TIME & DATE

8PM on May 1

LOCATION

The event will be held indoors in a community hall 25 minutes from Victoria (Address to be announced via e-mail).

TRANSPORTATION

IMPORTANT: You will need a ride to this event! This location is in a rural area with no access to public transit, and it would be arather expensive cab ride. PLEASE CARPOOL, and travel safe!

PARKING

Please park on the road outside the hall!

CARNIVALE 2010 THEME

Nymphs and Satyrs, come together! Pour the the wine, and dance through the night! May 1st from 8pm-6am, we gather to celebrate the Carnivale of Bacchus: The Bacchanal.

Carnivale is Burn Victoria's annual spring event, featuring music, art, live performances, and fire dancing. Tickets are available in advance only by clicking "Buy Tickets Now". There will be no door sales.

Art and participation grants will be available by application.

Come and celebrate the rise of spring with us at “Carnivale: The Bachannal”! This event is the second spring fundraiser produced by Victoria’s Burning Man community.

Bachannalia were wild and mystic festivals in ancient Roman times dedicated to the god Bacchus (or the greek Dionysus).

Cultic rites were allegedly characterized by maniacal dancing to the sound of loud music and crashing cymbals, in which the revellers, whirled, screamed, and incited one another to greater and greater heights.

The goal was to achieve a state of enthusiasm in which the celebrants’ souls were temporarily freed from their earthly bodies and were able to commune with Bacchus/Dionysus and gain a glimpse of and a preparation for what they would someday experience in eternity.

The rite climaxed in a performance of frenzied feats of strength and madness, such as uprooting trees, tearing a bull (the symbol of Dionysus) apart with their bare hands and eating its flesh raw. Having symbolically eaten his body and drunk his blood, the celebrants became possessed by Dionysus.

Dionysus was known as the god of the epiphany and also the Liberator who freed one from one's normal self, by madness or ecstatic experience.