Brooklyn is going to the birds - pigeons equipped with lights, to be exact - as part of a new show set to debut this weekend. NY1's Jeanine Ramirez filed the following report.
A spectacular light show illuminates the sky at the Brooklyn Navy Yard.
"I thought it was totally amazing," said one person who saw the show. "A great urban New York adventure."
"It was like fireflies descending upon Brooklyn," said another.
But these aren't fireflies. They are pigeons, two thousand of them equipped with LED lights.
"It was a spectacular display. I loved every moment of it," said one spectator.
"We'll never look at a pigeon the same way again," said another.
The performance, called "Fly By Night," was presented by the nonprofit group Creative Time. The artist who spent 10 months putting this show together on a ship is Red Hook resident Duke Riley. With a bamboo pole and a plastic bag, he's been training the pigeons to take flight and land on the vessel.
"They recognize who the person is that takes care of them, and they know that it's you standing there with her over the garbage bag on top of it and just know that it's their time to fly and their time to perform," Riley said.
Riley says pigeons are the focus of much his artwork.
"I lived in a pigeon coop for four years in Providence, Rhode Island, where I spent the entire time studying pigeons," he said.
Riley says the Navy Yard is significant for this project because it once was home to nation's largest military pigeon coop, where the birds were trained to deliver messages before radio existed. To help train pigeons now, Riley uses a whistle.
Shows run on weekends from May 7 through June 12, and they're free to the public.
Right now, the show is totally booked, but Creative Time says it expects to have more tickets available by the end of next week.
As pigeons and tickets fly, Creative Time is putting together a wait list.
For more information on the project, visit http://creativetime.org/projects/flybynight/.