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While the Carnival lasts, there is no other life apart from it. Mikhail Bakhtin

First of all, the sounds of it: A slow, booming rumble and then a quick, harder sound. Drums, flutes and cymbals! And suddenly the procession emerges from be- hind a corner in one of the narrow, winding streets of the medieval city. An explo- sion of brilliant colour, swirling movement, vivid faces. Shaking limbs, rocking feet at crazy angles over the cobble stones - big city Samba. The Street is transformed into one, enormous body dancing to the same rhytm again and again. The rhytmical space expands infinitely, to the exclusion of everything else. And after the procession has moved on, a large, gaudy bird remains in the Street to change a diaper on a baby lying safely on a doorstep. Utopia? No, Copenhagen, 1982. The eighties were to witness the return of the Carnival to Copenhagen — following an absence of almost two hundred years. During a hot Whitsun weekend about 200.000 Copenhageners took part in one of the greatest festivals in the history of Copenhagen. Or rather: They were the Festival. This event was born of the cold. During the dark winter months nine groups in different parts of the city plotted to bring imagination into power. Costumes were made, masks shaped, and the ballet dancer Eske Holm went from place to place teaching the Copenhagen Samba. A group of organizers consisting of twenty people provided funds for 25 bands etc. and worked like slaves to prevent the colossal ar- i)« rangement from collapsing. They succeeded magnificently. The god of water guides a boat manned by white clowns through the canals. The spirit of the air comes shimmering down over the city in the shape of three pink an- gels with parachutes for wings. And down below on the heavy Earth horrible dra­ gons make their tortuous way towards the heart of the medieval city, which throbs already with the pulse of the Samba. The city is bewitched. The busy everyday crowds in the streets have been trans­ formed into a sensuous wawe that renders traffic lights obsolete. It is impossible to imprison this expression of life in the usual categories of bureaucracy, politics or