QUEANBEYAN residents will be able to treat their taste buds to delicious cuisines and be entertained by traditional cultural dances at this weekend's Carnivale.
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The annual festival is a celebration of the town's multicultural communities and will be held on Sunday, February 22.
More than 25 groups will perform on stage including the Ngwao Letshwao Performing Arts who have travelled all the way from Botswana and will perform dances native to their homeland.
Artistic director Odirile Rammoni said the group was looking forward to sharing some of their cultural dances including 'selete' which is performed at initiation ceremonies as children enter adulthood and 'setapa' which is a celebratory dance for weddings and parties.
"We will be performing different types of dance from Botswana. We have different tribes, each tribe has got each type of dance and each type of dance has each meaning," he said.
"We will perform the Hosana from the Kalanga tribe. It is used for rain-making or praying for rain.
"We will also do the Tsutsube dance which is used by bushmen. They use it for hunting animals and gathering some wild fruits, also for healing."
The dance group is glad to return to Queanbeyan having been part of the town's 175th celebration in 2013.
They performed last weekend at Canberra's Multicultural Festival and will continue their tour to Goulburn and then the Cooma and Bega Multicultural Festivals.
Mr Rammoni said dance is very important to them, he describes their culture as the "the next diamond of Botswana".
He said children learn to dance from their elders and it is also used in their homeland as an employment opportunity and to keep youths out of trouble.
"All of our group members they didn't know how to dance. I taught them how to dance all from step one until they are perfect," he said.
"We learn from our grandparents. When we grow up, in the weddings some parents will demonstrate some of the movements. So from the age of seven I learnt how to dance and by the time I reached 10-years-old I was perfect and performing in the school competitions and winning."
Mr Rammoni said the multicultural festivals are not just a chance for the dance group to promote Botswana but also to learn much more about other countries. A "cultural exchange" is how he likes to describe it.
"We'd love for people on Sunday to be part of the performance, we are going to interact with the audience," he said.
"We will try to teach some of the audience some moves."
If dancing is not your thing, there will be a number of food stalls featuring cuisine from Sri Lanka, the Australia Mon Association, Turkey, Indonesia, Croatia, Greece and Macedonia.
There will also be family-friendly activities a farm animal patting paddock, face painting, Indigenous craft, air brush tattooing, festival flower making, the Fire Brigade and information stalls.
The Queanbeyan Carnivale will be held at Queanbeyan Town Park on Sunday, February 22 from 10am to 4pm.