Floating visions

 That's what they call the event. Floating Visions: Bosch reimagined.

And this year's theme is Powered by Defects. Ok. And some exerpts from the program:

"Defects can be found everywhere, poverty, unrisen cakes, badly dressed carnival goers, long term illness."

 I get the point but it's a rather odd conglamoration of examples. Of which those are only a few. 

The first float are the heralds announcing the parade.  And the defects in all of our lives. We of course didn't understand anything. 

Then, the SOS float. The designers collected bottles from patients and staff at a local hospital, and a

 "wish creature" announces  their wishes from a vessel filled with seaweed-like sculptures.

Apparently in Bosch's time sailors in danger would throw bottles with their final cries for help.

I will try to describe a few more of the floats, the ones I liked the best.

Meerklank is a floating barrel with open ends with four people in black black aboard, walking forward to keep the barrel rolling, It represents moving forward despite flaws, partly submerged and having to move forward to keep from sinking. This one was Loring's favorite, and one  we didn't need to understand any language to appreciate.

Perhaps my favorite was called The lazy curious innovative human. Three women are on individual small platforms linked to one another, drawn by a fourth person in a small float in front. Each has white kitelike wings. They are all different, one is on a ladder. It's quite elegant. The program explains that they are taking on the invincible force of graity, and in doing so lay bare the flaws we all possess. Sometimes it's better not to know the explanation! 

Another elegant float was called Als verlangen dansen. I will have to look up the translation. It was created by a woman intrigued by dancing from childhood, but who suffered an injury at the age of twelve. Now she wants to keep dancing., this time with other women who want to dance despite being burned out, being pregnant, etc. It was another visually appealing one. A half dozen dancers in a variety of black and red attire, on a triangular float intersected by a number of barres.   The float is motored by another half dozen women in the water, all wearing red bathing caps. And two of them perform synchronized swimming moves ahead of the float.

The last one I'll describe is De fanfare van oliedom. "we are all addicted to oil."  " this depicts and sets to music our addictive complacency...and insatiablel greed with a boisterous orchestra." The float is set upon oil drums, with others atop it played as drums. and musicians wearing oil  can funnels as hats, everything painted a bright blue. This float was powered by several people pedaling.  "They hammer their message to the quays. Will it be hellilsh noise or heavenly music?" 

The parade takes an hour. We watched it once in our purchased grandstand seats, and then two days later from an embankment on the other side of the river and further down, giving us a different perspective. 

It was low key and I'd guess almost entirely local and other Dutch people.  I'm glad we finally did it. 

We are now on our boat, docked along a spit of land not too far from where we embarked. We had a lesson from the staff and were on our way. I'll describe the first part of our boat trip as well as the other things we did between the two parades we attended, in my next post.