Laarheide - Bazaar

Laarheide brings a fairy tale to life

A classic fairy-tale scene: market stalls, merchants haggling, a bustling Middle Eastern village. This year, the Laarheide hamlet is building a story set at the bazaar. Drawing on fantasy tales like Aladdin, they sketch out the scene. Amid merchants calling out to sell their wares and visitors looking around, a young child wanders through carrying an old oil lamp. When the lamp is rubbed, a friendly genie rises up above the bazaar. All around, countless different scenes unfold at once. This well-known story will parade through the streets of Zundert this year in full splendour, led by the Laarheide designers’ collective. It’s a design packed with detail and little stories you never tire of looking at.

After a successful Corso season last year, the collective went looking for a new idea for this year. Plenty of ideas came and went, but the bazaar kept coming back. “Designing last year was a process where we really got to know each other better. That’s paying off this year,” says Jeremy. It’s an ambitious float, but a challenge the group has taken on with both hands. There’s a very specific atmosphere the float is meant to convey, and every element must fit. Working out that atmosphere takes a lot of time, because all the separate pieces have to add up to one coherent whole: “The music, the extras, the movement… it all has to click. There’s also a real challenge in the construction, because it has to be very compact. We sometimes make things harder for ourselves than they need to be,” says Dirk. “But we do know what we want.”

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This is the second year running that Laarheide has worked with a designers’ collective.

Original Dutch Text: Lieve Bastiaansen
Translation: Saskia Molema
Photo: André Roks

Hamlet Laarheide
www.laarheide.nl

This article is brought to you by Corsief. An independent magazine about corsos in general and the Zundert flower parade in particular. The magazine is produced entirely by volunteers, who are all more or less active in the Zundert flower parade world. Corsief is entirely full-colour and appears four times a year.