigration attorneys Corinne Beth and Lindsay Arroyo came to publicize the Westchester Hispanic Coalition of White Plains, through which they offer free help with the citizenship process. Beth and Arroyo wanted to reach the village's large Hispanic population.

"They're such a significant part of the demographic here," Arroyo said, "which makes our services and our organization relevant."

Most of the attendees on Saturday were children, with many of them walking around with their faces painted as lions, butterflies, geishas, or the Navi people from the movie Avatar. The event was designed to be "as child-friendly as possible," said Lipka, who brought his own five-year-old to the festival. 

Tor Snyder, a Brooklyn musician, was manning the musical instruments table, showing local kids guitars, keyboards, and percussion instruments from Chile, India, Japan and Bali.

"I believe in letting kids be hands-on with the instruments," Snyder said, which was clear from the noise created by eager new guitarists, drummers and singers.

In between showing one young boy sound effects on a keyboard and helping a girl construct a maraca out of macaroni and paper, Snyder praised the Port Chester Fest for "bringing the community together in a positive, creative artistic way that crosses the boundaries of culture, art and cuisine."

Vincent, 8, a Port Chester resident, enjoyed the multicultural instruments for a different reason: "They're LOUD!" 

Vincent's musical performance, however, was drowned out by musical performances taking place on the stage. Hermanos y Amigos de Guatemala, an Eastern Guatemala dance group dressed in elaborate costumes, performed "El Toro," a traditional street dance that tells the story of a boss who hires his workers to kill a bull. 

The ultimate cultural mélange, however, was displayed in the performance of the Keltic Dreams Irish Dancers, thirty-three students of African-American, Hispanic and Indian background from P.S. 59 in the Bronx who learned Irish step dance from their teacher, Caroline Duggan.

On stage, Duggan, who moved to the Bronx from Ireland, explained how the students became interested in Irish dance through her accent and the Riverdance poster in her classroom. Duggan then began an Irish dance program after school, and was amazed at how quickly the students picked up the steps. The group, which incorporates hip-hop and salsa moves into Irish dance, has traveled to Ireland to perform for its president, and on St. Patrick's Day, they performed at the White House for President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama. 

Offstage, Keltic Dreams dancer Anaistasia Younger expressed the source of her enthusiasm for Irish dance, which could just as easily explain the cheerful mood in abundance at the Port Chester Fest: "We mix together many different cultures. And it's fun!"