BIFOCALS / RITUAL EXCHANGES

https://soundcloud.com/bifocals-2013/double-double-kate-davies-on-playground- Poet Kate Davies sent me this recording of herself reading her work for Flypaper 2 on the transmission of playground games. You can also hear the children from South Walney infants playing their games for us.. Here's Kate's text as it was printed, along with my bit on Folk Process as Virus and my transcriptions of the movements that accompanied the children's chant. These are set out using the conventions of EFDS Dance Transcription and using imagery drawing on the early Government recommendations for handwashing during the early days of the pandemic. There's a downloadable PDF at the foot of the page. Our thanks to the children for sharing their games with us. games   https://drive.google.com/file/d/1fa9e9k3OK5Oh-wp214vRQDVZhNfjz8Ik/view?usp=sharing

  The obby oss is an intruder on the social  calendar,  unsanctioned and irregular he turns up with the best of intentions but with no-one's agenda in mind. This year though his wranglers are careful not to let him distract from the one occupying truth of the time. An audience- bigger than last year - are reminded of the need to look out for each other, to give each other space, to enjoy the oss and his flapping clacking jaw while masking their own. The proceedings are recorded and sent instantly to an online party, the annual Furness Tradition Christmas do is being zoomed around the town. While the oss sends a flavour of the wintry night and the wet cobbles; the Human Organs pipe band and the ostler flit around, with their red jawa  eyes and balefull oompah. An electronic drone and the hums from the crowd combine in a performance of the Love Chorus music from fictitious composer Horse Badorties*.  Intoxicated by the fizzing signal from the amplified battery fan...

 A  safe outdoor screening of three collaborations, by means of a fourth. Dan Fox of Sound Intervention  https://www.danfox.net/ has an off-grid on-wheels projection unit with fantastically good sound and  projected the video work from Ritual Exchanges onto  house walls in Ulverston.  We had a nice audience from around the Gill, we behaved,  caught up with each other. plans were made. It was lovely to see them. We'll do this again.   This project has nudged me towards further collaborations.   There are two pieces here that involve  friends who should know each other.  Talking to Dan and Ulverston Animator James Alexander just now about where we are with our work at this time underlines how important local connections are, and how it should be possible to make work that is rooted in locality and community..and that can find an audience beyond it. My Leeds Poly friend Andrew Beresford aka Barney is a prime mover behind the Unit...

  A December afternoon on the North Yorks coast. An open ended project about cycles of behaviour and celebration, about continuity, is in need of a jumping off point from a  world very different to one it began in.  Currently, distance and safety form a tight weave. (We share a tier, and I am careful). The Horngarth when it returns it will be behind new flood defences. On land, old elemental uncertainties have returned; Undercurrents and eddys pull us away from each other and weave us into bundles of 6.  The Elsinore , one of the centres of the towns folk scene, is set to re-open, hidebound and under  management that took over just 8 weeks before lockdown....others shut as night draws in, others light their windows to help us keep them in  mind....Neon reindeer cascade down the slope behind the Star..  In Scarborough I record a chat about the project with Chris Curtis for Coast and County radio. Next-door-but- one is the Koda coffeshop, easing into its...

 The oss is getting its winter plumage. Last years rotted and apparently ended up plastered to the inside of a spindryer, so thanks to  Sue Fletcher and Rob Cooney it is getting a covid-appropriate elasticated waistband and a new snood. Watch this space for this years socially distanced Short Rising. And sort out some bells or something percussive.