Kids play ole time mas

 THE Children’s Carnival on Saturday brought to Downtown Port-of-Spain a very strong flavour of Ole Time Carnival with Midnight Robbers, Dames Lorraine and Devils being portrayed in both their traditional forms and in exciting new adaptations.

Gerard Kelly’s “Sweet Fuh So” skillfully adapted the forms of traditional ole time mas characters to portray Trini sweet delicacies. In this band, like several others, a group of teenage girls wearing sailor outfits did a dance routine, first forming two parallel rows and then a rotating circle, to great effect. Kudos to Gabriel Cumberbatch’s “Save, Conserve, Preserve” designed by Keith Lovelace and Peter David for their very efficacious use of materials. Each outfit created a maximum impact for the limited amount of materials used. “Hills on Fire” was an outstanding section, each costume being half  leafy-green and half blazing red/orange, with streamers from costumes and standards getting billowed by the wind to truly bring alive the mas.

Other high impact bands were “A Hot Trini Pelau”, Mascoteers’ “The Sea - In Retrospect: A Sailor’s Dream”, Calvin Peters’ “Legends of Bats” , and Watusi Cultural Caravan’s “Dance, Moko Jumbie, Dance”. But drawing most acclaim, and most apprehension, from the audience were the Moko Jumbies presentation of Keylemanjahro and the International School “The Spirit of Carnival”. The colour design scheme, but not always the form, of traditional mas characters was portrayed on stilts including the horizontal stripes of the Jab Jab, the smeared body paint of the Jab Molassie. Amongst several Midnight Robbers, one boy went up to the judging bench and flapped his huge cape literally in the faces of the adjudicators. With bravado a youth on stilts ran quickly on-stage through his band. But he missed his footing and came crashing down. Onlookers let out a collective gasp...But he was back on his stilts seconds later, his ego probably bruised more than his body, and then treated the audience to a limbo under the raised stilt of a colleague.