Bryson's Blog

[Bryson]

Uncomfortable Armchair

 

First of all, my apologies. I have been severely lax in my writing of these things, and I wouldn’t be at all surprised if you’d forgotten about them. But you see, the thing is that I only really get inspired to write when I’m travelling – there’s something about going to the same place of work every day that starts to crush the creativity out of you, bit by bit – and conversely, it’s the crazy and ever so slightly unhinged people you meet when you’re out and about that makes it worth writing something down.

 

But now I’m travelling again. After two years at Dance City, it was time to pick up and move on. But that would be too easy, so I’ve gone and made a few decisions that will make my life excessively complex for a few months. It’s probably bad for me, but it does wonders for my creativity.

 

So; I’m out of here. Well, in the medium to long term anyway. I’m emigrating to Canada. Yep, for good. Why? Have you been there? Have you seen the food? And the mountains? I’m sold. So I was already looking for a little impetus to jump ship (metaphorically!) anyway, when my old Venue gave me a call. They had been without a Technical Manager for a fair while, and things were starting to fray quite badly. They needed a little help, temporarily, to put the place back on track and to help employ a new Technical Manager for the long term. So they asked me. It’s nice and easy that way, you see. The council has about a million systems to be able to do anything, and I bypass that entire learning curve because I’ve already done it. The tiny problem was that they kind of needed someone ASAP…

 

So, that’s how I found myself being the Technical Manager of two venues, at opposite ends of the country. It’s not the most practical of situations, but I was travelling to Croydon on a Sunday, working Monday and Tuesday, then travelling back and doing Wednesday, Thursday,Friday and Saturday at Dance City. You’ll note the lack of days off in that schedule. Anyway, I can tell you that it’s one hell of a commute. I was totally at the mercy of GNER and their tender ministrations.

 

So, who do I have to sleep with to get a seat at one of those tables? I’ve tried every possible combination of filling in that slightly impenetrable booking form – what the hell are “Airline” seats, exactly? Does that mean ludicrously small and tightly packed? So why would I select that on purpose? – but to no avail. I am permanently relegated to one of the “second-class” seats, where you can just gaze in wonder at those people who have somehow cracked the system and are glorying in their table-fuelled luxury. Yes, I want a table seat. Quite a lot, actually. In fact, the people who do get table seats seem to be some of the most heinous assholes I’ve ever come across. (The preceding statement is in no way affected by jealousy. Ed) The worst part is that they just can’t share. I’m guessing they were all only children, as if there was an empty seat, they would put bags, food, rubbish, small furry animals, anything on it to avoid having to share the table with a mere mortal (ie: Me). The Table Seat (I use the capitals advisedly) is the Holy Grail of the long-distance train journey experience.

 

So, hunched into my tiny “Airline” seat, I’ve been shooting up and down the country, trying desperately to remember each time I made a phone call which venue I worked for, for the purposes of that call and occasionally nodding off on the train and narrowly avoiding unscheduled excursions to Aberdeen. I’m glad to say that now, I’m finally free of that particular commute, and save a couple of trips up to do interviews for my old job, I won’t be having the terrible Table Seat envy attacks that I have been having.

 

I did have a great time at Dance City, though. There are some really great people up there and we had a fair bit of fun with it. Contemporary Dance does have it’s….characters, though. We had a few interesting companies in – they really do try to “push the envelope” a bit. One company (I can’t name them, for obvious reasons) were touring with an apparently experienced technician, who turned out to be a bit of an experience. We were a little short for time to get them in, and as result, the technician developed a face like a wet weekend in Scunthorpe. I don’t think it helped overmuch that the outgoing company technician decided to tell him to “cheer up, it gets much worse you know.” In retrospect, that wasn’t the best way to handle the man… Anyway, after moping his way through the tech and plotting, he then tried to get me to leave the control room when the show started. Hint to touring technicians: It’s my venue. I’ll stand where I like, thanks. By far the best part, however, was where he announced that the set of nine floorlights we had cabled earlier in the day was not an interval change as we had believed, but was going to be a live change in front of audience. Oh, at the end of the piece that was running now. As in, in 1 minutes time. So, with no rehearsal, a distinctly ragtag set of blacks (yes, most of us were in shorts) and what seemed to be the brightest scenechange light I’ve ever walked onstage under, we fumbled our way through a live change in front of a packed house. I think the audience thought “I’m not sure what that piece in the middle was about – the one with lots of blokes in dark clothes falling over each other and some cables. Contemporary dance gets stranger and stranger each year, you know.”

 

We had some cracking riders come through the door, though. Contemporary dance seems to attract these huge “concepts” for the larger stuff, so I was sorting though riders that required:

• Fixing points for 800 bungee cords. (Not in my nice dancefloor, mate!)
  
• A 2100 gallon tank of water heated to 21C.
  
• A full-sized stuffed stag to be provided by the venue.
  
• A wall 15 feet high and 25 feet wide covered in underpants.
  
• And, most ludicrously of all, a 6am start!
  

We also had our fair share of community events, one of which earned me the title of “The Grinch of Dance” – which seemed a little harsh to me, but…. What happened was; it was a community event called Shakers and Movers (unfortunately shortened to S&M in all internal documents..) that featured dancers and live music from all sorts of countries. Rehearsal and tech times were posted, but as is traditional in these events, one of the “groups” arrived at 7.35 for a 7.30 show. We already had the first act onstage, so we dispatched the man with a CD to the booth and the performers followed me to the stage. It’s probably worth mentioning that the performers were primarily 12-year old girls. The act before finished, I was assured over cans that the CD was cued up, so we hit the lights and played the music. The girls stayed exactly where they were in the wings. “It’s the wrong track” they tell me. So a bit of frantic communication to the box and we get the track stopped and start the next one. “It’s the wrong track.” So, we have one last stab at it. The guy in the booth is 100% positive he has the right track now. The girls, sadly, were 100% positive that he was mistaken. “Ok,” I said, “this one is cancelled, let’s move on to the next one.” Seemed perfectly fair to me. Unfortunately, the girls took their cue to burst into floods of uncontrollable tears. Another dream of performance shattered by yours truly. We did eventually send them on after the interval, when we’d had a chance to get CD-man together with the performers…

 

Later that month, we hosted a Free Jazz Weekend. I’m not quite sure how that was justified under the auspices of “dance”, because it certainly didn’t sound like anything you could dance to to me. It seemed to mainly consist of people who appeared to be totally unable to play the instrument they were supposed to be playing – even I can play the trumpet that badly, but apparently it takes a great deal of skill to mangle the instrument in that kind of way. This was accompanied by some intense beard-stroking from the audience, who seemed to be enjoying it in a way. Except, of course, for the one member of the audience who had a heart attack halfway through a particularly exciting bass solo. I have my suspicions that it was merely an elaborate escape ploy. By God, I wish I had thought of it.

 

All in all, Dance City was an entertaining place – even if it was refocusing every lantern in the rig 8 times for a show (a German LD with a Japanese choreographer is the very definition of “precise”) or fending off the dancers who, (bless ‘em) thought all they needed to do to bypass all the rules on equipment loans was to bat their eyelids at me a bit. Unfortunately, that tends not to work on me, and especially not when my girlfriend is in the office downstairs (doing her job as their employer….).

 

The one thing I won’t miss, however, is Dancefloor. Ordering it, getting the delivery, stacking the damn stuff, rolling it out, the bloody tape, shuffling it about. I hate everything to do with it. It is officially the most tedious part of working at a Dance venue, by far. And flipping it to a different colour, so you have to take all the booms off it; good god, it’s horrible.

 

So now, I’m back at the Clocktower for a little while, and I have to say that it’s been pretty good. It’s kind of like a really uncomfortable armchair that you’re really used to. The spings still poke you, but they poke you in a comforting and familiar way. I never knew that council paperwork could be so soothing.

 

But I’m only at the Clocktower until I manage to sort a few things out and somehow force the Personnel Employment Prevention Department (Personnel Department, for short) to pause long enough for me to hire a replacement for myself. Hopefully, by then, the Canadian Government (slogan: You Think The Council Has Some Red Tape!) will have finally decided that the letters from me have reached a critical mass that triggers them sending me a Visa. Then I’m off. The slightly fun part is that I don’t have a job to go to, so I need to find one when I get there. Might be interesting…

 

Anyway, I had better get on and see what needs to be done here at the Clocktower.

 

Apparently, we need a new Dancefloor.