The Love Parade was an electronic dance music festival and technoparade that originated in 1989 in West Berlin, Germany. It was held annually in Berlin from 1989 to 2003 and in 2006, then from 2007 to 2010 in the Ruhr region. Events scheduled for 2004 and 2005 in Berlin and for 2009 in Bochum were canceled.
A parade is a procession of people, usually organized along a street, often in costume, and often accompanied by marching bands, floats, or sometimes large balloons. Parades are held for a wide range of reasons, but are usually celebrations of some kind.
Carnival is a Christian festive season that occurs before the liturgical season of Lent. The main events typically occur during February or early March, during the period historically known as Shrovetide. Carnival typically involves public celebrations, including events such as parades, public street parties and other entertainments, combining some elements of a circus. Elaborate costumes and masks allow people to set aside their everyday individuality and experience a heightened sense of social unity. Participants often indulge in excessive consumption of alcohol, meat, and other foods that will be forgone during upcoming Lent. Traditionally, butter, milk, and other animal products were not consumed "excessively", rather, their stock was fully consumed during Shrovetide as to reduce waste. This festival is known for being a time of great indulgence before Lent, with drinking, overeating, and various other activities of indulgence being performed. For example, pancakes, donuts, and other desserts are prepared and eaten for a final time. During Lent, lacticinia and animal products are eaten less, and individuals make a Lenten sacrifice, thus giving up a certain object or activity of desire.
A rave is a dance party at a warehouse, club, or other public or private venue, typically featuring performances by DJs playing electronic dance music. The style is most associated with the early 1990s dance music scene when DJs played at illegal events in musical styles dominated by electronic dance music from a wide range of sub-genres, including drum and bass, dubstep, trap, break, happy hardcore, trance, techno, hardcore, house, and alternative dance. Occasionally live musicians have been known to perform at raves, in addition to other types of performance artists such as go-go dancers and fire dancers. The music is amplified with a large, powerful sound reinforcement system, typically with large subwoofers to produce a deep bass sound. The music is often accompanied by laser light shows, projected coloured images, visual effects and fog machines.
The holiday of Mardi Gras is celebrated in southern Louisiana, including the city of New Orleans. Celebrations are concentrated for about two weeks before and through Shrove Tuesday, the day before Ash Wednesday. Mardi Gras is French for Fat Tuesday, the season is known as Carnival and begins on King's Day, January 6(changes yearly with the church calendar), and extends until midnight before Ash Wednesday. Club, or Krewe, balls start soon after, though most are extremely private, with their Kings and Queens coming from wealthy old families and their courts consisting of the season's debutantes. Most of the high society Krewes do not stage parades. As Fat Tuesday gets nearer, the parades start in earnest. Usually there is one major parade each day ; many days have several large parades. The largest and most elaborate parades take place the last five days of the Mardi Gras season. In the final week, many events occur throughout New Orleans and surrounding communities, including parades and balls.
Christopher Street Day (CSD) is an annual European LGBTQ+ celebration and demonstration held in various cities across Europe for the rights of LGBTQ+ people, and against discrimination and exclusion. It is Germany's and Switzerland's counterpart to Gay Pride or Pride Parades. Austria calls their Pride Parade Rainbow Parade. The most prominent CSD events are Berlin Pride, CSD Hamburg, CSD Cologne, Germany and Zürich in Switzerland.
The Street Parade is with over 1 Million visitors the most attended technoparade in the world, since the end of Love Parade 2010. It takes place in Zurich, Switzerland and is the largest annual event in Zurich. Officially a demonstration for freedom, love and tolerance attended by up to one million people, it proceeds along the side of Lake Zurich on the second Saturday of August.
A float is a decorated platform, either built on a vehicle like a truck or towed behind one, which is a component of many festive parades, such as those of Carnival in Rio de Janeiro, the Carnival in São Paulo, the Carnival of Viareggio, the Maltese Carnival, the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, the Key West Fantasy Fest parade, the Mardi Gras in New Orleans, the 500 Festival Parade in Indianapolis, the United States Presidential Inaugural Parade, and the Tournament of Roses Parade. For the latter event, floats are decorated entirely in flowers or other plant material.
A samba school is a dancing, marching, and drumming club. They practice and often perform in a huge square-compounds and are devoted to practicing and exhibiting samba, an Afro-Brazilian dance and drumming style. Although the word "school" is in the name, samba schools do not offer instruction in a formal setting. Samba schools have a strong community basis and are traditionally associated with a particular neighborhood. They are often seen to affirm the cultural validity of the Afro-Brazilian heritage in contrast to the mainstream education system, and have evolved often in contrast to authoritarian development. The phrase "escola de samba" is popularly held to derive from the schoolyard location of the first group's early rehearsals. In Rio de Janeiro especially, they are mostly associated with poor neighborhoods ("favelas"). Samba and the samba school can be deeply interwoven with the daily lives of the shanty-town dwellers. Throughout the year the samba schools have various happenings and events, most important of which are rehearsals for the main event which is the yearly carnival parade. Each of the main schools spend many months each year designing the theme, holding a competition for their song, building the floats and rehearsing. It is overseen by a carnavalesco or carnival director. From 2005, some fourteen of the top samba schools in Rio have used a specially designed warehouse complex, the size of ten football pitches, called Samba City to build and house the elaborate floats. Each school's parade may consist of about 3,000 performers or more, and the preparations, especially producing the many different costumes, provide work for thousands of the poorest in Brazilian society. The resulting competition is a major economic and media event, with tens of thousands in the live audience and screened live to millions across South America.
Krewe of Tucks is a New Orleans Mardi Gras krewe.
Blacks and Whites' Carnival, is the largest and most important festival in southern Colombia. Although its geographical location belongs to the city of Pasto, it has been adopted by other municipalities in Nariño and southwestern Colombia. It is celebrated every year in 2–7 January and attracts a considerable number of Colombian and foreign tourists.
The Carnival in Rio de Janeiro is a festival held every year before Lent; it is considered the biggest carnival in the world, with two million people per day on the streets. The first Carnival festival in Rio occurred in 1723.
Rosenmontag is the highlight of the German Karneval (carnival), and takes place on the Shrove Monday before Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent. Mardi Gras, though celebrated on Fat Tuesday, is a similar event. Rosenmontag is celebrated in German-speaking countries, including Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Belgium, but most heavily in the carnival strongholds which include the Rhineland, especially in Cologne, Bonn, Düsseldorf, Aachen and Mainz. In contrast to Germany, in Austria, the highlight of the carnival is not Rosenmontag, but Shrove Tuesday.
The Patras Carnival, or Patrino karnavali, is the largest event of its kind in Greece. It has more than 180 years of history. The events begin on 17 January and last up to Clean Monday. The carnival of Patras is not a single event but a variety of events that includes balls, parades, hidden treasure hunt and the children's carnival amongst others. It climaxes in the last weekend of Carnival with the Saturday evening parade of carnival groups, the extravagant Sunday parade of floats and groups, and finally the ritual burning of the carnival king at the St. Nikolaos Street pier in the harbour of Patras. Its characteristics are spontaneity, improvisation, inspiration and volunteerism. In 2019, there were about 750.000 participants in the carnival
The Carnival of Viareggio is a Carnival event annually held in the Tuscan city of Viareggio, in Italy. It is considered amongst the most renowned Carnival celebrations in both Italy and Europe.
LovEvolution was a technoparade and festival that occurred annually in the Bay Area in late September and early October. From its inception in 2004 to 2009, the parade included 25 floats and started at San Francisco's 2nd and Market Streets. The parade continued all the way to San Francisco Civic Center Plaza. The 2009 parade drew over 100,000 people.
Haitian Carnival is a celebration held over several weeks each year leading up to Mardi Gras. Haitian Defile Kanaval is the Haitian Creole name of the main annual Mardi Gras carnival held in Port-au-Prince, Haiti.
Union Move was a technoparade that occurred annually in Munich from 1995 to 2001. It was an initiative by Munich event organizers and nightclub owners to demonstrate against the Munich curfew and excessive police controls. A recurring motto of the parade was "Music is the only drug!". The first Union Move took place on 27 May 1995 and attracted 60,000 people. The 1996 parade for the first time attracted 100,000 people, as well as the 1997 parade which involved 16 trucks equipped with sound systems. The next three parades attracted between 60,000 and 70,000 people, but in 2001 attendance declined. The parade usually started at Münchner Freiheit square and continued over Leopoldstraße all the way to Odeonsplatz, and in the first years even further over Isartor to Marienplatz where the final took place. After the final ravers could board a Housetram and this way continue partying through the city. At night the festival was continued at multiple after-parties in the local nightclubs under the motto Night Move. In 2015 an initiative was launched to revive the parade. So far, however, these attempts have not been successful.
The Carnival of Cayenne is an annual event held in Cayenne, French Guiana. Alongside the Kourou Carnival and the Saint-Laurent Carnival, it is one of the most significant carnivals in the region.
The Düsseldorfer Karneval is the Düsseldorf variant of the "fifth season" known as carnival. The Düsseldorf carnival begins on 11 November each year with the symbolic awakening of the Hoppeditz and ends on Ash Wednesday of the following year with his burial. The period of carnival is called the Carnival session and marks a high point in the social life of the state capital with numerous sittings and balls. Together with the events in Cologne and Mainz, the carnival procession is one of the largest in Germany. Its annual television broadcast made it known nationwide.
