Organization and Events of The Festival
Today the National Cherry Blossom Festival is coordinated by the National Cherry Blossom Festival, Inc., an umbrella organization consisting of representatives of business, civic, and governmental organizations. More than 700,000 people visit Washington each year to admire the blossoming cherry trees that herald the beginning of spring in the nation's capital.
The two-week festival begins on the last Saturday of March with a Family Day and an official opening ceremony in the National Building Museum. An array of activities and cultural events takes place on the following days. The Blossom Kite Festival (formerly the Smithsonian Kite Festival) usually takes place during the festival's first weekend. Every day there is a sushi/sake celebration, classes about cherry blossoms, and a bike tour of the Tidal Basin. Other events include art exhibits (photography, sculpture, animation), cultural performances, rakugo, kimono fashion shows, dance, singing, martial arts, merchant-sponsored events, and a rugby union tournament.
On the second Saturday of the celebration, a three-stage festival takes place on the Southwest Waterfront. When the festival ends, a fireworks show begins on the nearby Washington Channel. The next morning, the Cherry Blossom 10-Mile Run begins on the grounds of the Washington Monument. Later in the day, dignitaries gather at the Tidal Basin to participate in a ceremonial lighting of the 360-year old Japanese stone lantern.
On the last Saturday of the festival, the National Cherry Blossom Festival Parade takes place along Constitution Avenue. During and after the parade, the Sakura Matsuri-Japanese Street Festival (Japanese: さくらまつり), the largest Japanese Cultural Festival in the United States, takes place at 12th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue, Northwest. Because the festival must be planned long in advance, it sometimes fails to be celebrated during the peak of the cherry blooms. See also Japanese festivals.
In 2009, the National Cherry Blossom Festival introduced an alternative event to its lineup, with the debut of Cherry Blast, an underground-ish mix of projected art, dance performances, live music, fashion and DJs that took place in an empty (but festively decorated) Anacostia warehouse. (Most of the crowd was shuttle-bussed in from Dupont Circle.) In 2010, Cherry Blast II—the creation of artist Philippa P. Hughes of the Pink Line Project—moved to a storage warehouse in Adams Morgan, but still featured an eclectic group of local artists and musicians. Cherry Blast III took place indoors near the Southwest Waterfront in the evening of the 2011 festival's second Saturday, during and after the festival's nearby fireworks show.
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