Up to 150,000 attend arts festival’s last day

While airborne acrobatics aren't typically associated with high art, they were a fitting way to end the ambitious 25-day Philadelphia International Festival of the Arts, in the view of organizer Ed Cambron.

"We actually gravitated toward the high wire," he said Saturday as crews were scrambling to make last-minute arrangements to host a party for thousands along South Broad Street that was part Champ Elysees, part Jersey Boardwalk, and decidedly Philadelphia.

"We took risks."

In the end, he said, the inaugural festival, somewhat of a massive pep rally for the Philadelphia arts scene at a time when it could use one, was enough of a hit that organizers might consider making it a biennial event.

The festival involved 145 events at venues around the city; Saturday's grand finale was a barely contained giant street party, extending from Chestnut to Lombard Street. Event organizers said 100,000 to 150,000 people showed up.

It opened with the aerial performing troupe La Compagnie Transe Express, from Lyon, France, ringing bells and playing percussion instruments at street level.

A block away teenagers from Bristol Township beat drumsticks on turned-over plastic trash cans and empty sour-cream buckets. "It's an outlet," said Kevin Travers, leader of "Drummers with Attitude," and the drumbeats were more than enough to inspire a posse of toddlers to try their hands and legs at break-dancing.

Elsewhere, people waited patiently in lines for everything from food to sitting for caricuture sketches to let face-painters turn them into quasi-Polynesians, and, above all, to ride the Ferris wheel.

Although the wheel appeared dwarfed in the South Broad building canyon, and the trampolinists peforming nearby seem to rival its height, it still towered 70 feet. And by early afternoon, at least 200 were waiting in the Ferris wheel line, which went from near Sansom to Walnut, where it was forced to turn left.

"It's going real slow," said event staffer Andy Riehs.

Around noon, Laurel Landau, of Society Hill, was considering taking sons Jeremy, 3, and Caleb, 8 months, on the ride, but for the moment she was riveted by "the Living Fountain," in which water was ejecting from the fingertips of a performance artist (very handy for rinsing dishes, by the way).

Landau said she regretted not attending any of the other festival events, but said she was enjoying herself immensely on Saturday. She particularly liked the diversity of the crowd. "It's very inter-generational," she said.

Marilyn Edney, of Sicklerville, said she had read about the festival and was pumped to attend with her husband and great-nephew. "We try to keep up with the arts," she said. She added that given that since she and her family spent all of March celebrating her 60th birthday, "We appreciate that so many things are free" at the festival.

The Edneys visited the lighted Eiffel Tower exhibit at the Kimmel Center, home of the Philadelphia Orchestra - which, though it recently filed for banruptcy, was the focus of the festival.

Cambron, the organizer, said the event has been a major boon for the Kimmel, which, before Saturday, already had drawn aboot 100,000 visitors. On Saturday, hundreds were milling about the lobby; it was unclear how many were there for the free wine tastings.

The festival was conceived by Kimmel Center officials and underwritten by a $10 million grant from Lenore Annenberg before she died two years ago.

Trans Expresse, the acrobat troupe, was to close the show Saturday night with a performance staged 150 feet aove Broad and Spruce.

While Marilyn Edney said she was glad she attended the festival. But, she added, she doesn't really need an excuse to come across the river from New Jersey.

"Philadelphia," she said, "is a fabulous city."