31 december 2007Venice is going to stand as candidate for becoming the town of love par excellence and to do that it has bet everything on the organization of the New Year’s Eve 2008. In fact when midnight strikes 200 couples will kiss in St. Mark’s Square, for an event marked by a New Year Day of love.
Marco Balich, namely the artistic director of Venice Marketing Events, a company created following the desire of the Town Hall and the Casino in order to organise and sell the most important Venetian events, had three thousand Euros available and a precise request: to amaze, to leave a mark. An idea was necessary to sell the image of New Year’s Eve as something unique, which cannot be renounced or missed. That is why the idea of the kiss.
The New Year’s Eve 2008 in Venice, just like Balich himself has explained, wants to be a message of peace among the peoples, an hymn to love, maybe the simplest one that can be celebrate, but also the most direct and effective.
Nowadays the most famous New Year’s Eves in the world are the ones of Sidney, London, Paris and New York: Venice is to be placed on the fifth position.
In order to organize the event on 18th and 19th December there will be even a casting to find 200 couples that feel like kissing each other in St.Leonardo, Cannaregio. Those who want to take part in such event can contact the email love2008@kevents.it or call 3928168468. The person who will direct the group kiss is Doug Jack, a choreographer and staging director who has realized the mass movements for six Olympic ceremonies.
THE PROGRAMME: It will start at 10.40 p.m. with the first action that foresees the kiss of 200 voluntary couples. Fifteen minutes afterwards a test action again of group kiss. At 11.45 p.m. third test action, then the countdown of the Clock Tower, the melody of various famous love songs spreading in the air, different choreographic actions and, eventually, twenty seconds after midnight, the total kiss.