When Bollywood went mainstream, as enticing as it was

witnessing Aussie Holly Valance wearing considerably less than seven veils in her video for her single, Kiss Kiss, one couldn't help but feel the ghost of Empire and cultural colonialism still looming large.

This is something the life-sized steel elephant leading Runga Rung, the biggest street theatre spectacle to grace this year's Edinburgh's Hogmanay tonight, probably won't be overly concerned about. With a group of fully-costumed traditional Indian wedding singers performing astride it, and a mobile cinema screen relaying a pot-pourri of Bhangra and other contemporary British-Asian sights and sounds, all multi-cultural roots are covered.

Emergency Exit Arts, Runga Rung's producers, are fully aware, however, that ''we're a company who are mainly white British'', as artistic director Les Sharpe puts it, ''so we didn't want to do a show that drew on all these different cultures without us having an awful lot of very serious conversations. But we knew from the off that this was the only way we could do something that wasn't backward-looking, and was part of a changing society, about what's happening now and is part of the future.''

To whit, elements from Spain, Latin America, Trinidad and Jamaica have also been incorporated into Runga Rung's melting pot, along with a team knee-deep in such cultural exchange. While such searching after authentic flavours suggests a series of all-expenses-paid field trips to exotic locales may have been required, Sharpe can only respond with a dry: ''I wish.''

Runga Rung marks a change for Edinburgh Hogmanay's traditional Night Afore extravaganza, in that from now on the event will be themed to a particular country. Thus, reborn as Night Afore International, this year's inaugural event will also feature Asian stiltwalkers Nutkhut, who present Maharajah's Banquet, and Indian choreographer Honey Kalaria, deviser of the Bollywood-based video for Gareth Gates's Spirit In The Sky. Sister India and DJ Ritu will mix and match sounds across an up-to-the- minute contemporary spectrum and dance troupe Nachda Sansaar will appear alongside EEA offshoot, The Bollywood Brass Band, whose members played with 22-piece brass band and stalwarts of the mid-1980s agit-prop scene, The Happy End. Local input comes from Edinburgh's own Indian Street Band.

The last group's presence points to just how big a force such multi-cultural initiatives can be in indigenous communities. Edinburgh's annual Mela, which takes place in September, has proved this already, while even the Edinburgh International Festival got in on the act this year with Strictly Dandia. Dramatically speaking, that show was far from ready, yet it remained one of the biggest draws of this year's EIF, which genuinely opened itself to audiences who might not normally come near such legitimised art.

Yet if it hadn't been for a strike of actors and street performers, Unique Events director and Hogmanay maestro Pete Irvine might never have picked up on Runga Rung.

''All the programmes for the festivals I went to in the summer were cancelled,'' Irvine recalls. ''The performers were putting out manifestos and having picnics in the park, but weren't performing. Unlike here, in France you can get paid well to be street artists, so when they go on strike you really notice it. Out of that, I knew Runga Rung were available, and I knew it would fit perfectly with the things I wanted to do this year, which isn't just about welcoming people to Edinburgh, but to welcome another culture as well. Next year,'' he suggests, ''it could be South Africa or somewhere else.'' As if to illustrate this international sweep, Irvine breaks off to take a call from Sri Lanka.

Despite the fortuity of such industrial unrest, nobody's suggesting that EEA are scabs. The company's pedigree dates back to the left-leaning busking and street theatre scene that livened up Covent Garden and Brighton as a blaringly brash raspberry to the greyness imposed by Prime Minister Thatcher during her inglorious early 1980s first term. Coming from a fully radicalised art school background in Leeds, EEA were inspired by both the European street art scene and home-grown agents provocateurs Welfare State International to set up shop as a Woolwich-based collective. Utilising fire and rolling barrels, they revived a very English form of pagan ritual in much the same way as the Beltane fire celebrations were formally reconstituted in Edinburgh a few years back.

Old English traditions, however, soon became old hat. There were lots of companies drawing on that very rich seam of English eccentricity, and EEA wanted to move into other areas.

This included a melding of styles gleaned from observations of their contemporaries abroad, and the social and historical context that helped forge them. Sharpe cites France's tradition stemming from ''the Paris uprising of 1968 and the whole Situationist influence, where protest and art could happen at the same time''. In Spain, ''things came to life after Franco died and the country was suddenly part of Europe again''. As for British street art, its source comes from Dada and Surrealism. ''Then there's pop art and happenings in New York thrown into the mix as well.''

Fully clued up, the company's subsequently acquired interventionist sense of fun became a familiar sight, orchestrating demos of the period with giant Thatcher puppets even more grotesque than those that appeared on the Sunday night TV satire show, Spitting Image.

Before long, EEA were creating their own events, like Gravy Train, which they staged in a pre-City of Culture, pre-urban regenerated Glasgow in 1989. Here they brought together communities dispersed from the inner city to isolated estates designed as afterthoughts to motorway developments, and took over George Square in a mini uprising of communal expression and noise.

In this way, such initiatives subvert the idea of civic pride. Runga Rung, which has banged its drum and more through a multitude of town squares at home and abroad, is a clear case of the steel elephant biting the hand that funds it.

''We used to be more overt, politically,'' Sharpe points out, ''because that was what was required at that particular time. Now it's more about putting ourselves in the midst of social situations, and, particularly with Runga Rung, creating some kind of cultural hybrids. That's important now, because of what's going on in the Middle East, and with David Blunkett's racist policies being enforced. It's interesting that the Labour Party is going one way, and with cultural diversity projects and what have you, the arts council is going in completely the opposite direction to try to counter that.''

EEA, then, understand more than most that street theatre, fiesta, or whatever you call it, is a revolution by any other name. It's no coincidence that the application form to mount a celebratory parade is the same one required to stage a protest.

''I don't think everybody will get where everything's coming from in Runga Rung,'' Sharpe admits, ''but because it's essentially visual, they will remember what it looks like. If it wasn't Edinburgh and it wasn't Hogmanay, people would still be having a big party. So this is about reclaiming the streets in a way that the authorities generally don't like. It's a kind of liberation.''

At this time of year especially, Runga Run must also be about clearing out the old and ringing in the new. How literally one takes it, however, remains to be seen.

World revolution, anyone?

Night Afore International,

8pm-11pm, George Street,

Edinburgh, including Runga Rung from 9.30pm, also on Thursday, Hunter Square, off the Royal

Mile, 5.15pm.