The walking route the audience took was mapped to follow a combination of:

• tracks taken by butterfly surveyors, dog walkers, and sloe pickers;

• paths revealed by the National Trust cutting back overgrown bracken and brambles;

• safe routes along the sands shown to us by the cross bay guides;

• hidden and secret places that the children took us to;

• corridors marked by: ant hills, bat flight paths, and rows of mole hills.

The performance had two distinctive halves. Each half had a guide. The first half took place on the intimate heath land and the second on the vast sands of the bay. Audiences were met by the heath guide at the entrance to Jack Scout, he invited them to listen to the place; shows them a man dancing in a dank mossy tunnel his movements, inspired by Dog Rose, Autumn Ladies Tresses, and Hawkbit, respond to the earthy tones of the saxophone; he leads them along a cliff edge to a place where a view of whole bay opens up and two distant figures, tiny in the vast landscape, are seen looking out across the glinting expanse; then inside a thicket he tells them the story of the Matchless whilst sounds of Pipestrals echo around them in the dense air.

In a pebbly cove they are met by the sand guide, cockle shell and cane in hand, she leads them along the littoral; shows them a man hidden deep in a cave and a dancer unravelling from a sail before running out, arms open, into the bay; a clarinet cries with the birds as they follow her. Far out they look back, at the now distant, Jack Scout and a man dancing, reaching, and turning in a cove; like a flowing wave they are led towards him. In a cave a dancer hangs by her fingertips before tumbling and falling bare-foot through muddy sand. Finally, holding a cockle shell, they look at a tableau of the cast, all still except one dancer who clutched forwards as she is pulled backwards onto the sands, receding to a stick figure on the horizon line where sea, sand and sky merge.

Audience Responses

Responses of spectators to the performance indicate that the piece led to sense of a discovery, or for some re-discovery and that the immersive experience, made them “much more aware of the place and the ‘natural’ environment”. Responses include:

I live here in Silversale. My house looks out to sea. Today I have seen Jack Scout in a totally different light. I thought the performance was emotional. I will never forget this afternoon.

 

[It] Brought spirits of the landscape, history, soul of the area to life. Never been out so far on sands and seen [it] from that perspective. Seen Morecambe Bay in a different light.

 

Burnt forever in my mind’s eye

Physical memory through each sense

Drink in each sound through the silence

Heightened + infinitely memorable

The work was researched and developed through four 'Dialogues' (each involving workshops, exercises, and discussions) with people with diverse knowledges of the place. These were:

• an 'Underworld Dialogue' with National Trust wardens and plant ecologists about the site’s unique flora and fauna

• an 'Overworld Dialogue' with the RSPB and ornithologists about the behaviour of indigenous species of birds, butterflies and bats on the heath and migratory birds on the beach;

• an 'Innerworld Dialogue' with young people at a nearby school for urban children with special needs;

• a 'Waterworld Dialogue' with cross-bay guides and fishermen concerning fishing traditions and the Bay's infamous tides, shipwrecks and drownings.

The creative team used experimental cartography, writing, drawing, and musical and movement improvisation to record and reflect upon these dialogues; to register and distil their own experience of the place, and thereby evolve material that was transformed, and then montaged, into the final performance. Examples of the synthesis include:

• flute and clarinet music that mimicked the songs of indigenous birds we had learnt to identify through the Common Bird Survey;

• the sound of a clarinet mingled with the sounds and shapes of oyster catchers and other birds as they flocked and flew at key tidal moments;

• songs were written with children from the school about the ambiguous feelings they have when hiding or playing in the place;

• dance movement material was evolved by learning from fishermen how to work nets, tackle and tractors on the sands; and by working with conservationists who showed us how to use bracken bashers and pitch forks on the heath;

• choreographic scores illustrated the morphology of plants and flowers analysed through dance phemononolgy.

Jack Scout (Redux) is a short film by Nigel Stewart and Louise Ann Wilson. Jack Scout is the name of a secluded heath in Silverdale that overlooks the vast sands of Morecambe Bay in Lancashire, England. Moving between heath, cliff, shore-line and beach, the film reveals Jack Scout as a site to ponder from a distance and up-close; as a place to experience through movement, sound and touch; as a location to understand through story and song; and as a void beyond human understanding and scale. Woven into these different impressions is the story of the Matchlesss, a pleasure boat shipwrecked in 1895 with the loss of 34 lives.

Jack Scout (Redux) is choreographed and co-directed by Nigel Stewart; designed and co-directed by Louise Ann Wilson; performed by Steve Lewis, Natasha Fewings, Nigel Stewart and Louise Ann Wilson; composed by Steve Lewis and Matthew Robinson; and has sound designed by Lisa Whistlecroft. The film was premiered at the Dance Cuts festival in March 2013, and is related to a full-length live work of the same name performed on location in September 2010 with funding from Arts Council England, Arnside and Silverdale Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, Lancaster City Council and Live at LICA.