If Sebastian’s Indian River Drive isn’t already one of your favorite weekend destinations to relax, then maybe you ought to wait to get a true taste of the place.
Because this weekend, it will be wild. There’s no clamming up the Sebastian Clambake Festival at Riverview Park, at the southern end of Indian River Drive.
Best known as home to the waterfront hangout Captain Hiram’s, Indian River Drive’s two mile-long stretch of bars, restaurants and public boardwalks is linked by wide walkways that after work and on weekends form a vibrant destination for fitness buffs, families, nature lovers and music lovers.
Only a short drive north off the barrier island’s Wabasso causeway, or from the mainland up U.S. One or from the west via 58th Ave., the area has become Sebastian’s signature destination. And the Clambake, honoring the days when clamming was Sebastian’s bread and butter, is the best-known of all the activities at Riverview Park.
The Clambake has been around for a dozen years, with 8,000 clams giving their lives for the event this year alone.
Starting early afternoon on Friday and until late afternoon Sunday, the normally lazy little park will be crammed with stands selling clam chowder, clam sauce and linguine vendors, fried clams – you get the picture – as well as the usual festival food and beer vendors, live music, children’s activities, and even historical re-enactments: people pretending to be survivors of the 1715 Spanish Plate Fleet (a reference to silver plate) who were shipwrecked on the barrier island near Sebastian in a hurricane on the way back to Spain from Cuba.
If you notice people in costume camping on festival grounds, no, they’re not filming an episode of “Drunk History.” At least not that we know of. As Anjani Cirillo, head of the Clambake Foundation and part of the staff at Sebastian’s Kashi spiritual community, puts it: “Sebastian is a drinking town with a fishing problem.”
Fortunately, the town has less of a problem with overeating, if what Cirillo says is true: the festival’s 600 volunteers and 10 board members “worked their collective butts off,” she says.
The festival is free, with tickets available to purchase for food and drink. All proceeds go to the Sebastian Clambake Foundation, which to date has raised and distributed to good causes a half-million dollars. Money raised this year is going to the Sebastian Chamber of Commerce’s Pelican Porch project, as well as an outdoor pavilion at the Elks Club and capital improvements to the American Legion post.
If the clambake isn’t enough of a circus for you, the Majestic Theatre offers The Big Apple Circus Saturday when for the first time in the one-ring circus’s 37-year history, it will broadcast a performance of its new show, “Metamorphosis.” The two-hour show features clowns and acrobats from around the world and an equestrian act it proclaims is “animal-friendly.” The show starts at 12:30 in the afternoon. Tickets are $12 for adults; $8 for children. Buy online at www.cwtheaters.com.
Two events worth noting at the Kravis Center in Palm Beach: Diavolo, the Los Angeles-based dance company that develops its muscular, risk-filled choreography on large architectural set pieces, is performing Friday night at 8 p.m. The French artistic director, Jacques Heim, calls it “a live abstract painting … a fusion of modern dance, everyday movement, ballet, martial arts, hip hop.” The New York Times calls it “breathtaking.” Every dancer brings his or her own movement style, he says. Heim was invited to choreograph Cirque Du Soleil’s show “Ka” in Las Vegas. And a Vero connection: LA Contemporary Dance founder Kate Hutter, whose company has twice performed with Ballet Vero Beach, has presented her choreography in Diavolo’s Los Angeles dance space.
Tickets are $25 to $45 for the performance, scheduled for the Kravis main Dreyfoos Theater. Now in its third year, the PEAK series aims to be more avant-garde and thought-provoking, and above all affordable. Most of the PEAK series events are held in the outdoor amphitheater or in the intimate Rinker Playhouse, and a ticket includes a drink. Topping the list: the extraordinary Brooklyn-based Antibalas (that provided the Afro-beat music behind Broadway’s “Fela!”) playing with the Belgian Afro-pop chanteuse Zap Mama, Jan. 23. For the rest, go to www.kravis.org/peak.
Then there’s Kravis’s Broadway series presenting “Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Cinderella,” with the original music but a modernized book, Nov. 11 through 15. Along with matinees, the evening shows are starting at 7:30 p.m. with a younger, early-bedtime audience in mind.
And looking ahead – because they sometimes sell out – Miami City Ballet’s season opener “Romeo and Juliet” is at Kravis the weekend of Nov. 21-23. And Nov. 26, Kravis hosts the top ten finalists from Season 11 of “So You Think You Can Dance.” Call the Kravis Box Office at 561-832-7469.