Tuesday 4 September 2012

Godiva to lead Thames Festival Night Carnival

Godiva to lead Thames Festival Night Carnival
The Thames Festival are proud to announce the lead group in this year's Night Carnival, Imagineer Productions' Godiva. Measuring six metres high, Godiva is a large-scale beautifully crafted puppet - a marriage of art and engineering, operated by a team of five puppeteers, one caller and a crew of fourteen. 
Godiva’s cavalcade left Coventry on 28th July to travel to London via Rugby, Northampton, Milton Keynes, Luton, Hatfield and Waltham Abbey, arriving in Waltham Forest on 5th August.
Her final appearance of 2012 will be at The Mayor’s Thames Festival on Sunday 9th September, to celebrate the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games, giving Londoners the chance to see this monumental piece of street theatre in the centre of their city.
At dusk, Godiva will travel north over Blackfriars Bridge, wearing a dress designed by international British designer Zandra Rhodes.
Godiva will lead the spectacular Thames Festival Night Carnival, featuring 30 groups and 1,500 performers from across the UK and overseas, as the parade weaves its way over Blackfriars Bridge and west along Victoria Embankment, where she will bid her farewell to London.
Godiva Awakes is part of Artists taking the lead, a series of 12 public art commissions across the UK to celebrate the London 2012 Cultural Olympiad, funded by Arts Council England.