Passion for Arts, Healing Spurs 'Sacred D.C.' Debut

In July, American University student Graciela Lopez had a dream: She was holding a picket sign with a group called Belly Dancers for Justice when some SWAT-style police officers fatally shot her. As she lay dead in the dream, the officers took $3,000 off her body.

That was the unusual inspiration for Sacred D.C.'s first festival, a gathering of dozens of local activists, artists and musicians held yesterday at Meridian Hill Park in the District.

About two months after the dream, Lopez won $3,500 in grant money from the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities and the American Friends Service Committee for the event.

"I knew that I wanted to combine my passion for dance, my passion for healing, my passion for activism," Lopez said. "It actually turned into this festival."

Drum circles, yoga and meditation dominated the low-key event, meant to provide "healing" to the D.C. community and introduce young people to arts and activism. Not coincidentally, the festival fell on the summer solstice, a "day of transition," said Jessica Neagle, another organizer.

"It's a day to really try to find healing within yourself and have art and music really transform the healing process," she said.

Yael Flusberg, 40, of Columbia Heights came to the festival to teach yoga and commemorate the anniversary of her mother's death 25 years ago.

As she stretched and chatted with a reporter, the words to a song blasting from the stage made her raise an eyebrow: "Mother, I feel you under my feet. Mother, I feel your heart beat."

"Isn't it appropriate?" Flusberg said with a smile. "This is just a broader way of honoring life."

Wyatt Portz, 65, and his wife, Anna Pomaska, 63, were just leaving a meditation and breathing exercise across the street when they spotted a drum circle in Meridian Hill Park.

They joined in and soon found themselves in the middle of a giant group of people hugging and chanting "om."

"She called it a group hug, but it was also a group 'om,' " Pomaska said. "They say that it's the sound [we would hear] if we were able to hear all the processes in our bodies."