Carnival Vibes

Carnival – Uniting the World!

Carnival is an annual event celebrated in many countries of the world. At the core of all carnivals are creative and performance arts.

Carnival thus encompasses the extremes of performance culture. It is therefore not a singular art form but an integrated framework for live performances that are rooted in a diversity of disciplines and discourses involving the human body, space and time.

Carnival is a classic example of an art form that encapsulates not only various types of artistic expressions – dance, text, movement and masquerade – but is performed on contested terrain – the streets – where the struggle for space impacts on the whole of the society and all its institutions.

Carnival unites people into one joyful idiom of hope for a better world.

Today, carnival has fostered the concept of one global village. As people of the world meandered from their homelands to all parts of the globe creating world cities, we can celebrate this diversity through the festival of carnival.

In the United Kingdom, the main inspiration for Carnival comes from the Trinidad Carnival which  is an expression of the diverse cultures which make up the Caribbean’s most cosmopolitan island.

There are three main components to the Trinidad Carnival: the lively music of the steel band, the calypsonians and the masqueraders or costume bands and each of these components are found in the Carnivals of the UK.  We invite you to enjoy the dazzling colour and throbbing music of the Caribbean Carnival Extravaganza which captures the essence of Trinidad’s Carnival in a lavish and spectacular display of the overwhelming enthusiasm and excitement of this world-renowned form of street theatre.

* Time out or Time In? The Urban Dialectic of Carnival. Milla Cozart Riggio, pg 15 in Carnival, Culture in Action – The Trinidad Experience, Ed. Milla Cozart Riggio, Routledge, NY, 2004