Early last month, Page Repp was somewhat optimistic that Arizona’s coronavirus crisis would right itself enough to allow him and his partners to put on the annual Dusk Music Festival downtown.
But instead, the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases swelled. On Friday, July 17, Repp announced that the Dusk Festival, which was slated for Nov. 14-15 at Jácome Plaza downtown, was off.
“We felt like we really didn’t have a choice,” he said. “We just felt that it was the right thing to do rather than risk the chance of infections. We didn’t want to do it, but we felt that it was the responsible right thing to do.”
Dusk joins a handful of fall events in Tucson that have been canceled including the All Souls Procession in November.
Repp said it also would have been difficult to implement coronavirus social distancing and sanitizing protocols especially when it came to the artists performing on stage.
“Logistically it would be daunting,” Repp said, explaining that they would have to clean the stage between acts and provide social distancing for seven or eight artists sharing the stage.
“But mostly (the decision to cancel) was not wanting to put our artists and audience at risk especially our guests. That’s what clinched it for us.”
Repp called the cancellation a pause that would allow them time to put into place new ideas for the 2021 festival.“Next year we are coming back stronger. I’ve got so many ideas and things that that pause is going to let me pull off that normally I wouldn’t be able to,” he said. “I think you are going to see a really impressive festival in 2021.”
Photos: Remembering Rep. John Lewis, 1940-2020
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FILE - In this Tuesday, May 16, 2006, file photo, Congressional Black Caucus members, Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., left, and Rep. Al Green, D-Texas, center, are arrested after a news conference regarding Darfur, at the Sudanese Embassy in Washington. Lewis, who carried the struggle against racial discrimination from Southern battlegrounds of the 1960s to the halls of Congress, died Friday, July 17, 2020. (AP Photo/Lauren Victoria Burke, File)
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FILE - In this Friday, March 5, 1999, file photo, U.S. Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., speaks with reporters in Washington. Lewis, who carried the struggle against racial discrimination from Southern battlegrounds of the 1960s to the halls of Congress, died Friday, July 17, 2020. (AP Photo/Khue Bui, File)
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FILE - In this Sunday March 4, 2007, file photo, from left, Brown Chapel AME Church Pastor James Jackson, Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., U.S. Rep. John Lewis, D-Georgia, and Rev. Clete Kiley, hold hands and sing at the end of a church service in Selma, Ala., on the commemoration of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. protest march from Selma to Montgomery, Ala. Lewis, who carried the struggle against racial discrimination from Southern battlegrounds of the 1960s to the halls of Congress, died Friday, July 17, 2020. (AP Photo/Rob Carr, File)
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FILE - In this Feb. 23, 1965, file photo, Wilson Baker, left foreground, public safety director, warns of the dangers of night demonstrations at the start of a march in Selma, Ala. Second from right foreground, is John Lewis of the Student Non-Violent Committee. Lewis, who carried the struggle against racial discrimination from Southern battlegrounds of the 1960s to the halls of Congress, died Friday, July 17, 2020. (AP Photo/File)
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FILE - This Aug. 23, 1963, file photo shows John R. Lewis, National Chairman of the Student Non-Violent Committee, at the National Urban League headquarters in New York. Lewis, who carried the struggle against racial discrimination from Southern battlegrounds of the 1960s to the halls of Congress, died Friday, July 17, 2020. (AP Photo/File)
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FILE - In this March 17, 1965, file photo, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., fourth from left, foreground, locks arms with his aides as he leads a march of several thousands to the courthouse in Montgomery, Ala. From left are: an unidentified woman, Rev. Ralph Abernathy, James Foreman, King, Jesse Douglas Sr., and John Lewis. Lewis, who carried the struggle against racial discrimination from Southern battlegrounds of the 1960s to the halls of Congress, died Friday, July 17, 2020. (AP Photo/File)
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FILE - In this March 7, 1965, file photo, a state trooper swings a billy club at John Lewis, right foreground, chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, to break up a civil rights voting march in Selma, Ala. Lewis sustained a fractured skull. Lewis, who carried the struggle against racial discrimination from Southern battlegrounds of the 1960s to the halls of Congress, died Friday, July 17, 2020. (AP Photo/File)
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FILE - In this Thursday, May 10, 2007 file photo, U.S. Rep. John Lewis, R-Ga., in his office on Capitol Hill, in Washington. Lewis, who carried the struggle against racial discrimination from Southern battlegrounds of the 1960s to the halls of Congress, died Friday, July 17, 2020. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh, File)
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FILE - In this Sept. 6, 2012, file photo, U.S. Rep. John Lewis, of Georgia, speaks to delegates at the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, N.C. Lewis, who carried the struggle against racial discrimination from Southern battlegrounds of the 1960s to the halls of Congress, died Friday, July 17, 2020. (AP Photo/Lynne Sladky, File)
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FILE - In this Friday, Dec. 6, 2019, file photo, civil rights leader U.S. Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., is extolled at an event with fellow Democrats before passing the Voting Rights Advancement Act to eliminate potential state and local voter suppression laws, at the Capitol in Washington. Lewis, who carried the struggle against racial discrimination from Southern battlegrounds of the 1960s to the halls of Congress, died Friday, July 17, 2020. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File)
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In this June 7, 2020 photo provided by the Executive Office of District of Columbia Mayor Muriel Bowser, Mayor Bowser and John Lewis look over a section of 16th Street that's been renamed Black Lives Matter Plaza in Washington. The White House is in the background. Lewis, a lion of the civil rights movement whose bloody beating by Alabama state troopers in 1965 helped galvanize opposition to racial segregation, and who went on to a long and celebrated career in Congress, died. He was 80. (Khalid Naji-Allah/Executive Office of the Mayor via AP)
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In this June 7, 2020 photo provided by the Executive Office of District of Columbia Mayor Muriel Bowser, John Lewis looks over a section of 16th Street that's been renamed Black Lives Matter Plaza in Washington. The Washington Monument and the White House are visible in the distance. Lewis, a lion of the civil rights movement whose bloody beating by Alabama state troopers in 1965 helped galvanize opposition to racial segregation, and who went on to a long and celebrated career in Congress, died. He was 80. (Khalid Naji-Allah/Executive Office of the Mayor via AP)
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FILE - In this Tuesday night, Sept. 3, 1986, file photo, John Lewis, front left, and his wife, Lillian, holding hands, lead a march of supporters from his campaign headquarters to an Atlanta hotel for a victory party after he defeated Julian Bond in a runoff election for Georgia's 5th Congressional District seat in Atlanta. Lewis, who carried the struggle against racial discrimination from Southern battlegrounds of the 1960s to the halls of Congress, died Friday, July 17, 2020. (AP Photo/Linda Schaeffer, File)
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FILE - In this July 2, 1963, file photo, six leaders of the nation's largest black civil rights organizations pose at the Roosevelt Hotel in New York. From left, are: John Lewis, chairman Student Non-Violence Coordinating Committee; Whitney Young, national director, Urban League; A. Philip Randolph, president of the Negro American Labor Council; Martin Luther King Jr., president Southern Christian Leadership Conference; James Farmer, Congress of Racial Equality director; and Roy Wilkins, executive secretary, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Lewis, who carried the struggle against racial discrimination from Southern battlegrounds of the 1960s to the halls of Congress, died Friday, July 17, 2020. (AP Photo/Harry Harris, File)
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FILE - In this Wednesday, Oct. 10, 2007, file photo, with the Capitol Dome in the background, U.S. Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., is seen on Capitol Hill in Washington. Lewis, who carried the struggle against racial discrimination from Southern battlegrounds of the 1960s to the halls of Congress, died Friday, July 17, 2020. (AP Photo/Lawrence Jackson, File)
