Festival Continues to Raise Funds for AIDS
Volume 49, Issue 6
By Mike Lavers

A fundraising tour de force in the fight against the AIDS epidemic began in 1995 at the Fire Island Pines home of Stan Howard and Filoteo Maningat when the first Fire Island Dance Festival (FIDF) raised $6,000 in one night. More than a decade later, the event has evolved into the signature event for Dancers Responding to AIDS (DRA), a New York-based organization which has raised and distributed millions of dollars for HIV and AIDS outreach and prevention groups across the country, as well as one of the world’s premiere dance festivals.

The 11th annual FIDF will take place this weekend at Beau Clarke’s bay front home in the Pines and will feature performances from more than a dozen companies including the Cedar Lake Ensemble, the Mark Morris Dance Group, the Stephen Petronio Company and the Washington Ballet. Michael Benjamin Washington of “La Cage aux Folles” and “Mamma Mia!” fame will join Alan Cumming in emceeing the two-day event.

Event organizers, such as FIDF Associate Producer Jamie Bishton, said that the event is a great way for dancers to come together and help combat the AIDS epidemic, which has hit the dance community particularly hard over the years. But Bishton, who performed in the first dance festival in 1995, was quick to note that DRA’s mission has evolved over the years to provide dancers with access to health insurance and medical care, emergency financial assistance for rent subsidies and a variety of social services that includes educational and therapy groups.

“We really do make a difference in the quality of people’s lives,” Bishton told The News in a recent interview. “When we first started Dancers Responding to AIDS, we didn’t know what to do. [But] now what we can provide is so much.”

All of the dancers scheduled to perform in the FIDF donate their time and many, such as Thang Dao of the Stephen Petronio Company, who is performing a duet with Gino Grenek titled “bud,” consider it an honor and a privilege to be asked to take part in the festival.

“It is a great cause,” Dao said.

Grenek, a native of Rochester, New York, who has been dancing with the company for seven years, agreed. He said that dance is an often under appreciated art form in this country but added, however, that the festival is a great opportunity to showcase established and up-and-coming dancers and dance companies while raising money for a great cause.

“We’re thrilled to be doing it,” Grenek said. “We’re honored that we were asked to do it and to represent the company.”

Stephen Petronio, director of the Stephen Petronio Company, also praised DRA for its continued activism to combat the AIDS epidemic. And he further lauded the dance community – dancers and choreographers – for stepping up to the plate on this issue.

“It’s so great when artists do things not about themselves,” Petronio said. “Obviously the dance world has suffered incredible loses and this is a small way to help.”