Finding something to do that the entire family or a big group of friends could enjoy for a couple of hours can be difficult. These budget conscious days have made it even more difficult. But tomorrow afternoon Taipei residents have the chance to experience some spectacular silliness — for free.
The Dream Community (夢想社區) in Shijr (汐止), Taipei County, is putting on its eighth annual carnival parade, starting at Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall at 3pm.
The idea of a creative community, with annual parades, festivals and outreach programs, is the dream of Gordon Tsai (蔡聰明), whose incredible energy and drive have made him famous. It’s not often you see a middle-aged Taiwanese man covered in purple body paint and wearing little more than a loincloth, wings and a halo (2007) or white bodypaint and a big diaper (2006), running up and down the street encouraging bystanders to try a little samba.
His antics usually leave younger parade participants wide-eyed and giggling.
But it’s exactly that “not supposed to” attitude that propels Tsai, who says you don’t have to be a “professional” artist to be creative and that you don’t have to have a lot of money to enjoy making, performing, viewing or supporting art.
“My dream is to create a world-
famous Taiwan carnival and to give
local communities the confidence to promote their culture, community, environment through the parade ... Many people think only money can support their dreams but in many countries it is the poor people who support the local arts,” Tsai said on Tuesday.
Tsai’s energy and enthusiasm are infectious. They’re what keep the community’s volunteers, resident foreign artists and scores of students working long hours for minimal pay (the artists) in summer camp-like conditions (for the university students sleeping on floors around the community), building floats and giant puppets and making hundreds of costumes.
Jade Brant, an American costume designer and seamstress, has been in Taiwan for four months. She came to
the Dream Community because she met Tsai in New Orleans during this year’s Mardi Gras, although she had heard about him from friends who had residencies
in Shijr.
“His energy is incredible, he’s crazy,” she said of Tsai. “These kids are incredible. Most are university students in their first year. They have bottomless energy; some stayed up to 4am the other day working on their projects.”
Ho Ying-chi (何英琪), one of the full-time workers at the community, said there were about 10 foreign artists, from Brazil, the US, India and Bali, working on this year’s parade, while five Czechs made “master” creations for students to copy or improve upon during a residency earlier this year.
Kalamandalam Shiju Kumar from Kerala, India, was painting some papier-mache pieces for one of the floats. He was a prime example of the Dream Community mantra of “everyone pitches in,” since he’s a well-known Kathakali dancer and poet in India, not a painter. But since this is his sixth time at the community, he knew what to expect.
Two Indonesians were hard at work putting the finishing touches on the floor of a float carrying a giant monkey-eating demon, while a dozen students worked on another papier-mache demon. In between was a “rocking Buddha” sculpture, wearing a pair of headphones. There will be a local heavy metal band playing on its float, Ho said.
The theme of this year’s parade is the early migrants from China and the Aboriginals they encountered here, Tsai said — though it was hard to reconcile some of the floats on view with that idea.
“It’s about our ancestors working on their farms, conflicts with Aboriginal people, so we have farmers, pioneers, Aborigines — also a lot of ghosts, especially the ghosts who eat people,” he said, laughing.
“Farmers worked hard, suffering, there was not enough food,” said Tsai, whose parents and grandparents farmed the land the Dream Community was built on.
There will also be a boat, buffaloes, a giant pig and samba cows throwing beads, he said, and a lot of samba girls, for a total of about 10,000 participants.
This year’s parade route is much shorter — just from CKS Memorial Hall, up Zhongshan South Road (中山南路) to Renai Road (仁愛路) and then onto Ketagalan Boulevard (凱達格蘭大道) — because the parade will be followed by a two-hour stage show. The parade starts at 3pm and is scheduled to finish sometime between 5:30pm and 6pm — it’s hard to be precise when you have dozens of floats and 100 marching groups arriving from around the country and no time for a full rehearsal. The show will run from 7pm to 9pm.
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