Dare to Know: Jeanne Fleming Creates Transformation Through Celebration

As the director of New York City’s famous Greenwich Village Halloween Parade, Jeanne Fleming is the city’s reigning queen of the macabre. It seems only fitting, then, that her career as a “celebration artist” began with a life-threatening diagnosis. “I took a trip to Morocco, and I contracted hepatitis from the water,” she recalls. “I thought to myself, Well, if I’m going to die, I’m going to do something big before I go.”

That something was a full-scale horse and puppet show, the result of a lifelong fascination with the link between performance and community. One production gave way to more, and Jeanne soon became a prominent figure in the world of site-specific theatre. In 1986, Jeanne took the helm of the Village Parade, determined to redefine the event as a creative outlet for the city’s residents. “I call it the ‘Hokey Pokey’—you have to put your whole self in,” she explains of the parade’s immersive nature. “It’s an opportunity for regular people to undergo transformation.”

While creativity is a key component of Jeanne’s work, she credits her sharp business acumen for the popularity of what has at times been a controversial event—never more so than in 2001, when the parade took place despite the recent terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centers. “We could turn toward lower Manhattan and see the fires still burning in the days leading up to the parade,” Jeanne remembers. “New York needed a healing celebration to prove that it could still be a place that was safe and good and creative.” The resulting event progressed from solemnity into joyful catharsis, and Jeanne remembers it as her most meaningful parade to date.

Above all, Jeanne delights in the welcoming atmosphere that the parade offers its two million viewers and 90,000 participants. “The Village Parade is not just tolerant—it is loving,” she articulates, citing the event’s longtime cooperation with the gay rights movement as evidence of its inclusive nature and political clout. “It is a celebration of the unique imagination. The essence of the parade is a single individual who, for the duration of the parade, becomes something else entirely—and does so in the streets of the most sophisticated city in the world.”

—Emma Aubry Roberts