The culture programme, Miami 2017

01The strands

The event website grouped the culture programme into Art & Architecture, Dance, Film, Main Village, Music, OutCities, Pulse Points and Poetry. Wikipedia’s summary adds that concerts, art exhibits, band and choir competitions, community events and a film festival were planned across the ten days.

OutCities was an idea carried over from an earlier edition. At Copenhagen in 2009, according to Wikipedia, Melbourne, Tel Aviv, Mexico City, Rio de Janeiro, Antwerp and Aarhus each presented a cultural programme of local artists on themes of gender, identity and cultural diversity.

02The Festival Village

The hub of the cultural strand was meant to be the Festival Village in Lummus Park, the oceanfront park along Ocean Drive, entered at 8th Street. The official page planned two entertainment stages, a women’s space, a family area, an adult zone and food and drink stalls, with smaller village hubs at sports venues around Greater Miami. Entry was free. It was to open at 1 pm each day and close at 8 pm over the first weekend and 10 pm on most later days, ending with a beach party on 4 June.

The page also covered access. The village was listed as wheelchair accessible, with an accessible swing, and pointed visitors to companies that delivered rental wheelchairs and scooters to the airport or to hotels. Performers who wanted a slot on the Main Stage or the Women’s Stage were asked to apply by email.

03Art and architecture

The Art & Architecture page listed tours and exhibitions across the ten days, including “The Colors of Miami Beach” and “Invisible” (both running from 26 May to 4 June), “Jewels of Downtown Miami” (27 May), “Wynwood Arts District: Inside & Out” and a trip to Stiltsville and the Cape Florida Lighthouse (28 May), “Preservation Under the Rainbow” (31 May) and a gay and lesbian walking tour of Miami Beach (3 June).

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Three more items sat on the same page: “Sex and the Sea” (26 to 28 May), “ARTworkOUT” (27 May) and “Home Run for the Arts” (30 May).

The poetry strand was listed in the site menu, but its programme details are not covered here.

04Music and film

The music strand was billed to open the cultural programme. “It Takes a Village, People”, presented by the Miami Gay Men’s Chorus at the Colony Theater on Lincoln Road on the evening of 26 May 2017, marked the 40th anniversary of the Village People. The event page promised their songs alongside other music of the 1970s, from ABBA and the Bee Gees to Donna Summer and Queen.

Two screenings show the range of the film strand. On 31 May the free SoundScape Cinema Series, presented by Citi and curated by the City of Miami Beach Cultural Affairs Program, listed Ang Lee’s “Life of Pi” (2012) outdoors at SoundScape Park by the New World Center. On 2 June the Colony Theater was to show “Tom of Finland” (2017), Dome Karukoski’s film about the artist Touko Laaksonen, with the OUTshine Film Festival as community partner.

05Dance and performance

The dance strand included an evening by the Miami company Dance Now!, under its artistic directors Diego Salterini and Hannah Baumgarten, at the Colony Theater on Lincoln Road on 29 May. Its centrepiece was “Lacrymosa”, a 1988 work by Edward Stierle first performed by the Joffrey Ballet as a commentary on the AIDS epidemic of the time. The official page noted that Stierle, a Florida-born choreographer, died at 23, and that the evening would draw attention to the epidemic in South Florida. The South Beach Chamber Ensemble was billed for a special presentation.

The same company was also on the bill for Pulse Points at the New World Center on 1 June.

The opening ceremony at the Fillmore Miami Beach on 27 May was a performance programme in its own right, with Kristine W, David Hernandez and Tito Puente Jr. and his band. It was one of the events cancelled on 26 May.

06Culture at earlier editions

Culture had been part of the World Outgames from the start. Montréal in 2006 included events the Gay Games did not hold, such as a country-western dance competition and a choral festival with a competitive element, staged at Salle Pierre Mercure from 1 to 3 August 2006, according to Wikipedia. Its opening ceremony at the Olympic Stadium featured k.d. lang, Martha Wash, Deborah Cox and the Cirque du Soleil.

The main social area for non-sporting events in Montréal was on the west side of Viger Square, and the Games ran at the same time as Divers/Cité, the city’s pride festival. Wikipedia records that the festival’s attendance and revenue fell that year rather than rising, and quotes its director as saying there were “10,000 more things to do”.

07Pulse Points

One of the evenings on the Miami programme was Pulse Points, an evening of performances in memory of the 49 people killed at Pulse nightclub in Orlando in June 2016.

When the organisers cut back the Games on 26 May 2017, their statement said the cultural programmes would continue as planned. Wikipedia’s summary says the cultural events went ahead as scheduled, but that many athletes stayed away because they were dealing with what was left of their own sports. See Miami 2017.

08Frequently asked questions