Carnival Floats are one of the typical expressions of Carnival Parades. They can be simple or very elaborate, small or huge. but they all have one element in common: the passion of those who prepare them. They are almost always volunteers, groups of people who passionately contribute to creating papier-mâché masterpieces which will then be the point of attraction of the following year’s parades.
The most important parades take place on Shrove Tuesday, which this year is February 21st, but already from the previous weeks the Floats begin to parade in smaller towns and villages.
During those few days what the volunteers have prepared is brought before the public, often without revealing to anyone the details of what their Float would have been for the new Carnival
The construction work of the new Carnival Floats begins as soon as the Carnival festivities are over: technical improvements and new designs are studied first, to create the heart of wood and metal, pistons and levers which will then have to be covered and decorated according to the current trends.
In fact, Carnival Floats are often the satirical and ironic representation of the world we live in. No one is saved from the irony of the creators: Heads of state, politicians, actors are the favorite targets of the creators of the Carnival floats. But often we can also find characters from mythology, or creations taken from films and books.
The most famous Float parades are those that take place in Viareggio (Italy), Rio de janeiro (Brazil), New Orleans (LA - USA), Nice (France), Köln (Germany), but other less known parades take place in many large cities and small especially in Europe and America.
What these people have in common, as we have said, is passion, the desire to have fun doing something together that can entertain others.
But the Floats alone would be nothing if in front of them there weren’t “the parade”, the true soul of the carnival, dozens and dozens of masked and dancing figures who, marching and dancing in front of and above the Float, create the atmosphere of their story. In this the most famous city is certainly that of Rio, with its Samba schools that many months before begin to prepare costumes and choreographies for the following year’s carnival.
Have you ever witnessed, or participated in, a Carnival parade? If yes, would you like to share the photos with us?
I’ll start with mine, with a parade that took place last Saturday in a village near Treviso, and from which the photos in this post were taken.
The carnival floats entered the square with very loud music, accompanied by the town band, for the amusement and joy of the whole village.
I made a small video of it, which you can see below
