CIPRIANI GALA DINNER    

Saturday 9 June 2007
Cipriani Hotel, Venice

As the vernissage wound down, taxi-boat after taxi-boat whisked invited guests off across the Grand Canal to the Hotel Cipriani's pier on the northeast side of the Giudecca.

As they debarked they blended into a growing sea of cocktail-wielding dignitaries.

Diplomats from Spain and Georgia blended with art critics from New York and Moscow, museum directors from Taiwan and Morocco rubbed elbows with Italian MPs, and Hong Kong's cultural movers and shakers shook hands with collectors from across the globe and across the lagoon.

During the banquet Stuart Gibson and
Achille Benito Oliva made further remarks.
But the climax of the evening was the spectacular performance of Fidget Feet (www.fidgetfeet.com), the Irish performance art company led by Chantal McCormick and Jym Daly, one of the original members of the rock band Loop Guru. The group spread itself across the stage and shimmied up and down long strands of white fabric. Enveloped in kinetic projections based on Adi Da Samraj's artwork, the Ireland-based dancer-actor- acrobats enmeshed themselves in the fabric as they followed an airborne choreography based philosophically and symbolically on Adi Da Samraj's teaching.

Above:  Chief Curator, Achille Bonito Oliva. Click to Read the full text of his speech.

Above:  Fidget Feet on long strands of white fabric, performing airborne acrobatics

Above:  Fidget Feet performing airborne acrobatic choreography on strands of wire

Above (left):  Minister of Culture of Venice, Luana Zanella

Above:  Jonas Storys (Curator, Centre Pompidou), Julie Cabot (Curator of Modern Art, Hermitage Museum), Nic Iljin (Director of International Development, Guggenheim)

Above (left):  Patrick Ho, Secretary of Home Affairs, Hong Kong

Above (right):  Wife of the Prime Minister of Morocco (and also Director of Musse Hassen)

Left:  Senator Cesare Campa, Senator, Italian Parliament (and daughter)

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