This show does not exist.

Welcome to Drumming in the Hall of The Mountain. This is where your journey begins, and we invite you to choose one of four elements. Depending on what you choose, you will begin your journey at one of four locations in proximity of Cathedral Green where a member of the cast will greet you to begin. Below you will find information about each of the routes to help you make your choice. Remember to trust your intuition as you do, and we will see you soon.

AIR

There is a wild spirit in the air. It lives above me and around me, below me and inside me. I cannot live without it, and so I welcome it into my home, into my body, into the air that I breathe. Sometimes the spirit is angry, and we might become angry with it. With every breath, it howls and the ground beneath my feet freezes and thunder echoes somewhere across the horizon. Its spine is crooked, and its wings are made of bone. When it walks, I hear teeth chattering as the sound of feathers brush up against ancient willow trees. There is a storm coming and it is calling for me to join it.

The path of air will depart from the back entrance of the Museum of Making. Please click here for coordinates.

EARTH

There is a wild spirit in this earth, in the dirt and stones that my bare feet walk on. There is a wild spirit whose skin is porous, who is formed of the leaves and the bark that fall and birth over and over again. When it sleeps I might mistake it for a rock, but underneath that rock a wild horse awakens. As it gallops towards me, a whirlwind of scratching sound is heard along the forest bed. Plants grow from the land that its hair touches, leaving the gift of life in the etches it leaves behind. It buries me when I am ready to depart this life, and it gives me the food that I need to survive. It cares for me in the best of times, and it cares for me in the worst of times. I am its child, and it calls upon me now.

The path of earth will depart from Handyside Bridge. Please click here for coordinates.

FIRE

There is a wild spirit that sleeps in the embers of flames, beneath the soil and the roots, beneath the rocks and the sea. It burns hot and sometimes it burns even hotter. When the land cracks open too wide, it emerges from its slumber, and it destroys. It swallows anything and everything in its path and laughs in doing so. Not from malice or evil, but of necessity and desire. If it wasn’t for the spirit, there would be no life, and there would be no balance. And so, I have learnt to sacrifice in its honour, to keep it at bay, praying that it spares me in the wake of its path. There are times when I have fooled myself that I have mastered the skill to keep it caged, to keep it small, but it is not small, and it cannot be tamed, but it can be loved. It is time that I visit it one more time.

The path of fire will depart from the entrance to the Bass Recreation Ground Skate Park. Please click here for coordinates.

WATER

There is a wild spirit in the sea. It is heavy and it is long and extends over vast stretches of this planet. It shapes stone into form and mirrors the sky whether or not I believe its colours to be truth. I am made of it and from it, it envelopes me at birth and it drains out of me in my final sleep. There will come a day when its flooding will show no mercy, for it will no longer be able to hold the world’s weight under its tender skin. Sometimes it wishes this fate to be different, but that which melts into it can no longer be found, will be reversed, and shall not be unwritten. And so the day has come for me to let this spirit tell me its story of life and of death, of birth and rebirth, of how this will end and how it will all begin again.

The path of water will depart from the south-wall of Derby Cathedral. Please click here for coordinates.

Credits:
Research, development and creation supported using public funding by Arts Council England and seed-funding from Dance4 Nottingham,DanceXchange Birmingham and Déda Derby. Premiere co-commissioned by Sadler’s Wells London and Birmingham International Dance Festival.