And those who wondered what all the fuss was about will need to be convinced by some serious stage fireworks.
On New Year's Eve, for example, the local authorities, shunning the Western calendar, did not stage fireworks in Victoria Harbour, despite the pleas of harborfront hotels.
Twenty-two sky divers will drop at 125 miles an hour from 7,000 feet on Friday and Saturday, and the Zambellis will stage fireworks displays after dark on both days.
But four centuries ago, when people really had imagination, they staged fireworks displays on the Arno River in Florence in which mock battles between dyers and silk weavers vying for the queen's favor ended with the weavers' getting tossed in the river and the god Vulcan erupting in the form of a huge fireball.
The famed fungoids will perform three programs this weekend, starting today -- at an early curtain time to enable off-the-stage fireworks watching -- with Jonathan Wolken's new "Wedlock," the company classic "Untitled," and "Tsu-Ku-Tsu" and "Ben's Admonition," both by Alison Chase.
Over the years, advances in digital recording-studio technology and slick live shows replete with sound stages, fireworks, lip-syncing and makeup have allowed much lesser talents like Kiss (the band was featured, of all places, on the cover of Forbes magazine) to garner more attention and rake in much more money than Cream ever did.
Over the years, advances in digital recording-studio technology--and slick live shows replete with sound stages, fireworks, lip-syncing and makeup--have allowed much lesser talents like Kiss (the band was featured, of all places, on the cover of Forbes magazine) to garner more attention--and rake in much more money--than Cream ever did.
And the on-stage fireworks have never exploded higher, as virtually every scene last week was an altercation of some sort.
For many people, it closes every summer with a sort of picturesque hedonism, the final night spent surrounded by woodland and bizarrely sculpted stages, fireworks plunging down over grinning faces, all now reluctantly ready to slope back onto a ferry, and back to autumnal reality.
So Macy's settled for a third consecutive year of staging its fireworks show on six barges in the Hudson River.
