Dances with animals
Mar. 21st, 2021 12:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shewhomustOn Friday we live(ish) streamed a performance by Tim Dalling. Tim is a client, but of the semi-detatched variety: it never occurs to him to update his website, so it was only by fluke that we picked up a notification on FaceBook, and were able - after a bit of a struggle with the technology - to discover what Tom has been working on since Aye Coyote, his extraordimaty exercise in family history and ritual purification.
He has, it seems, been writing songs about animals, all designed for dancing - which, of course, is not possibly just at the moment. He is working with a bass guitarist and a drummer, and I don't know how that works right now, either; but the venue was the Globe, which seems to be a jazz venue. Does that mean that Tim is playing jazz, now? The bassist is apparently into jazz improv, and under his influence they did one jazz improv piece (carefully timed by Tim's watch): I know nothing about jazz, so I can't say whether that term would cover the event as a whole - if I had to describe it, I might say 'a more upbeat Ivor Cutler' (if you can imagine such a thing.
Songs included 'Scuttling Crabs', complete with crab headdress, and 'Tirrick' which apparently started out as a song the speed and elegance of the tirrick (Shetland for the Arctic tern) until a Shetland friend pointed out that the dunter (eider duck) flies even faster. So now it's about a whole variety of seabirds, icluding the bonxie and the tammie norrie. A giraffe-themed dance was illustrated by a toy giraffe, operated by invisible hands very close to the camera, while the slow loris inspired a Cajun flavoured waltz (I am not convinced that 'loris lent' is the French name for the slow loris; it isn't in my dictionary, but the internet speaks of a 'loris paresseux').
Unlike some of Tim's other work, this isn't necessarily music I'd want to listen to if I wasn't dancing - but it was a fun evening's entertainment.
He has, it seems, been writing songs about animals, all designed for dancing - which, of course, is not possibly just at the moment. He is working with a bass guitarist and a drummer, and I don't know how that works right now, either; but the venue was the Globe, which seems to be a jazz venue. Does that mean that Tim is playing jazz, now? The bassist is apparently into jazz improv, and under his influence they did one jazz improv piece (carefully timed by Tim's watch): I know nothing about jazz, so I can't say whether that term would cover the event as a whole - if I had to describe it, I might say 'a more upbeat Ivor Cutler' (if you can imagine such a thing.
Songs included 'Scuttling Crabs', complete with crab headdress, and 'Tirrick' which apparently started out as a song the speed and elegance of the tirrick (Shetland for the Arctic tern) until a Shetland friend pointed out that the dunter (eider duck) flies even faster. So now it's about a whole variety of seabirds, icluding the bonxie and the tammie norrie. A giraffe-themed dance was illustrated by a toy giraffe, operated by invisible hands very close to the camera, while the slow loris inspired a Cajun flavoured waltz (I am not convinced that 'loris lent' is the French name for the slow loris; it isn't in my dictionary, but the internet speaks of a 'loris paresseux').
Unlike some of Tim's other work, this isn't necessarily music I'd want to listen to if I wasn't dancing - but it was a fun evening's entertainment.
