There's water all around us and Miami's new water celebration, Water, began tonight. The festival is thirty days of liquid magic presented by Mary Luft and Tigertail Productions. There will be water music, liquid dancing, and tsunami cinema. 
Art flotillas may do battle on the Miami River and the Miccosukee Embassy will officially open.
Japanese performance artist, Eiko Otake, came to the Grove tonight.We followed her around Viscaya as "A Body in Places". It is her response to the Fukushima disaster. She'll be giving a free performance tomorrow night, 6:30 p.m. at the Perez Art Museum.
The complete schedule is at
www.tigertail.org . It's going to be an outstanding water festival but it's not the first.
That honor goes to the folks who once put on the Grove's King Mango Strut parade. In 2004 we staged the world's first festival with the liquid-themed, "WaterFest". It took place at Key Biscayne's Marjorie Stoneman Douglas Nature Center for three years. 
Most of those attending WaterFest were children and their parents. Here they're learning the hula.
Holi man
Like Mary and company, the Strut organizers came up with every water- related event they could think of. We had water music, water art and the frozen version, ice sculptures by Barry Massin.
Of course we had a wet t-shirt contest. In the King Mango version participants (men, women, and kids) were given old shirts. After dipping them in water they were thrown at a distant wall with gusto. The first person hitting the target won.
I exhibited my collection or antique sprinklers. Our mermaid contest was won by a man named "Jellyfish". Antoinette Baldwin ran the WaterFest Bar that served craft water. The melted glacier was superb.
During its three-year run we ended each WaterFest with a Holi celebration.
About to get soaked, WaterFest Holi, 2006.
Soaked, 2005That's the Indian fiesta where people wearing white toss colored water at each other. Great fun!
Tigertail's month-long event is WaterFest taken to its highest level. It is highly professional and has an impressive list of sponsors.
King Mango's version? Nah...it paled in comparison but got high marks for hard work, creativity, and weirdness. Our sponsor was the Miami-Dade Department of Water and Sewers.
There are so many cool things on Tigertail's festival schedule.
Many are on Miami Beach where they will soon have gondolas plying the waters that were once Lincoln Road.
Like we said twelve years ago,
"Relax. Enjoy the water.
It's 72 % of you".
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