Jeanne Fleming, Wonder Worker
by Cynthia Owen Philip

Jeanne Fleming is a celebration artist. How's that for a job description! Does she have a soaring imagination? Do her creations work? Is she a bit zany? Yes, yes, yes and much, much more. Through wondrous public experiences that integrate all the performing arts, she binds together the many different groups that exist within communities.

When did she start thinking about such grass roots interaction? When she was a youngster, she told me, her family had a place on Long Beach Island, New Jersey. She made the garage into a theater and pulled in neighborhood children to form a troupe. They improvised stories and plays. Soon the whole island came to their performances. Later, when she was all of 18 years old, she arrived at Bard College as a faculty wife. There, she studied the medieval period, a second major influence on her career. In those long ago centuries, all walks of life united in celebrating both secular and holy days. These were their chief source of entertainment, their TV-movies-internet-and-iPods, except that, face to face, they intimately shared their spontaneous exuberance and exaltation.

Finally, Jeanne's sensibilities have been enhanced by the magic of the Rokeby estate, whose dairy cottage has been her home and work place for many years. All the tenants in the converted farm buildings, as well as the owners in the mansion, are proud individualists. Yet, recognizing their interdependence, they all delight in playing a self-selected role in the Rokeby community. The estate's physical beauty—its huge open fields and venerable trees with the great river flowing by and the mountains framing the scene—also encourage Jeanne's imagination to fly.

I first got to know her when she and the late Larry Sacharow were staging an electrifying production of Chekhov's Three Sisters there. The first three acts moved from one pair of first floor rooms to the other; the fourth act was outside under a lone tall pine. The evening I saw it, just as the hero was about to shoot himself, the sunset blazed amazing streaks of turquoise sandwiched between red and orange clouds. It was the most powerful visual effect I have ever seen.

Dutch Christmas
Jeanne's first Rhinebeck celebration calling in a host of volunteers was Dutch Christmas. First held in the village in the 1980s, her intention was to bring back the creative spirit of the season by reenacting St. Nicholas Day, December 6, in old Holland, a rare tribute to the heritage of Rhinebeck's Kipsbergen/Rhinecliff patentees and the Beekman proprietors, too. In a special ceremony, children were made kings and queens. They wore paper crowns and carried decorated boughs for scepters they themselves fashioned as part of the day-long event. Each child made three wishes that were recorded in a book: one for their families, one for the whole town, and one for themselves. There were pony rides, a teddy bear beauty contest and storytellers. Student musicians and dancers performed in Town Hall. Madrigal singers roamed the streets. The day culminated with a great torchlight parade. Its feature was St. George riding on a papier maché horse pursuing a huge two-headed grisly green papier maché dragon, both of which, together with other beasties, were made in the Rhinecliff's Morton Memorial Center. The grand finale was the lighting of the community Christmas tree.

The first Dutch Christmas brought so much joy to participants of every stripe that the event became the focus of the holiday season; in just five years it grew from just over 500 participants to 15,000. Then, because shopkeepers believed so many people clogging the streets took a whole day away from Christmas sales, it ended. But it was not forgotten.

Rhinebeck's Tricentennial
Next, Jeanne masterminded two splendid events in connection with Rhinebeck's tri-centennial celebrations. The first was a weeklong Arts in Education program for fifth graders, Let the River Connect Us. Its aim was to bring Rhinebeck's Native American heritage to life and to remind residents that the river was the source of the area's plentitude from time immemorial. Tribesmen came to tell old stories and to perform rituals. The children made pictures and wrote poems that, in a marathon night session, volunteers published in a pamphlet presented to each child on the final day. The program's concluding event was a blessing of the river at Rhinecliff Landing. Residents of all ages had written their promises for Rhinebeck. These were placed in a well-crafted papier maché canoe and floated into the water.

The second event, HeyDay, was patterned after an old time county fair. It had been scheduled to take place at the Fair Grounds in Rhinebeck, but when, at the eleventh hour, rain made the grass too slippery, Jeanne simply moved the fancy tents and the performance stages to the ample and embracing Chancellor Livingston schoolyard. Entertainments ranged from puppet shows and turtle races to a baseball game and a magic show. The band and chorus from Rheinbach, Germany, in town for their twice-a-decade exchange with Rhinebeck students, offered a fine musical program. Huge quilts made up of colorful cotton squares depicting town scenes and icons, painted by children and sewn together by women in nursing homes, were a central attraction. (They hang today in Chancellor Livingston's auditorium.) Miss Margaret "Daisy" Suckley of Wilderstein, then a perky 96 years old, was the honored guest at the gala potluck supper. A fine display of fireworks ended the day just before the rain came down in drenching sheets.

Halloween Parade
At the same time Jeanne was the chief organizer of New York City's Greenwich Village Halloween Parade, work she continues to this day. Its special charm for our neighborhood is that the immense street puppets are designed, made and stored in the barns at Rokeby under the direction of Superior Concept Monsters, a partnership of Sophia Michahelles, a Rokeby daughter, and Alex Kahn of Red Hook. Every year a new set of puppets relating to the year's special theme is added to those of previous years. While planning the parade is always in motion, the actual building of the new puppets and refurbishing the old begins some time after Labor Day, when volunteers appear from far and wide to make the ingenious structural forms and the papier maché heads and to sew and paint the costumes.

One of the best times for me is when puppets from former years are brought down from the hayloft where they reside from Halloween to Halloween. It is like a reunion of old friends. My favorites are a host of bats and bugs with wings made of sections of collapsible umbrellas designed by the now renowned puppeteer Basil Twist. Mounted on varying lengths of pole, the wings are made to flap simply by pulling an attached string. But of all the puppets, the one that gives me emotional goose flesh every time I think of it was for the parade after September 11, 2001. Michahelles and Kahn made it between the time the city finally agreed to let the parade take place and Halloween. In those short ten days, they built a 25-foot-tall glittering gold and red phoenix. Leading the parade, the magnificent puppet set a brave and hopeful tone that I still cling to.

Sinterklaas
This coming holiday season Rhinebeck's Dutch Christmas will be revived in a new form, with Jeanne Fleming again at the helm. The celebration has been transformed into an ethnically diverse ecumenical celebration that promises to spread even greater creativity and cohesiveness in Rhinebeck and its surrounding communities. Varying interpretations of the ancient Sinterklaas story will be drawn from every ethnic and religious group of residents, including the growing Mexican and Jewish populations. The Center for the Performing Arts will create three versions of St. George and the Dragon performed by three different troupes, each of which will present their own perspective on the story. St. Nicholas himself will arrive at Rhinecliff Landing in a Dutch sloop. Mounted on a white horse, he will go from house to house, leaving candy for children who have put the traditional "carrot in a shoe" on their doorsteps for his steed.

Special arts projects will be coordinated by Superior Concept Monsters, which will run workshops for making a new array of street puppets, mobile inventions and masks. They will also refurbish the much loved "Toy Box" that has been sleeping in a barn for 20 years, so that once again the Four Seasons, the Ballerina, the Goosemobile and the Carousel will cheer participants and audience alike. New to the celebration will be a thousand hand-made illuminated stars. Adults holding them will bow deeply to the children, thus elevating them above the stars. As they rise, restoring the stars to the firmament, church bells will ring, signifying that all is well in the cosmos. Participants will take their stars home until the following year's Sinterklaas, when they will join the host of new stars.

Walking on Air
As I write this article, Jeanne is also in the midst of designing a celebration weekend for the grand opening of the long dormant Poughkeepsie Railroad Bridge, completed in 1888 and abandoned in 1974 after a fire. The bridge, which rises a spectacular 200 feet above the Hudson, is being transformed into a unique state park dedicated to walkers and cyclists. The project, first envisioned by Walkway over the Hudson (a group of volunteers that saved the bridge from demolition and now owns it), is funded by both public and private money. The new bridge-park's inauguration—the culminating event of the Hudson-Fulton-Champlain Quadricentennial—is scheduled for the weekend of September 25, 2009, four centuries after Hudson's Half Moon reached what is now Poughkeepsie. Many details still have to be filled in, but Governor Spitzer's enthusiastic endorsement of the project in his recent State of the State speech has put it on fast track.

Jeanne, the coordinator of the Quadri-centennial's Mid-Hudson Region, believes that unparalleled views from the park up and down the river and across the countryside will be as awesome as the first sight of the glorious river was to Hendrick Hudson and his crew. The difference will be that, at such a great height, the experience will be like "Walking on Air." Although the original charter for the bridge anticipated its recreational use by pedestrians, cyclists and carriages, and lanes on both sides of the tracks were provided for them, that never came about. Now, for the first time the public will have access to this glorious experience.

A prestidigitator at heart, Jeanne plans to bring the mighty bridge out of the dark on the Friday evening in question by means of a finely-tuned illumination. There will be fireworks galore, as well as subscription balls and informal jamborees on both the east and west approaches to the bridge. Saturday will be VIP day, featuring an immense parade, nautical events and more fireworks.

The real opening will be Sunday, when cyclists and walkers from near and far will take over. They will be entertained by the wonderful variety of performers that Jeanne is so adept at assembling, representing every cultural group in New York State: thousands are expected. The west side approach is a two minute walk, easily reached from Route 9 via Haviland Avenue in the Town of Lloyd, while the Poughkeepsie approach from Washington Avenue is only a bit farther. Moreover, it is expected the old waterfront elevator will again be working. The grand plan, to be realized over the years, is to link the bridge to rail trails extending to New Paltz on the west bank and to Hopewell Junction on the east as well as to the Greenway network of hiking trails.

Walking on Air in September 2009 may seem a long time away. But it will fly by. In the meantime, we can delight in the Halloween Parade, Sinterklaas and who knows what other surprises Jeanne, the wonder worker, is concocting for us all.