I hear the train a-comin'
Sep. 2nd, 2013 11:09 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ventaSo, at the end of August I ran away to Whitby for the folk festival (again). I've written about it here before, and... well... much the same sort of stuff happened. I did some dancing, some playing music, some listening to music, some drinking, some eating and lots of catching up with friends.
The people who brought you the Speed Ploughing Competition some years ago this year added the Clog Chain. I found out about this when I turned up at the Spa (the main festival venue) around 9pm and Melanie demanded to know "have you got your clogs?"
Er... no. But the place I was staying wasn't that far away, so I skipped back for them.
Someone had dug out a clog pedestal (basically a raised wooden box) and parked it in the middle of the foyer. The idea was that someone would begin dancing, and after 50 seconds Sally would blow a whistle. The dancer then had to carry on to the end of the phrase of music and jump off the pedestal before a minute was up, allowing the next person to jump on and begin a different dance - to a different piece of music, at a different tempo.
It was a completely ridiculous idea, so I agreed to join in. Except, er, I haven't got a musician. "Don't worry," said Mel, "you can have Mike." Mike, her other half, looked vaguely terrified and we had a quick consultation.
So... we formed a queue and, whistle at the ready, set off. And it turns out it's quite difficult for someone to immediately launch into a waltz when the previous person has been dancing to a hornpipe. Amy, immediately before me in the queue, had been unable to locate someone who could play ragtime tunes and elected to dance without music - which actually made it a lot easier for me to start.
Of course... I rarely dance in public, hadn't practised, and was being watched by any number of fantastic dancers... which was lightly terrifying. I regretted the whole thing approximately 7 seconds in, and it turns out a minute is surprisingly long.
I had left my phone in custody of my mother with a request she took a photo, but my phone has issues these days. It's very slow to respond, and anyone unused to it (ie anyone who isn't me) finds it basically unusable.
After it was all over, Thrales came along and did a rapper dance on the pedestal (which fortunately wasn't a competition pedestal, so was more than two feet square). If you want something daft doing, find a rapper team.
An innovation at the festival this year was the disco ceilidh, featuring dances to disco floor-fillers of yesteryear. It was kind of fun as a one-off, but I'm not sure I want it to become a regular feature. The half-time entertainment was Star & Shadow, doing rapper to Abba's Waterloo. If you want something daft doing, find a rapper team.
My musical discovery for the week was a band called The Teacups, who are one of the proliferation of new acts spawned from the folk music degree course at Newcastle University. They're a four-piece harmony singing group, doing mostly traditional stuff and a few of their own songs, and apparently having a whale of a time. You can listen to them on mySpace (oldskool!) but they sound fairly bland and unremarkable there.
Unusually, they also (when I saw them) sang a set of tunes - jigs, and I thought hey, you could do rapper do those. And the previous day, it turned out Thrales had (annoyingly I can only find a scratchy video clip on Faceache here). If you want something daft, &c.
In fact, I mused to the mother: when I was a kid at Whitby, the rapper teams were all terribly strait-laced. In fact, when the wives of members of the High Level Ranters danced rapper in the last-night ceilidh in the late 70s there was a furore - not because they were dressed as Playboy bunnies (they were) but because they were women. Dancing rapper! The scandal! You do not mess with the tradition!
In the 70s and 80s, if you wanted something daft doing, you wanted a north-west morris team. As if feeling maligned, the following day the men's north-west team Earsldon (from Coventry) came to the Harry Potter-themed dance as the Hogwarts Express. All of them. Wearing hand-painted boxes, with two people to form the engine and one per carriage they arrived in a procession that snaked half way round the main hall. It was awesome, my appreciation was only dented slightly by my not having a camera to hand.
The people who brought you the Speed Ploughing Competition some years ago this year added the Clog Chain. I found out about this when I turned up at the Spa (the main festival venue) around 9pm and Melanie demanded to know "have you got your clogs?"
Er... no. But the place I was staying wasn't that far away, so I skipped back for them.
Someone had dug out a clog pedestal (basically a raised wooden box) and parked it in the middle of the foyer. The idea was that someone would begin dancing, and after 50 seconds Sally would blow a whistle. The dancer then had to carry on to the end of the phrase of music and jump off the pedestal before a minute was up, allowing the next person to jump on and begin a different dance - to a different piece of music, at a different tempo.
It was a completely ridiculous idea, so I agreed to join in. Except, er, I haven't got a musician. "Don't worry," said Mel, "you can have Mike." Mike, her other half, looked vaguely terrified and we had a quick consultation.
So... we formed a queue and, whistle at the ready, set off. And it turns out it's quite difficult for someone to immediately launch into a waltz when the previous person has been dancing to a hornpipe. Amy, immediately before me in the queue, had been unable to locate someone who could play ragtime tunes and elected to dance without music - which actually made it a lot easier for me to start.
Of course... I rarely dance in public, hadn't practised, and was being watched by any number of fantastic dancers... which was lightly terrifying. I regretted the whole thing approximately 7 seconds in, and it turns out a minute is surprisingly long.
I had left my phone in custody of my mother with a request she took a photo, but my phone has issues these days. It's very slow to respond, and anyone unused to it (ie anyone who isn't me) finds it basically unusable.
After it was all over, Thrales came along and did a rapper dance on the pedestal (which fortunately wasn't a competition pedestal, so was more than two feet square). If you want something daft doing, find a rapper team.
An innovation at the festival this year was the disco ceilidh, featuring dances to disco floor-fillers of yesteryear. It was kind of fun as a one-off, but I'm not sure I want it to become a regular feature. The half-time entertainment was Star & Shadow, doing rapper to Abba's Waterloo. If you want something daft doing, find a rapper team.
My musical discovery for the week was a band called The Teacups, who are one of the proliferation of new acts spawned from the folk music degree course at Newcastle University. They're a four-piece harmony singing group, doing mostly traditional stuff and a few of their own songs, and apparently having a whale of a time. You can listen to them on mySpace (oldskool!) but they sound fairly bland and unremarkable there.
Unusually, they also (when I saw them) sang a set of tunes - jigs, and I thought hey, you could do rapper do those. And the previous day, it turned out Thrales had (annoyingly I can only find a scratchy video clip on Faceache here). If you want something daft, &c.
In fact, I mused to the mother: when I was a kid at Whitby, the rapper teams were all terribly strait-laced. In fact, when the wives of members of the High Level Ranters danced rapper in the last-night ceilidh in the late 70s there was a furore - not because they were dressed as Playboy bunnies (they were) but because they were women. Dancing rapper! The scandal! You do not mess with the tradition!
In the 70s and 80s, if you wanted something daft doing, you wanted a north-west morris team. As if feeling maligned, the following day the men's north-west team Earsldon (from Coventry) came to the Harry Potter-themed dance as the Hogwarts Express. All of them. Wearing hand-painted boxes, with two people to form the engine and one per carriage they arrived in a procession that snaked half way round the main hall. It was awesome, my appreciation was only dented slightly by my not having a camera to hand.
