New York church celebrates Pentecost with community gathering, Bad Bunny flash dance
St. Mark’s Church in-the-Bowery, an Episcopal parish in New York, celebrated Pentecost May 24 with a post-worship neighborhood cookout and a flash dance featuring music by Bad Bunny, a Puerto Rican reggaeton musician. Photo: Imani Riaz Amanullah
[Episcopal News Service] St. Mark’s Church in-the-Bowery, an Episcopal parish in New York’s East Village, celebrated Pentecost May 24 with a post-worship neighborhood cookout and a flash dance featuring music by Bad Bunny, a Puerto Rican reggaeton musician.
Even though it rained throughout the day, 200 people gathered outside for the special community event, which was planned in partnership with St. Mark’s, New York City Council Member Harvey Epstein and the Third Street Music School Settlement. The cookout also included games, crafts and other activities.
The goal was to bring “fun and joy amid uncertain times” and celebrate the East Village’s cultural diversity, the Rev. Anne Marie Witchger, rector of St. Mark’s and the Diocese of New York’s Task Force for Public Witness, told Episcopal News Service ahead of the event.
The women-led Fogo Azul NYC marching band performed samba reggae arrangements of Bad Bunny’s music during a flash dance hosted by St. Mark’s Church in-the-Bowery on Pentecost, March 24. Photo: Imani Riaz Amanullah
“Thinking about Pentecost, which is 50 days after Easter … what does it mean to be Easter people? Easter people are people of hope and renewal and joy who can face fear and uncertainty and violence and still proclaim joy,” Witchger said.
“When the Holy Spirit came down on Pentecost, people were outside in a public square at a festival, speaking different languages. It was a time of happiness. Our hope is to be able to reflect that kind of energy in a way that is welcoming, contagious and inspiring.”
Combining Pentecost with Bad Bunny, who headlined the Super Bowl LX halftime show in February, was a “natural fit” for St. Mark’s, which is “so enmeshed in its community,” Cynthia Copeland, co-chair of the diocese’s Reparations Commission and a St. Mark’s parishioner, told ENS in a joint interview with Witchger.
“Bad Bunny celebrated Pentecost’s message of unity and empowerment so beautifully at the Super Bowl,” Copeland said. “As Anne Marie said, these times that we’re in right now are a bit sad and uncertain. People are searching for community and spaces to just be able to turn off the noise, join groups and look for connections.”
About 50 of the 200 people danced. A dance instructor from Third Street Music School Settlement taught the simple choreography before everyone gathered on East 10th Street. The women-led Fogo Azul NYC marching band performed samba and reggae arrangements of Bad Bunny’s music while everyone danced.
Manhattan’s East Village has been known as one of New York’s historic immigrant neighborhoods since German and Eastern Europeans began settling there in the mid-1800s. Today, Latinos, mostly Puerto Ricans, make up a quarter of the neighborhood’s population.
St. Mark’s is known as an ally to immigrants. In January, for example, the church hosted a vigil in remembrance of people killed by federal immigration authorities or who died in detention.
Witchger and Copeland were inspired to host a Bad Bunny-themed celebration after watching his Super Bowl performance. The show, which featured guest artists Ricky Martin, Lady Gaga and Los Pleneros de la Cresta, was the first Super Bowl halftime set headlined by a Latino solo artist and the first set performed almost entirely in Spanish.
Bad Bunny, the stage name of Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, addresses colonialism, imperialism, displacement and Puerto Rico’s history and culture in many of his songs. These themes, extending to wider Latin American unity, were vocally and visually prevalent throughout the halftime show, which many critics interpreted as an act of resistance through joy. He concluded the show by shouting, “God bless America,” and listing countries and territories throughout the Americas while dancers carried the flags of those nations.
That unity, Witchger and Copeland said, is prevalent throughout New York, and the diversity from it “drives our culture” and should be celebrated.
“When we meet people with different backgrounds from our own, that’s what makes community so interesting and exciting,” Copeland said.
-Shireen Korkzan is a reporter and assistant editor for Episcopal News Service. She can be reached at skorkzan@episcopalchurch.org.
