UPDATED SATURDAY: Record crowds turn out for Night of the Arts

Strange Fruit acrobats draw 70,000 to Parliament

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The triple-whammy combination of warm dry weather (despite the gloomy forecasts of rain showers), Australians on 4-metre flexible poles, and the masterstroke of moving the event to a Friday generated record-breaking crowds for the 19th Helsinki Night of the Arts.
      It is estimated that around 100,000 people turned out for the traditional late August event, which is part of the annual Helsinki Festival.
     
The Australians on poles - the Strange Fruit performing arts company from Melbourne - were far and away the biggest draw of the evening.
      "Smash Hit" doesn't really do them justice. Police had warned in advance that if the crowds around their performance area in front of Parliament exceeded 5,000, they would shut down Mannerheimintie completely.
     
This conservative figure went west around an hour or more before the first performance at 19:00, and by showtime there were an estimated 20,000 people packed into the area.
      Traffic that had managed to get into the exclusion-zone before the police flipped the switch was completely surrounded and immobilised by the throngs, and trams, buses, and long-distance coaches had to be hastily rerouted.
     
For the second show two hours later, the police shut off Mannerheimintie completely.
      Wisely, as it turned out, for even more people - upwards of 30,000 this time - packed into the area for the free acrobatics show. Even at midnight, Strange Fruit's third gig was played over the heads of an entranced and ecstatic audience of more than 20,000. The numbers srawn to this memorable and mesmerising spectacle were quite naturally a new record for a single event at the Night of the Arts.
     
Given the huge mass of people, and given the fact that the Night of the Arts is also an occasion for brisk drinking, there was relatively little trouble (except for the traffic chaos) reported by police, who described it as no worse than a normal Friday night.

More on this subject:
 Unwelcome rain showers looming over Helsinki Night of the Arts

See also:
  Video of Strange Fruit in Helsinki
  More pictures from the Night of the Arts (captions in Finnish)

Links:
  Helsinki Festival
  Strange Fruit

Helsingin Sanomat