Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

The Na­tion­al Acad­e­my for the Per­form­ing Arts (NA­PA), Port-of-Spain, tem­porar­i­ly trans­formed in­to a rain­for­est as the Yu­ma Mas Band show­cased their Car­ni­val 2027 se­lec­tion of cos­tumes, heav­i­ly in­spired by na­ture and trop­i­cal wildlife.

And while the band’s lead­ers say they are op­ti­mistic that the cre­ativ­i­ty will re­dound to suc­cess for next year’s Car­ni­val, they are build­ing on short­com­ings and chal­lenges to present a bet­ter prod­uct to mas­quer­aders.

Speak­ing with re­porters af­ter the pre­sen­ta­tion on Sun­day morn­ing, Yu­ma’s co-di­rec­tor, Tanya Gomes, said the theme stays true to na­ture and the im­por­tance of adapt­ing to one’s en­vi­ron­ment, re­fer­ring to the brand’s abil­i­ty to ex­pand on ac­knowl­edg­ing weak­ness­es.

Re­spond­ing to the de­ci­sion to in­clude im­ages of neg­a­tive so­cial me­dia com­ments dur­ing the build-up to the pre­sen­ta­tion, Gomes said the brand ac­cept­ed the crit­i­cism and sought to build up­on neg­a­tive ex­pe­ri­ences.

“Af­ter com­ing off of a cou­ple neg­a­tive things, that’s what this theme is all about. It’s about in­stinct, it’s about sur­vival, it’s about how we just con­tin­ue to try our very best to evolve and that’s what our mes­sage is about tonight.”

And with Car­ni­val Mon­day and Tues­day set for Feb­ru­ary 8 and 9 next year, Gomes said con­sid­er­a­tion had to be giv­en to the dates and how the brand would con­duct its op­er­a­tions.

“Even though you’re launch­ing a year in ad­vance, you have to watch the po­lit­i­cal cli­mate, the eco­nom­ic cli­mate. You have wars hap­pen­ing, you have peo­ple watch­ing their dol­lars.

“A lot of our mas­quer­aders come from the Unit­ed States, so there are so many things to fac­tor in, then you have a short Car­ni­val, so you have a short­er pro­duc­tion time, so you try your very best to min­imise the amount of work that has to be done, so there’s a lot of lo­gis­tics and strat­e­gy that has to go in­to it.”

As the lights dimmed and the mu­sic stopped short­ly af­ter mid­night, all eyes turned to the front of the stage, where the first mod­els for the sec­tion ‘Claw’ strut­ted out from the dark­ness.

Adorned with feath­ers, se­quins and oth­er fea­tures syn­ony­mous with birds of prey, the mas­quer­aders were greet­ed with up­roar­i­ous ap­plause.

Oth­er sec­tions in Yu­ma’s 2027 band fol­lowed sim­i­lar an­i­mal themes, with ti­tles of Ven­om, Prowl, Tox­ic and Elec­tric, with cos­tumes pay­ing homage to the crea­tures in­spired by them, all to the tune of so­ca, dance­hall, reg­gae­ton and Afrobeats, as am­bi­ent wildlife sounds were in­ter­spersed, adding to the evening’s theme.

In ad­di­tion to the pre­sen­ta­tion of mod­els, the spec­ta­cle al­so blend­ed el­e­ments of the­atre as dancers in body­suits min­gled among mas­quer­aders, in­tro­duc­ing sec­tions to the de­light of pa­trons who crowd­ed the front of the stage, study­ing the de­sign of the cos­tumes.

De­sign­er Ale­jan­dro Gomez told Guardian Me­dia that the cre­ative vi­sion was not to repli­cate the ap­pear­ance of an­i­mals, but to find the dis­tinc­tive qual­i­ties of each crea­ture and re-imag­ine them for cos­tumes ready for the road.

“For us, it wasn’t about the phys­i­cal an­i­mal; it was more about the in­stinct and a very spe­cif­ic char­ac­ter­is­tic that each an­i­mal has and how we can trans­late that in­to a feel­ing and a phys­i­cal in­stead of just lean­ing sole­ly on the phys­i­cal, tan­gi­ble thing.”

He added that the process has been lengthy, from ini­ti­at­ing the con­cept to the fin­ished prod­uct on dis­play.

“It’s a long three months of sketch­ing, sto­ry­board­ing, mak­ing sure every­thing aligns, then to get ma­te­ri­als and build the cos­tumes.”

Mean­while, mod­el An­nalise Seep­aul, who was part of the Elec­tric sec­tion, said she en­joyed per­form­ing on stage and hoped that the de­sign and en­er­gy shared at the launch would in­spire some to book their places with the band for next year’s Car­ni­val.

“If you want vibes, good en­er­gy, end­less rum and great food, then Yu­ma is the place for you.”

From as ear­ly as 9 pm, throngs of pa­trons flocked to the venue’s en­trance on Sat­ur­day, ea­ger to soak up the en­er­gy and spec­ta­cle of the launch.

On en­try, pa­trons were greet­ed by pro­mo­tion­al mod­els with drinks and sou­venirs through­out the evening.

As pa­trons min­gled at the bar, oth­ers took turns try­ing to win prizes from spon­sors, in­clud­ing one at­trac­tion in which pa­trons were in­vit­ed to kick a foot­ball in­to holes along a card­board cutout.