This year I was drawn to a small festival organised by the Landworkers Alliance- The Land Skills Fair. It is a festival that focuses on land, food and climate justice. It is a medly of workshops, talks, music, performances and networking. Going there to perform combines my work life and my hobbies and passions.
So, along with Daisy Black of Gossamer Thread Circus we created bespoke aerial and spoken word performances on the themes of nature connection, climate, seasons, ecology and folklore. Writing and creating the piece was a very enjoyable creative endeaver, and I was keen to see how it was received by the audience. Daisy used some material from a film project she made during lockdown, adapting a part of it for live performance, as part of a larger project to be realised in 2023.
Both rope performances, they sat together beautifully and our short shows were well received by the very lovely audiences. It was, as ever a challenge to perform outside- we were rained off on Friday, but the weather held for Saturday and Sunday.
One of the things I do sometimes, is deliver text live while doing aerial, which can be a challenge for numerous reasons. On this occaision, because of being outside at a festival with background noise, I used a headset radio microphone, which of course brings its own problems, not least, where put and how to secure the battery pack and how to keep the headset on your head whilst going upside down and moving dynamically! In this case the wind also presented a challenge, as, the higher up you are, the windier it is, and the microphone was picking up the wind noise, which was a little distracting.
Despite this, the shows went well, we had fun and received good feedback on the performances. We are hoping to develop this into a full show to tour next year, and bring in Daisy's existing dream for the larger project- watch this space.