Leo Chadburn

English Dancing Master: LYRICS

Dance 1: Kit's Sequential

It is book of movements
It is for the imagination
These are fragments of the archaic dances
Their forms, structures and characteristics
They called it English Dancing Master
It begins with the sound of the pocket violin
Its steps move in sequences of fours, threes and fives
It is a dance performed on a damp, grey-green island

Dance 2: Castlemorton Common

1992
This is a dance that begins at least a mile away
It approaches
It approaches
It approaches
Crowds gather
It approaches
It approaches
It is upon us
Biased policemen arrive
It retreats
It retreats
It recedes from view
It is gone

Dance 3: Levin's Reverie, Version 1

This dance is shuffling
Ambling
Lingering
Lumbering
Crouching
Resting
Hesitating
Lurching
Pausing
Sleeping

Dance 4: Winter Gardens

A shadow of a memory of the baroque
Of men and women
Sinking slowly
In dark pools
In Northern towns.
Taffeta in candlelight
Endlessly turning
Under crystal raindrops
Deep frozen in black glitter

Dance 5: King Roland's Almain

Operational since 1980
This is music endemic to machines
Sequenced in patterns of 16
Its performers are automatons
Pistons
Factories
Robots
Royal electricity

Dance 6: International Statues

This dance is also known as...
Peel of London bells
Ox on the mountain
Thunder, weather, lightning
Cigarette number 43
Sly fox, stop!
The longest way round is the shortest way home
Sugar, coffee, lemonade
The tiger has returned to the village
All of us are men made of wood
The hibiscus has bloomed

Dance 7: Because We Love Our Pets

This is a generous form, allowing interspecies participation, through superimposition of rhythms suitable for bipeds, quadrupeds, hexapods, octopods, decapods, myriapods

Dance 8: Freedom of the City

Everyone at their own speed
Everyone in their own space
Internal
External
Go

Dance 9: Young John's Amalgam

1651. The Beginning of the World, Golden Square, Mars and Venus, The Symphony, Cold and Raw, The Phoenix, Emperor of the Moon, The Wish, Open the Door to Three, The Boatman, Second Thought's Best, The Juice of Barley, Perseus and Andromeda, Rub Her Down with Straw, Xerxes, Bohemia, The Volunteer, The Twins, Cupid's Garden, A Trip to Islington, Phoenix, The Devil's Dream, Essex Building, Jolly Roger, Jupiter and Juno, Europe's Revels, Goddesses, Whirligig, Jamaica, Hamstead [sic] Heath, Humours of the Age, Touch and Go, Peace and Plenty, Black Jack, Britain's Success, The Twenty-Ninth of May, Cockleshells, The Ape's Dance, Good Advice, The Britains [sic], New New Nothing, Neptune's Triumph, Chirping of the Nightingale, Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, Love in a mask, In the Fields in Frost and Snow, Amaryllis, Oaken Leaves, Waltham Abbey, Hole in the Wall, John the Mad Man, Nobody's Jig, The Knot, The Princess, The Gun Fleet, Resolution, Ever Happy, Frank and Easie [sic], A Trip to Killburn [sic], Brisk and Airy, The Last New Vagaries, The Glory of the West, Chestnut, Painted Chamber, Diamond Hall, The Queen of Hearts, Impertinence, The Man Tiger, Golden Age, Love and Beauty, An Old Man Is a Bed Full of Bones, All Alive, New Town, Britain's Glory, Friday Night, As Quick As You Please, Dunkirk, Kill Him with Kindness, About Ship, The Emperor of the Moon, The Green Man, Sage Leaf, Aniseed Water Robin, Vienna, The Opera, The Witches, Short and Sweet, Dour's Catastrophe, Glastenbury [sic], North Britains [sic], The Flying Horse, The Red Bull, Easter Tuesday, Barnacles, Cast a Bell, Newcastle, The Union, Under and Over, Intrigues of the Town, Nottingham Castle, Greenwood, Slaughterhouse, Arcadia, Excuse Me, Europa, Bellamira, London Bridge, Pegasus, New exchange, Up Tails All, Disappointment, Kettle Drum, Just as You Will, The Slip, Off with the Mask, Rose Is White and Rose Is Red, Upon a Summer's Day, Pinks and Lilies, Confess, Zephirs [sic] and Flora, Black and Grey, New England, Drive the Cold Winter Away

Dance 10: For the Solar Plexus

Nothing but pulse and smoke
Hepatic, splenic, gastric, pancreatic, suprarenal
Move your body
Rectify
Reify

Dance 11: Levin's Reverie, Version 2

This dance is limping
Drifting
Staggering
Trailing
Prowling
Hiding
Revolving
Trudging
Sliding
Crawling

Dance 12: Old Amsterdam

A dance indivisible from its chemistry
1999
Everyone had been awake for two days
Lights across the street were extinguished
In a realm of amorphous shapes and translucent walls, music was the only thing that maintained its form
The minutiae of it became mesmeric
Everything extending in all directions
She was a pharmacist with a five-litre flask
She knew the exact quantities, the nature of its administration and its duration
Time began to slip
She told us, if you take enough of this stuff, you'll meet the aliens who made it
Time began to slip

Dance 13: Paradiso

1977
Careful filtering has removed rhythm section, lead vocal, horns and percussion, leaving only the string arrangement intact
Deletion of the music culminates in the demolition of this building
They call it development
Enjoy your memories

Dance 14: St Vitus / St John

Bright autumn morning
1374
Boots caked in mud
Eyes shining
Limbs quivering
High gothic
Fellow cultists
Arms in sinuous motions
Dark spirits gathering
Involuntary spasms
Holy intercession
We are implicated

Dance 15: End of the Night

Pause
Your head swims
Everything is on fire
Turns out, Mount Parnassus is in smithereens
Terpsichore lies dead
Coroner's report: burnt out lungs, lactic acid
Your head swims
Why is the floor so sticky?

Dance 16: The Ice Sheet

The slowest of the known forms
A dance of almost imperceptible movements
It moves like a glacier through the valley
The Anglian Stage
We will know it best when it has ceased
On its departure, it leaves behind drumlins, eskers, moraines
Cold, clean air

Dance 17: Colloid Exchange

One substance dispersed in another
Gels, foams, emulsions
You find yourself in rhythm with strangers
Frenetic embrace in the centrifuge
A mass, illuminated by red and blue light
We liquify

Dance 18: Manual Transmission

This is a dance for the hands only
For this dance, you need to put your hands in the air
Put your hands in the air

Dance 19: Submechanophobia

He cannot sleep
His body remembers the motion of the water
The enormity of the submerged machinery
He is drawn towards it
He is pulled away from it
Take it down
Take it right down

Dance 20: Infinity

The end
And the beginning
Keep on moving