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Originally Posted by jidderman
Is this a UK festival? I have forgotten what it is and I must have subscribed to this a while ago?.
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It's one of four historic Gaelic celebrations for the four seasons. Edinburgh kickstarted the tradition in the late 80s with celebrations for two of them- Beltane and Samhuinn, respectively overnight on 30th April and 31st October. Both are well established now but since the latter is held in the old town itself, nudity is disallowed and limited to (sometimes deliberate) wardrobe malfunctions- since Free the Nipple a few girls have been doing it with just tape on their nips.
So yes, every year on Calton Hill in the city- thousands attend, which is why punter photography sets are so limited- the nudity takes place across the hill, so only official photogs inside the performance areas tend to get decent albums of pics. As far as I know there are lots of small scale celebrations in Northern Europe- one in Germany seems to get a bit of nudity- but this is the only properly ticketed, rehearsed and choreographed event- as you see it involves a lot of naked acrobatics... There were some huge, moving human pyramidal chariots this year- it's pretty insane.