Light Festival warms up Portland

For two winter weekends every year – including this Friday-Saturday, Feb. 10-11 – Portland lights up in a dazzling array of colors. The streets and plazas are strung up with lights, and performers create evocative lights shows.

This is all part of the Portland Winter Lights Festival (https://pdxwlf.com/), an annual event taking place over the course of two weekends since it began in 2016. The Light Festival is a volunteer-run event, and is entirely free to attend and features numerous attractions all throughout downtown, and beyond.

I was able to attend the event in person during its opening weekend, Feb. 3-4, this year.

The Pioneer Courthouse Square served as the center of the event, in a way, with a number of attractions present and the opening ceremony being held there, as well. One display which was a brazier that launched a fireball into the air every few minutes.

I arrived at the event a short while before the opening ceremony, which gave me the opportunity to witness the tail-end of a performance by Spencer Sprocket, a local carnival-style performer. During the portion of the performance I saw, he was carefully balancing on a motorized unicycle outfitted with bright LEDs, juggling large bowling pins that glowed in every color imaginable.

The opening ceremony itself was a fire performance, right in the center of Pioneer Square. Numerous performers in dazzling clothing flowed around the square with countless flaming items, from simple batons to hand fans and swords. It was quite a spectacle to behold, watching these practiced professionals transition from one motion to the next, leaving flickering trails of light in their wake.

After that, I traveled to a collection of nearby food carts for the LED Drag Show. The show was scheduled at the same time as the opening ceremony, but appeared to have only just started when I arrived. It consisted of a number of short dances by individual performers, set to music. Most of the performances only featured color-changing ambient lighting, but one dancer actually had hundreds of colorful lights integrated into their outfit, which created a spectacular image as they moved around their stage.

There were other events on the different days that I wasn’t able to attend, but, overall, I had a fun time at the few I did see.

(As this article is being written, the Winter Light Festival has not yet been confirmed to be returning next year. However, it attracts hundreds of visitors from all over and has sponsors such as Portland General Electric (PGE), so it’s likely to continue.)