Bodies of Water
Part of Open Space 70
Bodies of Water was a performance protest piece devised and led by Delia Stevens. It was performed twice on Sunday 16 July 2023 at the Town Hall, Hebden Bridge and included performances from a project percussion ensemble, Calderdale Fantasy Orchestra & Choir and She Choir.
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Solastalgia: the homesickness and distress experienced by a local witnessing the destruction of their chosen home through environmental change; in 2022 River Calder was the second most polluted river in the UK, following a year when Yorkshire Water dumped sewage into it 30,000 times.
Join BBC Radio 3's award-winning percussionist, Hebden Bridge-based Delia Stevens in her campaign to restore the river to its natural state. She leads local wild swimmers, community orchestras and choirs through a captivating exploration of the industrial heritage of the river and its the ripple effects of its contamination into our wider community. Featuring water percussion, drainpipe xylophones and industrial beats meshed with the lush choral harmonies of Todmorden She Choir and the sheer madness of the Calderdale Fantasy Orchestra, this is a call to arms to take collective responsibility for the future of the River Calder. Delia has featured on Sky Arts, BBC Young Musician of the Year, the BBC Proms, BBC Radio 3, 4 and 5 as a percussionist and played all over the world, from Beijing's Forbidden City Concert Hall to the Royal Albert Hall to the muddy fields of Cambridge and Shrewsbury Folk Festivals. She lives in Hebden Bridge and is completely in love with its draw-dropping nature. |
Consider these words from Octavia Hill, a co-founder of the National Trust:
“We too readily sit down, under imperfect or bad conditions instead of setting ourselves to think over what may or may not be done to alter them. When I am gone, I hope my friends will not try to carry out any special system, or to follow blindly in the track which I have trodden. New circumstances require various efforts, and it is the spirit, not the dead form, that should be perpetuated.
What we care most to leave them is … the quick eye to see, the true soul to measure, the large hope to grasp the mighty issues of the new and better days to come – greater ideals, greater hope, and patience to realise both.
We all want quiet. We all want beauty…we all need space. Unless we have it we cannot reach that sense of quiet in which whispers of better things come to us gently.”
“We too readily sit down, under imperfect or bad conditions instead of setting ourselves to think over what may or may not be done to alter them. When I am gone, I hope my friends will not try to carry out any special system, or to follow blindly in the track which I have trodden. New circumstances require various efforts, and it is the spirit, not the dead form, that should be perpetuated.
What we care most to leave them is … the quick eye to see, the true soul to measure, the large hope to grasp the mighty issues of the new and better days to come – greater ideals, greater hope, and patience to realise both.
We all want quiet. We all want beauty…we all need space. Unless we have it we cannot reach that sense of quiet in which whispers of better things come to us gently.”
Meet the Bodies of Water Musicians
David Insua-Cao
David Insua-Cao is a freelance drummer and percussionist living in his narrowboat on the Rochdale Canal. He has performed internationally with various companies including Giffords Circus, Circo Raluy (Catalonia) Ramshacklicious street-theatre company, Can't Sit Still theatre company, Spymonkey comedy theatre company and 1927 Theatre company, playing at arts festivals including the Melbourne international festival, Spoleto festival USA and Edinburgh international festival. David regularly performs with groups including afro-futurist artist Nwando Ebizie, Vintage pop band The Black Shakes, and Cuban salsa group Salsa Tatin y Su Son. He has collaborated with Delia Stevens on a number of projects, including this one. In January 2022 David started the Calderdale Fantasy Orchestra. This is an extension of the Paris and Bristol Fantasy Orchestras (David co-directed the Bristol fantasy for a couple of years). They have 40 plus members playing and singing music together, improvising, experimenting and looking at tunes from a wide range of genres- Beyonce to Hendrix, RD Burman to Morricone, Sun Ra to Delia Derbyshire. In their short career they have packed-out The Golden Lion (Todmorden), The Trades Club (Hebden) and the Birchcliffe Centre. Their next big event is The Circle, Bacup 5th August. |
delia Stevens
Delia Stevens is a percussionist: a pioneer of future-facing ideas with “burning chops and a cosmic imagination”. "percussion from Delia Stevens, whose thoughtful, insistent playing is crucial” The Guardian 2023 sees Delia as Co-Guest Director with Sinfonia Cymru and violinist Simmy Singh, reimagining Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons as a double concerto with improvised percussion, presenting her own BBC Radio 3 Series: Music and Machines, touring China with the Aurora Percussion Duo, playing a local water dam in Hebden Bridge as a percussion instrument with wild swimmers and a new duo with triple BBC Folk Musician of the Year harmonica virtuoso Will Pound. In 2022 she was Artist-in-Residence at Leeds University, curating, performing and commissioning music around their science research. Delia is an Associate Artist of the RNCM - where she won the Concerto Prize and Gold Medal Award - and has won the Royal Over-Seas League Award twice. Delia has toured as a concerto soloist across Germany to the Royal Albert Hall as Guest Percussionist with the BBC Singers at the Proms; from TedX Talks (Sage Gateshead) to orchestral jams in Peckham’s Bold Tendencies Carpark; from recitals in Beijing’s Forbidden Concert Hall to the fields of Cambridge Folk Festival. www.deliastevens.com |
brian acton
Brian Acton is a guitarist, composer and educator from Belfast, who has been living in Calderdale for 20 years. He is a live musician and teaches guitar at Calder High and Crossley Heath, and is a director of the Music Makes You co-op and Brooklyn Artist Studios. In 2020 he developed a system of wireless, weatherproof and synchronised speakers called ‘Flock' for multi-source audio events. He then began working with community members to create collaborative electronic events including The Nºthing Factory and Impºssibly Human. Brian also loves mountain-biking and archery, but not simultaneously. |
