Wednesday 19 June 2019

NEWS: A flavour of Brazilian Carnaval to celebrate the 258th birthday of Manchester's Bridgewater Canal.



Artists from Brazil and the UK bring the carnaval to Salford

Celebrating the Bridgewater Canal’s 258th birthday, Precarious Carnaval invites audiences on a walking adventure from 1761 to 2061 with performance, personal stories and parties, and where nothing is as it seems… 

Last year, award-winning theatre makers from Brazil and the UK spent a month living along the Bridgewater Canal, getting to know the waterway and the people that use it. During their time they fished for stories, made costumes, took portraits of the people they met, set up beaches on the canal banks and said hello to every person they passed.

Artists Lowri Evans, Renato Bolelli Rebouças & Rodolfo Amorim started scheming Precarious Carnaval. This Brazilian festival with a distinctly Salford feel will take place along a five mile stretch of the Bridgewater Canal over the weekend of the 5th – 7th July 2019.

With support from Arts Council England, Heritage Lottery Fund, Salford City Council, Est. 1761, Community Fund, The Lowry, Worsley Rotary Club, and Superbia at Manchester Pride, the artists are collaborating with over 30 community groups and hundreds of people to stage Precarious Carnaval. The incredible piece of site-specific theatre will be a celebration of community connected by one very important canal. It will be joyous and jagged, perfectly precarious as we wonder: where are we heading?

One canal. Three days. Five miles. What could possibly go wrong? 

Part-party, part-procession, part-performance extravaganza: Precarious Carnaval will be an unforgettable journey which will see a confetti of performances, roaming scenes and strange spectacles as well as sculptures, installations and street parties, staged in three acts and sited along the canal from Boothstown to Barton. Members of the public will be invited to walk the route, watch, take part and explore from Friday 5th to Sunday 7th July 2019.

From the past, present and future of England's first canal, Precarious Carnaval is divided into three epic acts that will tip the world on its head, taking audiences on a journey through time from 1761 to 2061 to make sense of now in 2019; from 8pm-9pm on Friday 5th July members of the public are invited to Act I, that will include a sunset procession along the canal. On Saturday 6th July Act II, the walking adventure from Boothstown Marina to Worsley’s Humpback Bridge will feature more than one big bang, and the joyous grand finale in Act III will take place from Patricroft Recreation Ground to the lighthouse in Monton on Sunday 7th July. Expect riots, revolutions and a shower of colourful get-togethers in a carnaval where nothing is as it seems. BOOKING NOT REQUIRED: On Saturday and Sunday performance walks will start every ten-minutes from 2pm, with the walk taking roughly 1-hour. The event will close at 5pm. The whole weekend is absolutely free.

Artist Lowri Evans says “It will be dark as well as colourful to reflect the complicated legacy of the industrial revolution that exploded right here from a mine in Salford. We’re using Brazilian Carnaval, where the world tips upside down for one day, to celebrate and question what’s going on.

“We can’t ignore and are curious about what it means to work in a coal mine when there’s a global warming crisis; what it means to work with over 30 community groups and hundreds of volunteers when the UK feels so divided; and what it means to work with artists and carnaval from Brazil when there is a fascist president in power who is dismantling culture and violating human rights.”

To find out more about Precarious Carnaval and how to take part go to www.est1761.org/events/precarious-carnaval or email precariouscarnaval@gmail.com.

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