Goa Carnival's dancing buddies

The festival of colours in Goa that Carnival is, it seems to have a place for everyone to showcase their brand image and their talent . While corporates such as Maggi and Budweiser besides catering institutions and ambulance service 108 as well as local businesses have walloped the limelight in a bid to promote their brand image. However carnival in Goa can never miss a distinct brigade of boys and girls who lend the exceptional dance spirit of carnival to the float parade in Goa.

It is a familiar sight to see these young lasses in attire full of frills and carnivelesque colours in the good company of boys flaunting a maverick hairstyle or better topping themselves with cowboy hats or just wearing bandanas. The cultural splurge of carnival which gives a little extra punch to free flowing dancing abilities, has given this ever renewing brigade in Goa a good reason to hog some limelight while making some extra cash for themselves.

While the student community of Goa is the backbone of this inseparable carnival brigade. the organisers find this community to be the ideal foil to their plans because students are inexpensive, can be moulded easily, love some limelight in their teens and essentially have no airs as some of the seasoned dancers would carry with them.  

The students are often selected through common friends in college and other such campuses and get to participate in all the parades in Panjim, Margao, Vasco and Mapusa while pocketing for themselves payments upto Rs 500 per day. Armed with a training which may range for a day or two, the students conduct practices, often within their own group on Sundays and holidays.

So this unmistakable brigade of boys and girls lend the completeness to the carnival floats by dancing to a series of forward, backward and side steps and hip movements in a choreographed rhythm for every few metres of the float parade.

The students get picked up by individual float sponsors like hot cakes with sponsors ranging from beverage companies to cell phone manufacturers scouting for this hep crowd from among the schools and college campus influentials.

After selection, the youngsters are then fine tuned to personalise with  the particular brand they are selected for and keeping with the requirements of the song and its tempo, they trail behind the leading brand image banners, synchronizing with their dance steps often with glittering strips of  colourful papers adorning their hands. They also help in distributing pamphlets of the advertised product besides some of them even singing and making announcements

It is the love of dancing and the spirit of fun besides the welcome bonus of pocket money which goads these youngsters to take part in the parade year on year and once they leave the campus,  the generation next takes over in  a continuance of the passion to enjoy the remnants of Goa's colonial past adding fun and frolic to their lives.