The annual Snow King’s MasqueParade went off Saturday evening at Spirit Square.
Thousands of people gathered at the square on Saturday evening to welcome the Snow King and Lady Spring to Golden.
There is a lot of planning and crafting that goes into the annual event, and a lot of volunteer coordination from behind the scenes, explained organizer Joyce DeBoer.
Around 200 people performing, setting up, and tearing down come out each year to make the festival happen.
“There were a hundred children we had to accommodate for,” she said. “We could be talking close to 200 people in the community that were actively participating in some way beyond being an audience member, which is remarkable.”
In the months leading up to the festival, volunteers open up the Play House at the Civic Centre for people to go and craft costumes and props for the MasqueParade. Closer to the date, volunteers set up the scaffolding and cut the snowbanks in Spirit Square for people to enjoy the show from. Performers volunteer their time with children, setting up acts and building costumes, and on the night of the event, volunteers make up the stage and logistics crews.
After it is all said and done, a group of people has to take it all down, clean up the Civic Centre, and put it all away again until the next year.
“That’s more or less what has happened over the other years,” DeBoer said, adding that one thing that changed this year was the number of people approaching them with ideas for performances.
Usually DeBoer and her band of volunteers finds themselves approaching groups in the community to see if they would like to participate in the festival, but this year many groups approached the organizers to put in acts. Lady Grey Elementary School students built lanterns, and on the night of the MasqueParade, marched from their school to the Spirit Square.
“That’s important to me because it reflects the community’s engagement,” she said.
When it all comes together, oftentimes, the performers haven’t had an official dress rehearsal with the organizers, which can make things a bit interesting.
“It is a bit anxiety provoking in the week leading up, because I hadn’t seen most of those acts,” she said. “Everybody is so busy and it tends to be busy people who are involved.”
This means organizing a time for an official dress rehearsal isn’t always feasible.
“You kind of pull it together, and everybody knows that, and that’s kind of the way it is. There’s always one or two or three surprises,” DeBoer said.
On the night of the show, sometimes people don’t enter from where they are supposed to, or they don’t know where to go, but that is what DeBoer is there for. She dresses in a glamorous conductor suit and ensures everything goes smoothly.
