Magic Lantern Celebration brings Halloween light not fright to Paseo
Casey Tisdale of Theatre Upon a StarDanceSwan dances in the pumpkin labyrinth during the 2008 Magic Lantern Celebration. (Photo by Skip Largent)
From Friday’s Weekend Look section of The Oklahoman.
Paseo lauds light instead of fright in Oklahoma City
The Paseo Arts District is celebrating Halloween a week early with “a night of light instead of fright.”
The annual Magic Lantern Celebration will take place from 3 to 7 p.m. Sunday in the neighborhood businesses, art galleries and outside on Paseo Drive, which will be closed during the festivities.
“It’s to give children a different perspective of Halloween,” said Lori Oden, executive director of the Paseo Arts Association, which sponsors the event with the Oklahoma Arts Council. “It’s making it something fun and not scary.”
The hands-on event also moves the focus away from gobbling up candy and buying Halloween costumes at the discount store, said Lorrie Keller, artistic director of Theatre Upon a StarDanceSwan, the multigenerational Paseo dance company that organizes the celebration.
“The whole philosophy behind it is nurturing creativity and giving parents and children a chance to really work together in an authentic and unique way,” she said.
Children from toddlers to teenagers are invited to come in everyday clothes and make their own costumes in a series of “playshops” in the Paseo.
“The first year of the event, we asked kids to come in their costumes and we noticed that they came in all these store-bought kind of boring costumes, and many were gory,” Keller said. “In my childhood, we took a lot of pride in getting to wear original things that our mothers made, and so within the next year, I said let’s just make the costumes.”
Participants can twist, crumple and tear craft paper and then sculpt it into outfits. They can decorate their costumes with ribbons, sequins, leaves, old photographs and beads. Rather than gruesome monsters, most children opt to dress themselves as fairies, animals, superheroes and the like.
“You can do a whole lot with paper. … It’s not unlike the crepe paper costumes of the Victorian period, but with a contemporary twist,” Keller said. “It really is an exciting way to introduce problem-solving and creativity.”
In other playshops, youngsters can make paper hats, decorate their faces with sparkles and create LED light crowns, the magic lanterns of the event’s name.
“Our concept is that they are the magic lanterns,” Keller said. “It is a celebration of imagination and the light within us.”
The celebration will culminate at 6:30 p.m. with the Spin ‘n’ Sparkle parade, in which Oklahoma City musicians Steve McLinn and Jahruba Lambeth will lead children and parents into a painted pumpkin labyrinth, where they can dance into twilight.
“It does bring the labyrinth to life … when people began to enter it and dance in it,” she said. “It’s a very magical moment.”
New this year, many of Paseo galleries and businesses are decorating their windows with old-fashioned shadow plays, putting up Halloween-theme cutouts and lights against white paper. The shadow windows will stay up through Oct. 31, Oden said.
Children also will have the chance to cut out shadow play silhouettes and decorate pumpkins with natural items such as leaves, twigs and dried flowers.
While some studios will be open and handing out candy, and StarDanceSwan offers a basket of goodies, Keller said the treats aren’t the focal point of the festivities.
“We always have had a basket of candy out here and it doesn’t get touched. They are way too interested in creating than eating candy,” she said with a laugh.
Going on
Magic Lantern Celebration
When: 3 to 7 p.m. Sunday.
Where: Paseo Arts District, between NW 28 and Walker and NW 30 and Dewey.
Cost: Free but donations will be accepted.
Information: 525-2688 or www.thepaseo.com.
-BAM
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