WATERBURY — The thud-thud of the drumbeat rolled ahead of the crowd, preceding the wave of lights coming down Waterbury’s Main Street at 5:00 p.m. last Saturday.
As the lights got closer, their shape began to clarify. Held high over the heads of the moving crowd were lanterns depicting a penny-farthing bicycle, a pink gumball with eyes — Kirby, the Nintendo character — and a five-part dragon. One person carried the head of the dragon, other people held its torso and tail. Behind the drums, the brass section boomed.
The whole Waterbury community gathers each December for the annual River of Light lantern parade. Each has its own theme: this year’s theme was “wheels and wings.” Starting at Waterbury’s Brookside Primary School, the parade takes a roughly half-mile route down Stowe Street to North Main Street, ending at Dascombe Rowe Park.
Primary school art teacher MK Monley and visiting artist Gowri Savoor ran the first River of Light Parade in December 2010. Now, parades are planned and coordinated by Monley and local teacher-artists Mame McKee and Sarah-Lee Terrat.
In the weeks leading up to the parade, the three women led workshops where participants learned to build lanterns from paper and willow.
“We start several months ahead of time fundraising for the event, making sure materials are ordered, the bands and fire spinners are scheduled, scheduling workshops and all of the logistics that need to happen in order to have a successful parade,” Monley said.
This year, at the parade’s head was a bobble-headed bird lantern. Terrat acted as its torso and head; she wore a feathered suit and bore the weight of the beaked head. Her co-leads Monley and McKee carried the wings.
The bird was a mash-up of several different artists’ work, Monley said. The wings were left over from a lantern that middle school students made several years ago.
Parade organizers were relieved to see the recent cold snap break in time for the parade. Saturday began in the single digits but warmed to around 32 by early evening, making for perfect conditions for people to linger outdoors at the park, taking in the scene.
The several hundred or so participants, of all ages, moved and swayed to the beat of the drums, waving their homemade lanterns triumphantly and smiling. Around 2,000 onlookers stood on the sidewalks. Some followed the lanterns while others peered from behind doorsteps and porches.
“The artists who built the larger lanterns really knocked it out of the park this year,” Monley said. “I’m also proud of the work the middle school students did in building their large lanterns.”
Around Main Street, traffic wardens cordoned off roads so the parade could pass through.
When the parade reached Dac Rowe Park, it funneled down the road to the parking lot. Snow covered the extent of the field, and people broke off from the crowd to traipse through it.
To the far left, behind the sheltered pavilion where high schoolers served hot chocolate, the faint silhouettes of children sledding down the hills could be seen.
Straight ahead, a ring of people stood around a fenced-off area. Behind them were the fire-spinners of Cirque de Fuego, a fire performance group from Jericho. Clad in striped black-and-red vaudevillian attire, a man and woman contorted and bent backwards in front of the crowds, rolling a fire-tipped baton down their chests. After dancing, the two performers joined in the middle for a sword fight, their batons now coated in fire.
“He’s so cool!” a little boy watching said.
Over on the ballfield, leaning against the fence were an array of temporarily abandoned lanterns: pieces of the dragon lantern, a pair of green wings with a hibiscus in between, and a series of multi-colored orbs.
Terrat, McKee, and Monley stood at the far edge of the fence, near the fire-spinners. They talked with parade-goers. Both Monley and McKee held their wings loosely. Her bird head now planted in the snow, Terrat grinned from ear to ear.
When asked what type of bird they are supposed to represent, McKee shrugged and said that she didn’t know.