Lanterns on parade

Tenth annual Firelight Lantern Festival brings lights and laughter

Hundreds of people paraded from Benson Park to the Crystal Palace in a joyful display of colour, light and music during the tenth annual Firelight Lantern Festival on Saturday evening. There were giant puppets, a pair of cavorting dinosaurs and many, many paper lanterns that people had made during workshops in the weeks leading to the event. And it was not only the lanterns that were illuminated. Many people also wore light-up costumes, whether it was a string of LED lights made into a headdress or a complete outfit in sartorial splendour.

This year’s event actually began the previous day with an adults-only evening at the Crystal Palace, featuring music from Kingston-based The Gertrudes, a group of talented musicians that bill themselves as a “folkestra”. Their lively brand of music had the adult attendees up and dancing in no time. Department of Illumination creative director Krista Dalby said the event was held in part to combat the perception that the festival is mostly directed at children. “We believe this type of whimsical practise is for everyone. So it’s part of educating the community that it’s okay for adults to get dressed up in costumes and dance around and interact with puppets, and you can do that 100 per cent without children being present,” said Dalby. “We had an absolutely wonderful time on Friday and we had a very enthusiastic crowd at the Crystal Palace. This was a wonderful experiment that proves there is an appetite to expand to two days, and also for adults to go out without their children. The people have spoken, and we’re going to do this again next year.”

Another reason for going to a two-day event was to acknowledge the tremendous amount of work that goes into creating the temporary art installations that are part of the festival. “The set-up is quite elaborate in the Crystal Palace. Our artists really do work for months to create these temporary installations that have only been seen for one evening. It has long been our wish to extend the life of these installations so that more people can experience them, and I guess it took 10 years to build up enough of an audience where we felt we could really justify this kind of expense. It is more expensive to double the length of the festival,” said Dalby. This year’s theme was “The Enchanted Forest” and Department of Illumination artists Kyle Topping, Chrissy Poitras, Nella Casson and Tim Snyder, as well as Dalby herself, put in long hours to create a magical atmosphere both inside and outside the Crystal Palace. Additional artists were brought in from outside the County.

Montreal puppet masters Imagicario appeared as three wandering (and illuminated) mice that interacted with the attendees. Jeremy Pastic from Trellis Arts in Peterborough dazzled the audience with a spirited fire show, and Nicole Malbeuf, also from Trellis Art, performed an aerial dance while suspended by her hair. On Saturday evening, Alison Gowdy and Aleksandra Bragoszewska from Birdbone Theatre provided a shadow puppet show based on the legend of Baba Yaga. It was a non-verbal visual opera, accompanied by music from the hurdygurdy and assorted sound effects from the puppeteers themselves.

While the parade is deservedly the highlight of the event, this year’s Saturday night music performers came a very close second. Bangerz Brass combines the sound of brass instruments with contemporary hip-hop, and they were a huge hit. The area in front of the stage was filled with small children who quickly latched on the sheer joy and energy of the music. Lead performers Matt Somber and Ayrah Taerb soon found themselves fist-bumping with their new legion of young fans, and even got them involved in some call and response singing. “My goal in curating the music is to really expose our community to artists they might not encounter otherwise. I have a great fondness for brass, and I thought it was such an interesting mixture of traditional instruments with very contemporary hip-hop music,” said Dalby. “And the kids in the front row were absolutely entranced and screaming with joy in reaction to being able to see this live music up close. We had a real dialogue happening with the children of our community and the band, and this was absolutely fascinating. I really do think this is the type of experience that can really have an impact on children. Of course, the adults were eating it up. The music was phenomenal and fun to dance to.”

Over the two days, close to 1,000 people took part in the Lantern Festival. There were about 300 on Friday night, and tickets were sold out on Saturday night for the Crystal palace, which has a capacity of 525. Hundreds of others took part in the parade and in the events on the grounds of the Crystal Palace. “This weekend felt like a triumph of celebrating 10 years, but also really reuniting with our community after the last couple of years,” said Dalb