The making of Macao’s signature event—Parade through Macao, Latin City

The passion of art is not constrained by location and space—it can be expanded limitlessly and extended freely. In 2015, the teams of “Parade Through Macao, Latin City” continue to shuttle in and out of the streets and alleyways of the Historic Centre of Macao, promoting the concept of “Love, Peace, and Cultural Integration”, instilling unlimited vitality to the Historic Centre.

Held for the fifth consecutive year, “Parade Through Macao, Latin City” has become an event for local art brands. Authorities have to overcome a host of challenges in alleviating traffic and flow of people during the parade, as well as team selection and design of programmes prior to the event.

Cultural Affairs Bureau President Ung Vai Meng said: “Looking back, when brainstorming for the event with other departments and groups five years ago, we exhausted our ideas. From the design of souvenirs to the route of parade, we overcame a lot of difficulties. With every resolved issue, the team took one step further.”

The architecture of the Historic Centre of Macao is filled with rich Latino culture and customs. Combining it with an east-meets-west cultural atmosphere, a major parade event is put in the limelight. Ung said: “One of the keys to the success of the parade is the past exchanges between Macao and Latin countries, in particular Portugal. People think that Portuguese and Spanish people work slowly, but their creativity is extremely rich. This event can on one hand promote the beauty of the Historic Centre of Macao to the outside, and on the other hand train local youngsters, equip them with more international vision, and help them accumulate more experience. I believe that these kinds of major events are helpful for the promotion of costume production and artistic performance so that they become the foundation of the cultural industry in the future.”

The showstopper of the parade every year is the Handover Celebration held at the Tap Seac Square. Impressive stage designs like gigantic puppets and balloons suspended mid-air were displayed in the past. According to Ung, despite the fact that Tap Seac Square is closely located to residential areas, creativity is not at all limited by it. The entire parade route is another stage to demonstrate creativity. For Instance, interesting installments are set up in the Ruins of St. Paul’s, The Passion Alley (Travessa da Paixao) and the fountain beside the St. Anthony’s Church, showcasing artistic creativity in people’s daily living space.

Around 60 teams of performing groups participated in the latest parade. Of these, 43 were local teams with the number of performers closing in on 1,500. The genres of these performance groups range from Cantonese operas, mimes, dramas and magic to music, martial arts, folk dance and oriental dance.

The Regina Dance Group has sent its members to participate in all five editions of the parade. Group Leader and Art Director Regina Kuok said: “This year we continue to opt for Chinese style. The dance we chose was used by the State of Chu in sacrificial rituals in the ancient times, conforming to our characteristics as a traditional dance group. Our students, and even the audiences, are all very excited by the performance.” Kuok said that students who participated in the parade are mainly 15 to 16 years old. She hoped that they could get the chance to perform in front of the public. She added that citizens were able to closely watch the amazing performances by the Regina Dance Group during the Latin Parade over the years, which was a decent promotion for the Group.

“We hired professionals from Italy to arrange dances in the past, and our members learnt a lot from that.  We resorted to free creation this year and it was pretty good. But we may pull in overseas talents again in the future so that our students can interact more with [dancers from] other places,” said Kuok.

Meanwhile, the LDG Dance Studio, established in 1995, is another unit that participates in the parade every year. Founded solely by Mini Chan, the group is the first dance studio that focuses on street dance. The studio’s K-pop MV course in recent years is extremely popular among youngsters.

Mini said: “This year, we continue to use New Jazz, which our student is best at, as the performing item. They put on Chinese costumes and hold a fan printed with Macao’s World Heritages to showcase to tourists Macao’s characteristics.”

Mini said the overall preparation for the parade was extraordinary.  Despite the large number of songs during the last stage performance, all songs were played accurately with the respective performing group. But Mini added that the rehearsal schedule this year was changed a lot due to the rain, and suggested that more preparation could be made on this regard next year so that performers are more assured.