Latest Parades Stories

By Philip Key A SPECTACULAR open-air performance featuring a crew and cast of more than 150 is set to grace one of Liverpool's original Victorian parks. The Emperor and the Tiger is a large-scale outdoor theatre show created by internationally acclaimed outdoor theatre specialists Walk the Plank and carnival arts organisation Kinetika. The performance, at Newsham Park on August 1, will open Liverpool's Carnival Weekend and is the opening event of the Imagine festival (until August 10),...

By MIKE BLACKBURN STOCKTON International Riverside Festival is coming of age this year as it celebrates its 21st birthday. Visitors to the UK's leading street arts festival have come to expect a world-class performing arts event - and they won't be disappointed when the festival starts on July 30. Taking centre stage will be Flying Dragon Circus - a groundbreaking celebration of the very best of Chinese and European circus traditions. The stunning show of aerial work, acrobatics and Kung...

By Ronica Shannon, Richmond Register, Ky. Jul. 14--The Madison County fairgrounds will come alive with carnival rides, food and a variety of different special events beginning Friday, July 18. Everyone is invited to the eight-day Madison County Fair & Horse Show that will kick off July 18 at 6 p.m. with the traditional parade along Main Street. The fair's first day will feature ATV and truck mud races starting at 7 p.m. at the fairgrounds on KY 52 East, just 3.5 miles east of Richmond....

LONDON (Reuters) - Europe's largest street party got under way on Sunday as festivities began in the narrow streets of London's Notting Hill with an estimated 300,000 visitors coming to enjoy the first day of the annual carnival. Children and adults in elaborate costumes, many decked out with multi-colored feathers and large wings, paraded along the carnival's three and a half mile route in west London to the sound of whistles, steel drums, and Caribbean music. "The weather is...

By Michael AtkinsBERLIN - Berlin's "Love Parade" returned on Saturday with around half a million revelers attending the gigantic techno-music party on the streets of the German capital a mere one week after the end of the soccer World Cup.Dancers wore elaborate costumes or gyrated in their under-garments to deafening bass rhythms produced by disc jockeys on giant flat-bed trucks riding along a 3-km (2 mile) stretch near the Tiergarten Park and Brandenburg Gate.Police said as many as...

By Claudia Parsons NEW YORK (Reuters) - The man in charge of Manhattan's St. Patrick's Day parade has fueled a controversy by saying allowing a gay group to join Friday's march would be like permitting neo-Nazis to participate in an Israeli parade. In an interview with The Irish Times, parade committee chairman John Dunleavy defended the organizers' decision to bar the Irish Lesbian and Gay Organization from participating in the biggest St. Patrick's Day party in the world. "If an...

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil (Reuters) - A samba club backed by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez took first place in Rio de Janeiro's Carnival on Wednesday with a performance that promoted Latin American unity but steered clear of his outspoken opposition to U.S. influence. The 4,000-strong Vila Isabel parade troupe, which received about half a million dollars in sponsorship fees from the Venezuelan state oil company PDVSA, won the champion's title for its hour-long extravaganza in Rio's...

By Terry WadeRIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil -- Female beauty and brains were extolled on Monday night as Brazil's Carnival dancers shimmied, stomped and sang in sensual celebration.A naked pregnant woman danced on a float to a song about feminine beauty and brains as a second batch of elite samba schools marched into a stadium before thousands of cheering fans. She rubbed her belly provocatively as some 4,000 troupe members sang "Indian, white or black, it's all seduction."But the sensuous...

By Elizabeth Piper TURIN (Reuters) - Ballerinas and brides, aerial acrobats and cartwheeling clowns celebrated the close of Turin's Winter Games on Sunday in a cacophony of music and mayhem drawing on the Italian tradition of Carnival. Coinciding with Italy's Mardi Gras weekend, carnival combined with the circus to close a Games that Olympic chiefs hailed as a success, pushing memories of a doping scandal deep into the background. A roar shook the Stadio Olimpico, built by Italian...

By Jeff Franks NEW ORLEANS (Reuters) - Mardi Gras revelers crowded the sidewalks of storm-shattered New Orleans on Sunday in a turnout that was lighter than years past, but large enough to line the streets, fill the bars and remind people of better days. Partiers with beers in hand jostled along Bourbon Street in the historic French Quarter while parades marched along avenues that six months ago were under water or plagued by looters in the aftermath of powerful Hurricane Katrina....