The Dream Community Culture and Education Development Foundation's annual carnival (
Organized by the community arts organization, partly funded by the Taipei city and county governments, and local businesses, this year's parade takes as its theme the cycle of life. There are five parts, with sections on birth and creation, the connection between the individual, society and the natural world, the dislocation of the individual from the external world, metamorphosis and finally rebirth.
Thirty-four international artists from 12 countries, almost double last year's number, were invited to hold a series of community-based workshops held throughout September and early this month to prepare for the carnival.
PHOTOS COURTESY OF DREAM COMMUNITY
The parade, first held in 2002, adheres to an ethos that rejects commercialization. At the event, company signs or logos are forbidden and words are only allowed to appear on costumes if they are used poetically.
"It will be different from other parades in the sense that everything is very handmade. Really it's a celebration about members of the community finding the artist within themselves," said the artistic director for this year's festival, Andrew Kim.
The parade and pageant is the culmination of five weeks of work for the artists who organized activities with 11 local schools and workshops for local communities in the Shijr area.
The organizers are optimistic that tomorrow's festivities will attract as many as 3,000 to 4,000 participants. The route has been shortened and altered so the terrain is less difficult than last year's event and the road will be closed to traffic.
"On the one hand the response has been fabulous. But it took a little bit of getting used to, as the reaction in Taiwan is different than in the communities I work with in the States. It took a while for members of the community to feel comfortable making art with us. Sometimes they felt a little intimidated," Kim said.
For more information call, (02) 2695 6969, or visit www.dreamcommunity.org.tw
A jumbo operation is moving 20 elephants across the breadth of India to the mammoth private zoo set up by the son of Asia’s richest man, adjoining a sprawling oil refinery. The elephants have been “freed from the exploitative logging industry,” according to the Vantara Animal Rescue Centre, run by Anant Ambani, son of the billionaire head of Reliance Industries Mukesh Ambani, a close ally of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The sheer scale of the self-declared “world’s biggest wild animal rescue center” has raised eyebrows — including more than 50 bears, 160 tigers, 200 lions, 250 leopards and 900 crocodiles, according to
They were four years old, 15 or only seven months when they were sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau, Bergen-Belsen, Buchenwald and Ravensbruck. Some were born there. Somehow they survived, began their lives again and had children, grandchildren and even great grandchildren themselves. Now in the evening of their lives, some 40 survivors of the Nazi camps tell their story as the world marks the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, the most notorious of the death camps. In 15 countries, from Israel to Poland, Russia to Argentina, Canada to South Africa, they spoke of victory over absolute evil. Some spoke publicly for the first
RSS