Pe­ter Ray Blood

Rain failed to mar yes­ter­day's me­dia un­veil­ing of The Hu­man Race, the Car­ni­val 2013 pre­sen­ta­tion of K2K Al­liance & Part­ners. Held at the Glen­coe res­i­dence of Ni­na Tom­my, the pre­miere was at­tend­ed by Min­is­ter of Arts and Mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism Dr Lin­coln Dou­glas.

K2K Al­liance & Part­ners, led by twin sis­ters Karen and Kathy Nor­man, made an im­pres­sive de­but at Car­ni­val this year, por­tray­ing The Wa­ters-Seas of Con­scious­ness. The pre­sen­ta­tion copped first place for the Band of the Day, both at the Queen's Park Sa­van­nah and Down­town (South Quay) com­pe­ti­tions, for medi­um bands. The band al­so placed first in Cos­tume De­sign in the medi­um bands cat­e­go­ry, and was fourth in the Band of the Year (Medi­um Bands) com­pe­ti­tion.

Ad­dress­ing Wednes­day's con­fer­ence, host­ed by Mervyn De Goeas, Karen Nor­man said K2K Al­liance & Part­ners is bring­ing "a dif­fer­ent dy­nam­ic" to Car­ni­val, es­pe­cial­ly as its cos­tumes are reusable. Her sis­ter Kathy said, "K2K Al­liance & Part­ners isn't just a mas band but is built on a foun­da­tion of three pil­lars."

She cit­ed these as the arts and en­ter­tain­ment el­e­ment of the band, which fo­cus­es on cos­tume and Car­ni­val de­sign, and sec­ond­ly, it is in­tend­ed to rein­vent cin­e­mat­ic beau­ty through chore­og­ra­phy in mas, and win a Band of the Year ti­tle. Third­ly, it means to give back to so­ci­ety through its fund-rais­ing arm, the K2K Foun­da­tion.

"The foun­da­tion is be­ing in­tro­duced at the launch of next year's band and it is sup­posed to help dis­ad­van­taged chil­dren through art," Kathy said. "To­geth­er with our mom, Althea Nor­man, we are in the process of iden­ti­fy­ing these chil­dren and among the ac­tiv­i­ties we have planned is a week­end sem­i­nar to come up with ways to best help them."

Yes­ter­day, the band gave guests a sneak pre­view of next year's cos­tumes by pre­sent­ing three sec­tions-The Crowd; The Start­ing Gate; and The Jock­ey - Vic­to­ry. The sis­ters ex­plained that K2K Al­liance & Part­ners in­tends to use horse rac­ing as an anal­o­gy for the "race of life." Its theme is based on the prin­ci­ples of "self be­lief" and ul­ti­mate­ly "forg­ing one's own des­tiny."

The band's brochure states: "K2K's 2013 pre­sen­ta­tion of The Hu­man Race is a com­men­tary on the ex­pe­ri­ence of the race for "suc­cess"-about pur­su­ing a dream, re­sist­ing pres­sure, over­com­ing chal­lenges and forg­ing one's own des­tiny." The Hu­man Race is be­ing launched at Queen's Hall on Au­gust 9 in a pro­duc­tion ti­tled Fash­ion Meet­ing Car­ni­val. The stage pro­duc­tion will be pre­ced­ed by a cock­tail seg­ment from 6.30 pm.