Wynwood may be the heart of the art scene in Miami, but South Beach is still the place where all the people are at on a Saturday night, which means hundreds of thousands got to enjoy the many and varied happenings for Sleepless Night 2011. Hours of subtropical ministorms, and the logistics of spreading 150 artists in 80 venues over 13 hours slightly hampered the event, but best believe minds were blown regardless. Here is some of what there was to see...
The New World Center was a central hive of activity. Between musical acts and performances, their huge video screen ran art well into the morning.
And their projector is a work of art in itself
Masses of people were splayed across the whole parkland grass and later concrete.
Music and dance acts brought the people together
And Dana Leong rocked out with his cello out
Meanwhile, the Catalina Hotel served as official Sleepless Night headquarters with an artified lounge open till the wee hours.
Bands played out front all night, including the better than ever ArtOfficial.
Out back, the pool had an awesome projection loop running over the water on a recycled plastic bag screen.
Out on Lincoln Road, Diogo Brown's Batuke Samba Funk band had the people dancing to that live tropical bass music.
A dude named Dr Strange sat in a cage surrounded by electronics and sampled voices live to create audio collages
Probably the greatest agglomeration of people occurred for the wall scaling dance work of Project Bandaloop's "Bound(less)," which saw the vertical exterior of Frank Ghery's architectural design transformed into a stage.
Bandaloop's act was full of flips, turns, jumps, and real time slow motion footwork.
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Meanwhile back at The Catalina,
There was drinking, dancing, and chillen for Rose Max and Ramatis's performance.
But the greatest performance of the evening (that we saw) took place Beachside, Ocean Drive, between 9th and 10th streets, where a London band called the Tiger Lillies played a mixed up blend of Benny Hill comic, German beer hall, gypsy klezmer that had the people shuffle swinging in the sand around 1a.m.
Too bad the Felipe Lamoglia Sextet got rained out, their first song sounded awesome, some people sheltered under-tree to check it out,
The storm passed, but the band had already stopped playing, and some people were tired of dealing with nature's fury,
Overall, Sleepless Night was awesome, but we know we missed a lot of great action. A majority of the events took place between 6 and 10p.m., many were spread out too far from each other, the pickings were slim the later it got, and to that free shuttle bus driver who told me he wasn't, suck a fat bag of donkey dicks. See ya in 2013.
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