One of our finest weddings took place in Krems, Austria, on May Day 2014. Dirty Wedding to the Soil was produced by Donau Fest, a multimedia arts festival. The wedding party included local artists who responded to our call for collaborators, artists invited by the festival organizers, and artists who were already part of the festival, including our very favorite rock star Peaches, and Keith Hennessy, a fantastic performance artist, and our neighbor friend. Keith and Peaches, who met for the first time in our dressing room that morning, decided to improvise together, which became a highlight of the wedding. Keith did movements to a spoken-word piece called “Dirt,” which Peaches had written for the occasion.
Thank goodness our director friend, Joy Brooke Fairfield came with us to Krems, and she directed what turned out to be a pretty intense production. The tone was celebratory, but we also did not gloss over Austria’s Nazi past. Tobaron Waxman (our cantor for White Wedding to the Snow) reminded all of us to think about whose blood had been spilled on the soil where this wedding was taking place, recalling World War II atrocities as well as highlighting recent incidents of anti-Semitism. We invited everyone to make vows to the Soil with us and passed around two hundred rings our Boulder Creek neighbor had made for us from brown-fired clay.
The Soil Wedding reception was in a garden a few blocks away from the wedding venue. A fantastic, tall maypole, constructed for us by the festival team, was festooned with colored ribbons and attached to the head of a double bed filled with soil. Three women playfully hugged the maypole as they were bound to it with ribbons. Our guests wove these ribbons together in the maypole dance. It was delightfully kinky, colorful, and fun all at once. We consummated our vows to the Soil by rolling around naked kissing the dirt and each other. We got really dirty.
To view, our beautiful Wedding program and full credits click here.