After a night in which I lost a couple of hours sleep, we were up early for breakfast and on our way to the train station just after nine, for a train to take us to Birmingham on a thirty quid day return ticket, to see Kath's new show 'Dance in the Dark'. Rhiannon came to meet us at New Street Station, arriving by train herself, having thought better of driving into the heart of the city to collect us. We took a 47 bus to Edgbaston and walked to MAC (the Midlands Arts Centre) in Cannon Hill Park.
The park is a special place for us, as we lived in Selly Oak. when I was a Guild Chaplain in Birmingham University. We took Kath there in a baby buggy when she was a toddler, walked around with her and went to the swings. We took her there not long after she'd taken her first steps, so we freed her from the buggy, to see how she'd fare in the great outdoors. She set off and walked steadily around the pond at the centre of the park, a distance of about four hundred yards without tiring. The pond is still there fifty years on, over the fence from the Midlands Arts Centre. We could see the pond shining in the afternoon sun from the upstairs room where we took off our outdoor clothes and shoes ready for the performance.
The show is aimed at very young children, and is set inside a large circular sleepover tent, with soft furnishings and blue blankets covered with stars. The lighting is subdued and only rarely is it completely dark. It's not unusual for tinies to be scared of the dark or easily disturbed from a state of light sleep. The hour long show features two pyjama clad dancers and Anto plus guitar taking a playful adventurous, approach to night time and sleep, features night sounds, footsteps, doors banging, owls hooting, rain, wind, thunder and lightning. Some children came dressed in their pyjamas, and the dancers invited them at certain stages to play with the dancers in the centre circle. Children who were noisy and rushing around in the upstairs room became quiet and naturally attentive when they settled down in the sleepover tent. This was the sixth performance in the show's opening venue. The company takes the show on the road to other cities next week. It was a delightful experience, both the performance itself and the children's response.
This is Kath's first solo venture as a show maker, building her own team, creating a stage environment in which some pretty sophisticated lighting and sound technology served the performers perfectly and didn't get in the way. Some of the music made by Anto was recorded and played back, blended to perfection with his live performance playing on stage, interacting like a parent with the pyjama clad dancers, and with the two dozen children in the audience. I'm so proud of what Kath has achieved with this show, and marvel at Anto's stagecraft and musicianship. I don't think many ex-primary school teachers would do as well. In a rock band when he was young and still performing salsa music with Kath, he's come to stage performance of this kind late in life, and is loving it.
Rhiannon's boyfriend Talion came to join us for the show. He's an actor working in Warwick Castle as Rhiannon does. They met there last year, and when Rhiannon's contract came to an end she re-applied and was one of the few to be re-hired. She'll work there until the autumn, then start a lengthy fashion design course in Manchester University. Talion will also be studying there. They make a lovely couple, relaxed and confident, sociable, comfortable in their skins. We arrived at MAC while the Company was taking a lunch break in between performances, so we met them and joined them for a sandwich.
After the show, they were under pressure to clear out of the performance studio space, so we congratulated them and took our leave. Another 47 bus took us back to the city centre. I'm not sure if we got off at the right spot, but the driver told us we could walk through to the station from there. Just as well he told us, as the bus went on beyond the centre, and wasn't on a circular route. Neither of us knew where we were as we started walking - I was reminded of the Midlands ballad of lament 'I can't find Brummagem', voiced by a visitor from another town finding the roads and streets have changed so much he can't work out where he is. Written 200 years ago.
We were last in Brum on December 23rd 2021 for an evening Carnival Band concert and singalong with Maddy Prior in the Town Hall. Before that I came on a trip with Cardiff City Centre Retail Partnership Board in 2007, for a briefing about the recently opened shopping mall. That was in daytime, and I was amazed then at how the city centre had changed since we lived in Selly Oak in the mid-1970s. Anyway, we followed the directions given and within minutes came within sight of St Martins in the Bullring, and the shopping mall I'd visited eighteen years back. At the top of the hill I couldn't see signage for the station so Clare asked a lady who pointed us to a narrow passageway between buildings. It led down a slow to a place where we could see the shiny new exterior of New Street Station and re-vamped Bullring Shopping Centre, now branded as 'Grand Central'.
I'd love to have had time to explore the area and piece it together with my previous recollections, but taking a train home took priority. There was a train direct to Cardiff at four thirty, so we only had half an hour to find the platform and wait. We had a twenty minute wait for a 61 bus when we arrived. A past dish for supper, quickly prepared, followed by a slice of the beautiful apple pie Clare baked yesterday. I'm none the worse for sleep lost, but not pushing my luck, and going to bed even earlier, savouring memories of an exquisite performance, topped and tailed with train journeys in what turned out to be good weather, up and down the Severn Estuary and the Vale of Evesham.
