Ring of Fire seizes the spotlight

Sunday’s 300-strong march mashes unlikely collaborators linked by marginalization

In the traditions of various cultures, street processions function as something of a public valve-releasing: bacchanalian abandon in Caribbean cultures, say, or a last romp in excess before the austerity of Lent, as in New Orleans’ Mardi Gras.

Marlon Griffith, the Trinidadian artist in residence at the Art Gallery of York University, has created this Sunday’s 300-strong Ring of Fire procession with all that in mind, but much more.

Mashing together unlikely collaborators — young spoken-word poets from Scarborough’s hardscrabble Malvern district, disability dancers from the Mississaugas of the New Credit First Nation and members of the city’s Capoeira Angola community, which keeps alive its traditional practice, born of slavery, of dance as a martial art — Griffith’s procession is celebratory, but not of excess.

Outfitted in regalia and costume as elaborate as any, Griffith’s performers draw from histories of marginalization and dissent.

Tied to the opening of the Parapan Am Games this week, Ring of Fire takes on board the notion of groups typically left on the periphery finally stepping to the centre of the stage.

Two years in the making, Ring of Fire is that stage, built for just that purpose.

And it’ll be hard to miss: the procession begins at Queen’s Park on Sunday at noon and marches down University Ave. to Nathan Phillips Square.

VINCE TALOTTA/TORONTO STAR Marlon Griffith, a Trinidadian artist in residence at the Art Gallery of York University, shows the mountains of costumes and regalia for Sunday’s Ring of Fire, a 300-person procession that will march from Queen’s Park to Nathan Phillips Square.