This has been an uncharacteristically cultured week. First, the ballet. Then to the Barbican for the Michael Clark company show Mmm. It was part intolerable, part tolerable and part very good. I like the dance of the four toilets, where four sculpted young men wore very tight black shorts and toilets, so their heads emerged from the toilet bowl. (If ever they are murdered while wearing these costumes, I can refer them to Julian Ballanco, who is an expert in deaths in toilet bowls.) The finale was a splendid solo by a young woman with spectacular muscles who was wearing only a pair of big spangly white knickers. She took her bows still half-naked, then, when the ensemble came on, was suddenly and urgently enfolded in a huge dressing gown (dancers probably call it a robe). There is no doubt much to be said, and doctorates to be written about the arbitrariness of that moment of modesty but I can't think what it might be.
Then, on Saturday, the best bit. The Royal Albert Hall, once every three years, is given over to many choirs and two brass bands. In the past, they were all from Yorkshire, and it was a Yorkshire Festival of voices and brass. Now, apparently due to a fall-out that remains mysterious, the voices have gone national, though the brass is still Yorkshire. It was my first time in the Royal Albert Hall, and this was the best introduction I could have had. 700 or so voices belting out in perfect harmony the Finlandia hymn or Gwahoddiad is marvellous. The buglers' holiday is funny and probably very difficult, what with all that triple tonguing. And – sue me – it was good fun to wave a Union Jack/Flag and try to sing along to Land of Hope and Glory and not feel like a BNP member. I did hide my Union Jack/Flag on the number 38 home though.
My singing along was not brilliant. My first father, who died a long time ago, was a Welshman by blood. His grandparents were Welsh speakers. I have taken after him in looks, if not in vocation (he was a vicar; I am godless). I have Welsh-like colouring, stature and two whole Welsh names. But he could sing and I can't. My brother used to be a solo chorister in Wakefield Cathedral. My father had a glorious baritone. And I get defeated by singing along to the Strokes.
The brass bands playing were Sellers International and the YBS band, formerly sponsored by the Yorkshire Building Society and before that by Hammond Sauce Works. Sellers International have won many brass band contests. The YBS has won even more, including the British Open. I know all this because the Royal Albert Hall experience provoked me into 1) downloading the Floral Dance by the Brighouse and Rastrick brass band, which I used to own in the form of a proper record (not the Terry Wogan version) and 2) wikipedia-ing. One of the best things about my godless vocation is discovering Whole New Worlds. I like to learn about hierarchies I had never imagined, or about the coolness of the flugelhorn, or that the cornet players playing the Buglers' Holiday have to face their chairs towards the audience. And I like to see that young people who presumably work in the service industries now are still giving up their free time to wear blazers and play the flugelhorn, though the foundries and pits that sponsored brass bands have long since closed, and though in the modern day of coke and alcopops, blowing wind through an instrument is not generally thought to be cool.
But it is. Also, the event raised lots of brass for Cancer Research UK. The next one will be in 2009. Go.