Highlight Program Guide, 2022

Welcome to Highlight 2022

When the City first brainstormed what could fill the 35-year-old shoes of First Night, Burlington City Arts teamed up with Signal Kitchen to find a way to honor the past while looking forward to the future. Because that’s what New Year’s Eve is all about, right?

Highlight 2018 was new and exciting, and in 2019 we hit our stride, welcoming 6,500 attendees. And then, like everyone else in 2020, we were forced to adapt. The “Highlight House Party” was still a blast despite the obvious physical limitations. With over 13 hours of multiple online channels featuring hundreds of Vermont performers broadcasting direct from their living rooms and studios, we reached 7,500 sets of eyeballs from all over the planet. This streaming shindig helped bring Burlington’s unique spirit worldwide. Last year, our “hybrid happening” was a step in the right direction, but a last-minute pivot due to

Omicron left our in-person programming consolidated onto two outdoor stages—not ideal for an event that prides itself on a constant overstimulation of the senses.

But now we are SO grateful to be relying on what we have learned from the fast, strange half-decade behind us as we look ahead to Highlight 2022 and beyond. We are back in-person with some of the most brilliant Bright Ideas we’ve ever seen (seriously) at venues all over the downtown and waterfront areas. So let’s get together, raise a glass, and invoke another five years of Vermont’s best and brightest lineup of artists, musicians, chefs, comedians, and more.

Start the countdown!

Burlington

City Arts & Signal Kitchen

It’s hard to believe that Highlight 2022 marks the five-year anniversary of Burlington’s community-driven New Year’s Eve celebration.

Let’s celebrate together again!

I am excited for the return of yet another beloved Burlington tradition – Highlight.

Now in its fifth year, Highlight has cemented its reputation as Burlington’s – and Vermont’s – official New Year’s Eve party.

Highlight salutes the rich spectrum of talent that makes Burlington the vibrant city that it is, and brings our local artists and their visions to center stage.

Through the pandemic, Burlington City Arts made sure that audiences all over the world could appreciate the creative spirit and many talents of the Burlington community. Now that we can return to in-person performances, I hope that folks both near and far will come to Burlington to celebrate the New Year with us.

With the Bright Ideas Project, Highlight celebrates diverse aspects of our city and state while relying on the creativity and industriousness of Burlingtonians and Vermonters to design their own event. Every year, I look forward to experiencing the new ways that our local artists will create to reflect on where we have been, and to celebrate the possibility of a new year.

I look forward to ringing in 2023 at Highlight with you and to all that the future will bring.

Warmly, Mayor Miro Weinberger

What is The Bright Ideas Project?

With VSECU’s commitment to empowering possibilities, it’s no surprise that the not-for-profit credit union been the driving force behind Highlight’s Bright Ideas Project from the very beginning. Every year, Highlight receives ideas from Vermonters for all kinds of New Year’s Eve happenings through this crowdsourcing effort.

Once all of the brilliant submissions have been gathered, BCA and Signal Kitchen work together to choose and support the best projects to bring to life. This community-driven format is all about celebrating the experiences and perspectives that make Vermont a beacon of creative energy.

VSECU will be on-hand this NYE to help Highlight revelers empower possibilities in 2023 by giving away $2,000 total in prize money to support their New Year’s resolutions. Stop by VSECU’s table at ECHO, warm up with a decadent, build-your-own hot chocolate, and enter your New Year’s resolution in the drawing. If your resolution is chosen, you could win $200 to put toward reaching your 2023 goals!

Happy New Year!

The journey from Bright Ideas to an amazing NYE event starts with an open call for proposals, getting the word out to reach creative visionaries from every corner of the state.

Circus Smirkus

Contois Auditorium, 2 & 4 pm

Join VT’s famed Circus Smirkus for two shows in Contois Auditorium. This up-close stage show is made just for Highlight and features many of Vermont’s most talented youth. Smirkus has been part of NYE in Burlington for decades, and we are thrilled to be back in-person with this beloved Vermont tradition.

KT

Good Clean Fun

Vermont Comedy Club, 2 & 4 pm

Bring the kids and get ready to laugh with Good Clean Fun, Vermont Comedy Club’s popular family-friendly improv comedy show. For Highlight, the hilarious, professional, in-house troupe presents a special edition featuring two shows of fun, silly, Whose Line Is It Anyway?-style games.

Puppet Kabob: The Snowflake Man

Echo Center, 2 & 3:30 pm

Touring puppeteer Sarah Frechette brings the story of Wilson “Snowflake” Bentley to life with The Snowflake Man. Relating how the self-educated farmer and scientist attracted world attention when he became the first person to photograph a single snow crystal, The Snowflake Man swings audiences into the historic 1920s through creative storytelling, intricately designed Czech-style marionettes, and a striking pop-up book of watercolor scenery.

Make ‘N Take BCA Center, 2-5 pm

Stop by the BCA Center on Church Street between 2-5 pm for a fun make-and-take art activity. We’ll have teaching artists on-hand to assist families with crafting a dazzling glow stick creation to light their way into the new year.

Follies on Follies

Back again after two wildly popular performances, the Front Porch Follies riffs on Vermont’s most cherished form of social discourse. Burlington-based theater makers Gina and Quinn create a hysterical variety show based off their favorite Front Porch Forum posts from 2022. This year features the additional participation of community organizations that have FPF-aligned missions.

Gina and Quinn are also the hosts of BCA’s Listen Up! series, which recently wrapped up its second summer in City Hall Park. At Listen Up!, Gina and Quinn interview local BTV and VT innovators and ideators, so we thought it best that they handle both the questions and the answers for this interview.

Who are you?

Gina: Hi, I’m Gina.

Quinn: Pass.

G: That’s Quinn. We’re theater makers.

How did the Front Porch Follies come about?

G: When we first moved to Burlington in September of 2020, we were told by everyone we knew here—

Q: Our two friends in town and our new landlord

G: —that we should join Front Porch Forum. Obviously, we didn’t have a community here yet, and it was still the height of the pandemic. Reading those daily posts made us feel like we were part of our new neighborhood.

Q: It made Burlington home. We fell in love with all these sweet weirdos who were just like us! And then we saw the call from BCA looking for Bright Ideas for the 2020 New Year’s Eve celebration. If it wasn’t for that call for submissions, the Follies would never have been born.

G: We thought, well, we’re all going to be cooped up, so why not make people laugh?

Q: And FPF is such a place of honesty, so I’m never sure how people are going to react to seeing us repurpose their words. But peoples’ reactions are so joyous. I think that’s why we’re back for a third year.

G: I love how it brings the city together – especially since the pandemic, seeing people come out and celebrate together is so heartening. It makes me feel like I’m part of something beautiful.

G: Some surprises. We’re doing things a little differently. The last two years felt successful as entertainment, but we wanted to grow the Follies into something even more meaningful.

Q: Yeah, we kind of felt like, “Great. We can get people to chuckle together, but what else does this community care about? What else can we all do together?”

G: So you can expect to laugh, and also to engage more directly with the ideas that so many of us seem to care about.

Q: And you can expect a purple El Camino.

G: Yes! The famed purple El Camino…

G: I Really Love Sharing, Anyone Need Sourdough Starter? (Free Items)

Q: Can You Actually Recycle Plastic Bags? (Seeking Recommendations)

What’s been your favorite thing about Highlight?

What can audiences expect from the Follies this year?

If your personality were a Front Porch Forum post, what would be the subject line?

Years of Highlight!

ECHO Center

The ECHO, Leahy Center for Lake Champlain comes alive all day long, beginning at 2 pm with the story of Wilson “Snowflake” Bentley, told via the incredible puppetry of Sarah Frechette and her Puppet Kabob presentation of The Snowflake Man. Meanwhile, the Front Porch Follies act out and riff on real posts from Vermont’s favorite source of social discourse, Front Porch Forum. Be sure to also check out Murmations, an interactive art installation where sounds and visuals respond to your control and directions. Push buttons and turn knobs to see how you affect change in this generative system created by composer Jeffrey Pierce and video game developer Ben Throop.

At 6 pm until the ball drops, we turn on and tune in to The Spirit of NYE. This festival-within-a-festival combines sets of music by some of Vermont’s buzziest bands with serious national renown. Local champs Rockin’ Worms, Dari Bay, and Thus Love get the night going on the downstairs stage prior to NY acid-punk art-rockers Guerilla Toss throwing out tunes that Pitchfork praised recently for being “jampacked with Day-Glo cheerleader chants dedicated to celebrating existence right now, today.” Next, behold Sub Pop artist and Brattleboro native King Tuff, reigning supreme with selections from his vast and heavy-hitting catalog. Beloved VT rockers and heirs to proto-punk royalty Rough Francis pull double duty as King Tuff’s backing band before capping off the evening with a blistering set of their own to send us straight into ‘23.

Be sure to run upstairs for interludes of BTV DIYers Greaseface, songsmith Lily Seabird, the ubiquitous DJ Disco Phantom NYE Dance Party.

The 23 for 23 Movie Marathon runs concurrently for the film fans amongst our revelers. Winding through a mix of genres and styles—horror, animation, camp, comedy, documentary, and more—this fascinating mélange of taste and style celebrates the many possibilities inherent in the short film medium.

And compliment your day at ECHO with refreshing selections of food and beverages provided by Sugar Snap Catering!

Guerilla Toss

Rough Francis

Unitarian Universalist Church

Zoë Keating

A trek to the top of Church Street will be well worth your while, with some of Highlight’s marquee acts filling the Unitarian Universalist Church with wondrous sounds and vision.

At 2 pm, the Youth Opera Company of Vermont gives us Opera 101: A Day in the Life. This string of musical vignettes relies on Mozart, Gluck, Rossini, and others to tell the story of a single day in a high schooler’s life. If ever there was a time to turn your teen onto the expansive world of opera and classical music, this is it.

At 3:30 pm, Jericho’s own Isabel Pless performs songs from her already rich catalog. Having cultivated nearly 110,000 followers on TikTok, come see what all the buzz is about. Singer-songwriter Hope Deluca opens the show.

The exquisite composer and cellist Zoë Keating, who recently made Burlington her home, fills the church with her ethereal landscapes of sound at 5:30 pm. The San Francisco Weekly referred to her music as “swoon inducing,” and NPR described her style as “a distinctive mix of old and new.”

At 7:30 pm, settle in for a night of reflection, anticipation, and, of course, powerfully good music. Supernova soul squad Dwight + Nicole host a party they’re calling Play the Future , which features some of their favorite local performers, including DJ Fattie B, Mikahely, and West African drum and dance troupe Jeh Kulu. The night wraps up with a pew-rattling set from the hosts themselves, taking the form of a nine-piece band, and joined by singer Ali McGuirk, whom The Boston Globe described as “A soul singer who evokes comparisons to Amy Winehouse but rocks even harder.” Completing this amazing picture is Vanish Works’ projection designer Alex Reeves, spinning improvised projections onto the walls of the UU for the evening sets.

Dwight + Nicole

Moran FRAME

City Hall holds it down with the clowns and the sounds, with two shows from VT’s famed Circus Smirkus at 2 and 4 pm, followed by a night of disco-infused boogying.

Last year’s last-minute, Omicron-induced change had Smirkus performing in front of cameras in the BCA Studios warehouse, with a crowd watching outdoors on a big screen. While that was cool, we are so thrilled to be back in person this year to present this beloved Vermont tradition.

Throughout the day Myles Jewels brings you NYE on VHS: Through the Lens of CCTV’s Community Media Archive . This TV installation displays Burlington’s NYE celebrations from the 1980s and 90s, recorded by CCTV’s Founder, Nat Ayer, and other community members.

At the recently opened Moran FRAME, get lost in a surreal art installation that washes out the border between the physical and mental terrains. Through immersive video installations, Lost Objects from the Subsurface transforms the FRAME into an oceanic videospace, inviting you to search for commonly lost objects, explore vast horizons through underwater murkiness, and dive into the depths of a cave, where audiovisual keys help facilitate a process of self-reflection and discovery. An atmospheric soundscape further animates the installation with sub-harmonic frequencies, electronic pulses, and rhythmic patterns. This project comes to you from the folks at Semiliminal Research Group, a collaborative project between artists Sean Clute and Leif Hunneman.

Contois Auditorium

The tunes kick off at 7 pm with DJ Matty P’s Classic Funk, R&B, and Soul Mixer before segueing into live jams from the Medallions, the ‘70s disco-funk incarnation of Vermont’s former psych-pop juggernauts Madaila. DJ Rice Pilaf takes over the decks to help scratch your ABBA itch. You’ll also burn baby burn to a disco inferno of Cher, Donna Summer, the Bee Gees, and more. Disco attire strongly suggested!

Skinny Pancake will be slinging out crepes starting at 2 pm, and don’t forget to fuel your dance moves with a signature Highlight cocktail from Tito’s Handmade Vodka, an indelible beer from Foam, or a civilized sip from Citizen Cider.

Circus Smirkus

SM

Hird: The Garden of Absolute Truths

Fever Dolls

BCA Center

The BCA Center galleries will be open from 12-5 pm, so be sure to engage with our two current exhibitions, Val Hird: The Garden of Absolute Truths and Bill McDowell: Roxham Road to North Elba . On the first floor, The Garden of Absolute Truths explores humanity’s shared myths through large-scale paintings, animated video, and sculpture. Upstairs, Bill McDowell’s photographs engage with the ongoing legacy of racism and social justice in America.

Stop by with the kids between 2-5 pm for a fun make-and-take art activity. We’ll have teaching artists on-hand to assist families with crafting dazzling glowstick creations to light their way into the new year.

From 7:30 pm until the last hours of 2022, head to the Lorraine B. Good room on the second floor for The Long White Line: An Interstate Fever Dream.

This tribute to the U.S. interstate system via immersive art installation and surrealist fashion show comes from the minds of BTV band Fever Dolls. The eveninglength happening features myriad works from local artists, live performances, and an assortment of hors d’oeuvres from Burlington chef Michael Judy . The multimedia mashup takes on one of the most ambitious engineering achievements in human history, reflecting on how the U.S. interstate system shaped the American identity to the point of transcending its purpose and becoming a physical projection of our country’s collective fears, fantasies, and social concerns.

Val

Waterfront Park

Cirque de Fuego

Waterfront Park became Highlight’s de facto headquarters last year, when Omicron forced us to consolidate as much indoor programming as we could onto the mainstage there. But it worked! So this year, we’re following our own lead and have a daylong medley of music, arts, food, and fire.

Jeh Kulu gets things moving at 2 pm with a set of West African drumming that the Burlington-based group has been refining for almost 30 years. Barika takes the stage next, bringing their inspired sounds from the Wassoulou region of Mali, before Moondogs steps up at 4 pm for a set of psychedelia, incorporating elements of funk, pop, jam, jazz, and hip-hop. DJ Rice Pilaf bookends a Donny Hathaway Tribute set from singer-songwriter ivamae, at 5:30 pm, and at 7 pm, the All Night Boogie Band primes the waterfront audience for the 8 pm fireworks, brought to us each year by North Star Fireworks

Last year, Cirque de Fuego started the tradition of igniting a massive wooden Champ effigy. This is still one of the most talked about events from our “hybrid happening,” so be sure not to miss the second year of this uber-Burlington rite with an even bigger Champ! As the flames flicker down to embers, Kat Wright and her band give us all something to talk about with Wright as Raitt, a tribute to singersongwriter and legendary bluesy badass Bonnie Raitt.

Bonfires will keep us toasty, libations from Tito’s Handmade Vodka, Foam, and Citizen Cider will keep our spirits up, and grub from Red Hot Blue, Glory Burger, Mister Foods Fancy, and Sustainable Kitchen will keep our bellies happy.

Stay active by trying your hand at curling, between 2-6 pm, and become entranced by Stephen Roade’s LED Light Towers, acting as bright beacons stationed on the shore throughout the day, ushering 2023 to port.

Kat Wright

LA

Skinny Pancake

Skinny Pancake is the perfect stop along your Waterfront wanderings for excellent food, drink, and fashion!

Starting at 9:30 pm, check out Planet Creation , a fashion show and dance party curated by Trinidadi Twagirumukiza. Trinidadi shares the experience of living as a refugee in Vermont, using the cultural fabrics of music and fashion to tell a story. The first 20 people in the door can volunteer as models for the fashion show, and will be rewarded with the choice to take home the piece they model.

Foam Brewers

Dance yourself dizzy with a Daytime Disco party from DJ Svpply, who has curated a lineup of BTV deejays digging deep into their vinyl collections from 2-6 pm.

And be sure to hail a ride in the mysterious Tarot Taxi, picking up passengers for a cosmic adventure in the Foam parking lot between 4:30 and 11 pm. Reservations are required for this fantastic voyage, so head to highlight.community to book your cab today!

Back inside the tasting room, the musical genre heads in a more down-home direction for the evening festivities, with VT-grown bluegrass bands Wild Leek River and The Wormdogs. Kick off your shoes, enjoy some brews, and dance until the clock counts down on another trip around the sun.

Vermont Comedy Club

Get ready to laugh with Good Clean Fun, Vermont Comedy Club’s popular family-friendly improv comedy show. For Highlight, the hilarious, professional, in-house troupe presents a special edition featuring two shows at 2 and 4 pm. The team will play fun, silly Whose Line Is It Anyway?-style games and create spontaneous comedy based on audience suggestions. There will also be opportunities for brave volunteers to jump onstage and get involved in the fun. The whole show is G-rated, with a full bar and food menu available along with table service. These first-come, first-served shows do fill up quickly, so hop in line early!

By Pete Edwards

Love Highlight? Support BCA!

Highlight is just one of the many programs Burlington City Arts produces throughout year. Since 1981, BCA’s mission has been to nurture a dynamic environment through the arts, making quality experiences and opportunities accessible to everyone in our community. We do this by supporting professional artists, providing high-quality arts-based learning experiences to students of all ages, and producing events and celebrations that spark joy and create community connections.

When you make a donation to BCA today, you are supporting a thriving arts community in which arts experiences like Highlight are accessible to everyone, regardless of their ability to pay. Thank you, and here’s to a bright, creative, and joyful 2023!

Tito’s Supports Local

From the very beginning, Tito’s Handmade Vodka and its philanthropic arm, Love, Tito’s, have been loyal supporters of Highlight and Burlington City Arts. In addition to helping us kick off the New Year on a spirited note, Love, Tito’s has worked with communities in Vermont year-round to support programming that benefits so many amazing causes. Some of these causes include animal welfare, military and veterans services, arts and music, education, food insecurity, adaptive sports, and so much more. Look for special Tito’s Handmade Vodka cocktails at all Highlight location bars, and join us in raising a glass to their continued commitment to turning spirits into community action!

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