Fox&Badge welcome you to emerge with joy & passion from the doldrums of Winter to embrace the first glimmers of Spring, communion, connection - & Carnival! Our pageant merges the old pagan/Christian festival of love (Valentines is 2 days earlier) with the seasonal post-harvest, pre-Lent spirit of Carnival, where we explode with festivity and abandon. Traditionally food stocks, energy and morale were all running low before Spring shoots arrive in time to nourish us; our reconvergence warms the cold vaults of the slumbering city, and the chambers of our hearts. We warmly welcome you to our reversal ritual of release, summoning back the sun; a Dionysian rite of passage where we are all reborn; a rebellion against our confinement, and a celebration of our collective creativity and eros; our energetic alignment; our passion for connection and transcendence. Our Carnival learns from the best, seeking inspiration from across the world, with a special focus on Brazil - the great Land of Carnival - and the extraordinary Rio Carnival - which even began with sploshing! Crowds ran amok amidst the entrudos, throwing flour and milk on each other. Our concurrent Valentines celebrations emerged from Lupercalia, where the Luperci (brothers of the wolf; almost fox) priests would whip women with animal hides to promote health and fertility. Our event celebrates all this, and most of all the collective, communal forms of non-divisive love, and those sweet ties that bond us all, no matter what our relationship status. In these celebrations, we find a truth our ancestors knew well: that sexuality and spirituality flow from the same sacred source. That under the mask, we can be our truest selves (as the Venetians know so well). That the mask and costume, no matter how thin, enable entirely new adventure; and in that temporary chaos, we discover lasting communion. Carnival meant goodbye to meat (carne-vale) - but here let’s say hello to the flesh of new friends, and the vast rich cultural history of pleasure and excess. For one night, we invite you to descend deep into this tradition of transcendent excess, where fetish meets festival, kink meets carnival, the profound mingles with the profane, and we explore that liminal space where pleasure becomes prayer; surrender becomes strength; and we discover delight and divinity in the deepest collective pleasure. YOUR JOURNEY Come explore all our joyful, festival spaces of abandon & joy: