Sat 2/6
The 4th annual Kurentovanje festival on St. Clair was blessed with great weather and unseasonably warm temperatures, unlike the first and third iterations when participation was depressed by blizzards. Well, that’s the risk you run when you have a festival in Cleveland in February.
So what’s Kurentovanje all about? It’s a Cleveland version of a festival celebrated in a Slovenian town that attracts tourists from far and wide. It features people dressed up in furry suits representing a creature called a Kurent who rings bells to scare away the winter and make way for the spring. Would that it were so easy!
It was started in 2013 as a partnership between the St. Clair/Superior CD and the local Slovenia community based at the Slovenian National Home at E 65th and Cedar. Once a bustling hub of Cleveland’s Slovenian community (the Slovenian National Home on St. Clair is the largest Slovenian home in the U.S. ), the two groups were looking for a way to market the slowly reviving neighborhood and to pay homage to its thriving past.
Cleveland Krentovanje kicked off with a parade that featured numerous fuzzy kurents, along with polka bands, dance ensembles, high school marching bands and local businesses. They represented not only the Slovenians but other ethnic and racial groups that have diversified the neighborhood including Polish, Asian and African-American.
After the parade, the crowd surged into the Slovenian Home for eats, drinks and performances by bands, DJs and ethnic dance ensembles. There were booths from local vendors and organizations to browse and buy from (or book a trip to Slovenia!) and crafts and face-painting for the kids. The adjoining Slovenian Museum and Archives shared more of the story of this country with visitors while the Upcycle Parts shop next door offered discarded and surplus materials and doodads of all sorts to fuel arts and crafts projects. When the things wound down at the Slovenian Home, the party moved over to Sterle’s down the street on E. 55th, another proud remnant of the old Slovenian neighborhood, now undergoing a renaissance of its own.
View the PHOTOSTREAM here.
