This year marks the 50th anniversary of the Village Halloween Parade, a spectacle along Manhattan's Sixth Avenue known for uniting thousands of people, enormous puppets, marching bands and floats.
Perhaps no one knows the event better than Jeanne Fleming, who has been its artistic director for the past 43 years.
Fleming, who describes herself as a “celebration artist,” plans other productions, but this is the one for which she works 17-hour days and spends all year organizing.
"It's not like other parades,” said Fleming, noting that most participants don’t march for political reasons or to celebrate their cultural heritage. She said the Village Halloween Parade is “a celebration of individual imagination, but within the most creative city on earth.”
Jeanne Fleming at the formation area of the parade in Soho in 2022.
Fleming believes her parade is vital.
“We really need tens of thousands of New Yorkers right now to come out and create positive energy, partly to offset all the terrible things that are going on at the moment,” she said.
Fleming joined WNYC’s Tiffany Hanssen to discuss the parade, why she loves it, and what New Yorkers need to know if they’ve never been but want to attend. An edited version of their conversation is below.
A scene from the Village Halloween Parade in 2021.
Hanssen: For folks who have never been to the parade, describe it for us.
Fleming: What I love about it is that it's really the mind of New York City exploding and showing up live for each other. And everyone is walking in their imaginations.
They're not looking for any political purpose or ethnic purpose. It's not like other parades. This is a parade about spirit, creativity. So it’s very exciting in that sense, because it's a celebration of individual imagination, but within the most creative city on earth.
It is also an enormous undertaking. I've heard folks say that you work almost 17 hour days sometimes in the weeks before the parade. Why do you do it?
From the very start, I loved all the people. I love the diversity. I love all the sounds. I love the sights. I love the creativity. And it's an enormous opportunity as a celebration artist to be able to do something that unleashes the imagination of millions of people.
From the 2021 Village Halloween Parade
I believe sincerely that if people – and I'm not talking about artists, because artists know this – I believe that if regular people take the time to reach into their imaginations and create something, that the process of doing that opens your heart. It allows you to lose your mind in the very best sense, to be able to live in your heart, to be able to live in your imagination and to share that with people. I really believe it changes the energy of the world.
And at this point in time, I think we really need tens of thousands of New Yorkers right now to come out and create positive energy, partly to offset all the terrible things that are going on at the moment, which, of course, makes it extremely important to celebrate.
From the 2021 Village Halloween Parade
That's a question: when things are hard, should you celebrate? My father was a funeral director and he always believed that funerals should be a celebration of life and not, not to be thinking of the negative, but the thinking of all the joy — and that that created a good spirit of love in the world. I'm probably following in his footsteps in that way.
Well, for someone who's working 17 hour days, you certainly sound very passionate about all of this. So it must be giving you energy rather than wearing you down at this point.
It does. One of the reasons I work so hard is I answer every single email that I get. It’s magical thinking. I think if I take care of every individual person the way we did at the beginning, when it had fewer people, that it will protect the parade. It takes time to do that because I'm answering everyone who’s asked me a question.
Like the other day: 'I'm coming with my dog.' 'Do we have to wear the same costume or can we dress differently?' For me, that gives me energy. It makes me feel like, yes, somebody's thinking about this in a serious way and I have to take them seriously. But I love that.
Skeletons await their human interlocutors before 2022's Village Halloween Parade.
Well, let's talk about the parade this year. The theme is “Upside down/Inside out.” So talk about that a little bit.
Well, that's the way it feels to me. I feel like all of us, our whole world was turned upside down. And when it did, we all went inside. We all went into our apartments. We also went inside ourselves. And when we did that, we started thinking about how it is when the inside is going to come out again. And that's what I see the parade as this year, as us coming out again.
Even though we were the first event after COVID, that year, people seemed still fearful, there was hesitancy. The next year, people were giddy. It was almost as if nobody was thinking. This year feels different.
If there is a New Yorker listening to this who hasn't yet been to the parade, what's one thing that you would say to encourage them?
Come! And be part of the generous spirit of this event, because this is an event where nobody is there who doesn't want to be there. Nobody's working and they're sharing themselves with you, with everyone who comes. So in that sense, it's extremely generous. And in a world where it's maybe not so generous, to just be a part of that spirit and energy is a fun thing.
Jeanne Fleming is the Artistic Director of the Village Halloween Parade. Jeanne, thanks so much for talking to us today.
Thank you for asking such good questions.
The 50th Annual Village Halloween Parade is Tuesday, Oct. 31. To be in the parade, dress in costume and you can enter at Canal and Sixth Avenue. It steps off from Spring Street at 7 p. m.
