St. John’s Parade 2009

Open ended performances are always an adventure. When will it start? How long will it go? What will happen? We don’t know. Who’s in charge? Where do we wait? Which way are we going? We don’t know.

The solution is to relax and adapt as things go. Since there is no set plan, it’s pointless to worry about how events will unfold.

Now I say all this as if the parade was a whirling slosh of chaos – not so. I’m positive the organizers knew exactly what was going on and were completely in charge. Given the number and diversity of groups parading they did an awesome job of moving everyone forward. However, from the perspective of the individual groups, there are – many questions that simply can not be answered. In short, the event was an excellent test of martial skills.

With seven dedicated performers, we made it the whole mile without having to put down the costume once. Surprisingly, it only took about 30 minutes to walk the whole route and at that speed sometimes the lion had to pop up and hustle down the street.

Unfortunately, with only seven people, we neglected to take any pictures during the actual parade BUT this shot is an excellent one of the lion greedily eying a child’s precious yellow balloon. Don’t worry, no one got eaten.