After hours, when you really let your hair down
The short version: if you have any interest in folk music, folk dance or contemporary dance I strongly advise you to consult the touring schedule of The Lock In to see if it's coming near you. It's well worth checking out.
Last Saturday saw me trundling round the pubs of Newbury committing acts of sword-dancing at hapless passers by. Later on, I committed further such acts outside the Corn Exchange in the company of a few other local dance sides, as a sort of warm-up for The Lock In.
The Lock In is a show put together by electric folk group The Demon Barbers (up until recently the show was called Time Gentlemen Please). It's been touring in various incarnations for a while, and my dance team decided we'd go en masse to see it. If you're wondering why I didn't advertise it in advance, here's why:
The Lock In describes itself as The UKs #1 Folk and Hip-Hop Extravaganza. I imagine that's a little like being the world's #1 spoon-playing octopus: that there's one at all is rather unexpected, and there's not a whole load of competition. I like The Demon Barbers, but I did wonder that a Folk and Hip-Hop Extravaganza had the capacity to be horrifically, train-wreckingly awful.
The good news? It isn't. It's actually really, really good. The show (from their website) "sees a group of street dancers arrive at an apparently deserted pub. Local rumour has it that The Fighting Cocks is the place to be ‘after hours’ but as the regulars arrive a clash of cultures turns into a dance floor stand-off."
Which is how come you end up with clogdancing to beatboxing, street morris, and longsword done with pool cues. Plus some truly impressive break dancing, acrobatics and testerone-fuelled morris jigs. And a few songs, and some stunning live music.
I actually wondered how the music was going to work, since two of the Demon Barbers are under a baby at present, and had been replaced by ringers. As it turned out: brilliantly. They're all excellent musicians, and I'd go a long way to hear Lee's bass-playing alone.
When the show originally started, all the folk-dancey bits were done by, well, folk-dancers. The trouble is that now it's a proper touring show, several of them have inconveniently been revealed to have day jobs. Which means that a couple of them have been replaced with professional dancers. I wonder if they realise how much it shows :)
Watching the two-man morris jig I'd thought there was something weird about it. It was well-done, it was athletic, it was exciting but... but the guys just didn't quite look like morris dancers. Later, in the rapper dance, I could have picked out easily the two people (of five) who weren't rapper dancers. OK, so I had a head start, because they were also the two people I didn't know by name, but even so I think I'd have managed it.
On a similar note, when it got to some of the more street-dance orientated bits I think I could instantly have picked out the folk dancers who don't usually do that kind of stuff. Again, they were in the right place at the right time but just not... not quite... not quite convincing.
In the interval someone next to me in the bar queue asked if we'd been at all intimidated to see the rapper on stage because it was "so good" (and, by implication, better than us ;) It's probably a fair cop that it was better than us. However it really surprised me, because the dancing was fine, but not brilliant. Even professionals can't pick rapper up just like that, and the dance wouldn't have been scored all that highly in a competition. However, it did have that elusive "buzz factor" (usually our downfall in competitions, because we don't!) - buzz is hard to learn, impossible to teach or even define, but is the thing that makes any dance exciting and gripping, regardless of quality. And that they had in spades.
This is a dance show, rather than a music show, so if you don't like watching dancing it's probably not for you. If you do, though, it's exciting, it's different and, in places, jaw-dropping and very, very inventive. I'd really recommend catching it if it passes by your town.
Last Saturday saw me trundling round the pubs of Newbury committing acts of sword-dancing at hapless passers by. Later on, I committed further such acts outside the Corn Exchange in the company of a few other local dance sides, as a sort of warm-up for The Lock In.
The Lock In is a show put together by electric folk group The Demon Barbers (up until recently the show was called Time Gentlemen Please). It's been touring in various incarnations for a while, and my dance team decided we'd go en masse to see it. If you're wondering why I didn't advertise it in advance, here's why:
The Lock In describes itself as The UKs #1 Folk and Hip-Hop Extravaganza. I imagine that's a little like being the world's #1 spoon-playing octopus: that there's one at all is rather unexpected, and there's not a whole load of competition. I like The Demon Barbers, but I did wonder that a Folk and Hip-Hop Extravaganza had the capacity to be horrifically, train-wreckingly awful.
The good news? It isn't. It's actually really, really good. The show (from their website) "sees a group of street dancers arrive at an apparently deserted pub. Local rumour has it that The Fighting Cocks is the place to be ‘after hours’ but as the regulars arrive a clash of cultures turns into a dance floor stand-off."
Which is how come you end up with clogdancing to beatboxing, street morris, and longsword done with pool cues. Plus some truly impressive break dancing, acrobatics and testerone-fuelled morris jigs. And a few songs, and some stunning live music.
I actually wondered how the music was going to work, since two of the Demon Barbers are under a baby at present, and had been replaced by ringers. As it turned out: brilliantly. They're all excellent musicians, and I'd go a long way to hear Lee's bass-playing alone.
When the show originally started, all the folk-dancey bits were done by, well, folk-dancers. The trouble is that now it's a proper touring show, several of them have inconveniently been revealed to have day jobs. Which means that a couple of them have been replaced with professional dancers. I wonder if they realise how much it shows :)
Watching the two-man morris jig I'd thought there was something weird about it. It was well-done, it was athletic, it was exciting but... but the guys just didn't quite look like morris dancers. Later, in the rapper dance, I could have picked out easily the two people (of five) who weren't rapper dancers. OK, so I had a head start, because they were also the two people I didn't know by name, but even so I think I'd have managed it.
On a similar note, when it got to some of the more street-dance orientated bits I think I could instantly have picked out the folk dancers who don't usually do that kind of stuff. Again, they were in the right place at the right time but just not... not quite... not quite convincing.
In the interval someone next to me in the bar queue asked if we'd been at all intimidated to see the rapper on stage because it was "so good" (and, by implication, better than us ;) It's probably a fair cop that it was better than us. However it really surprised me, because the dancing was fine, but not brilliant. Even professionals can't pick rapper up just like that, and the dance wouldn't have been scored all that highly in a competition. However, it did have that elusive "buzz factor" (usually our downfall in competitions, because we don't!) - buzz is hard to learn, impossible to teach or even define, but is the thing that makes any dance exciting and gripping, regardless of quality. And that they had in spades.
This is a dance show, rather than a music show, so if you don't like watching dancing it's probably not for you. If you do, though, it's exciting, it's different and, in places, jaw-dropping and very, very inventive. I'd really recommend catching it if it passes by your town.