Durham Brass Festival

Without knowing what to expect I agreed to spend my Sunday night in Durham and because of a spare ticket I took my friend, Kathryn. We arrived in Durham expecting to see some sort of "dance thing." We parked by the river and walked up to the gala where we were greeted by a great French band with a lot of comedy value.

 

 

After the unexpected show we went for a coffee where I embarrassingly mistook a man talking fluent itallian for being Scottish... After that mishap we worked our way to the main square where we caught more feel-good bands with uncontrollable energy.

 

We'd been tipped off to work out way to the cathedral square before the crowds so that we did and we got a great spot right in the centre of the grass beside some kind of stage with a poll in the middle of it, we exchanged fears about how controversial it would be for a poll dancer to dance in this place of all places.

The synchronised dancing started on the right (if you're facing the cathedral, as we were) at this point it was impressive to see 4 separate groups of instruments all working in time and the dancing was unusual but I wasn't overwhelmed. Dancing started on the left and though the dancing wasn't interactive, I felt as if it was because I had to turn round and keep looking for other dancers. Then opposite the cathedral two male dancers started drumming on huge drums then fastened themselves to the first weird contraption.

 

Then for the poll dancing stage, which turned out to be very different, the dancers seemed to be technicians as well because they seamlessly and effortlessly constructed a huge rotating sphere

 

By now I was impressed but I still wasn't expecting the next part of the show: in front of the cathedral the dancers were joined to more crazy contraptions and suddenly it was as if they weren't dancers any more, but human Catherine wheels, whizzing in 360 degrees. The engineering if the equipment was amazing, the dancers were able to throw themselves in any direction while spinning around simultaneously. The shadows on the cathedral were amazing too as it was harder to see the poles that the dancers were on so it was as if they were actually flying in a dizzy manner. I'll leave you with pictures un hope that they captured what I saw.

Enjoyment: 95% (would have been 100% but I the weather was a bit miserable, not that that was anybody's fault)