‘Like a tide of water in the sky, fire and magic below’: The Awakening

Deblozay by Rara Woulib

Hull’s stunning new two-day international arts festival The Awakening transformed the city centre last night. Vicky Foster was among the thousands caught up in the magic

Pictures by Tom Arran Commercial Photography

It’s 7.30pm on a Friday night and Princes Quay car park is packed – the first sign that something big is happening.

We find a spot, leave the car, passing queues of people with small children who must’ve already made the tour of The Awakening and are on their way home. We have to wait in a small crowd before we can get out of the shopping centre. ‘It’s so busy,’ I say. ‘This is amazing.’

Princes Dock Street is teeming with people. Blue and green lights hover in the sky at its end.

It feels like Hull Fair, I think, because it’s the only comparison I can conjure for when I’ve seen this many people together outside at night in Hull.

There’s a huge, four-person-thick line outside Zebedee’s Yard, and as we pass, I glimpse through the arched entrance - stacked discs creating pillars of light – shimmering in blues and whites.

Borealis by Dan Acher

Children are being lifted above the heads of the crowds by unseen adults, to place their hands into the columns and make sounds that carry out into the street like a space-age orchestra.

We’re heading for Borealis in the Rose Bowl, but before we arrive, we pause again, stalled by a holographic bell and dog which spin in the windows at the top of Whitefriargate. A full moon hangs in the sky above the street, in which a mass of people move.

How long has it been since this many bodies were gathered here at once? I get a flashback of old pictures I’ve seen of shopping Saturdays in 1960s Hull. Not the same thing, but again, the closest comparison I can make.

Approaching the Rose Bowl, a kind of hush descends, even though, again, the pavement is thick with people.

Glowing angelic figures, at least ten-feet tall, are moving away from us at its far end, and music like electronic tubular bells hangs in the air, carried in the breeze like the shifting smoke in which flow clouds of blue, green and red light.

Totems by Compagnie des Quidams

We move through it, or under it, past glowing trees, towards Queens Gardens, and bursts of fire become visible in the distance.

Before we let them tempt us away though, we enter the centre of the bowl, resting a few minutes between families with small kids, to savour what is happening.

A man in a puffer coat and baseball cap is perched on a low wall, his daughter and son intermittently trying to gain his attention, but his eyes are fixed on the lights above him. ‘It’s beautiful,’ he says. Pauses a while, then repeats: ‘It’s beautiful that, innit?’

I realise the atmosphere is not like Hull Fair – less febrile, more contemplative – and the lights move more like a tide of water in the sky than clouds, like a coloured mirror of the old docks that used to fill this space.

It’s tempting to stay, but the occasional bursts of combustion we can hear in the distance draw us away. As we crest the rise of the slope that leads down into Queens Gardens, the scene that greets us feels medieval.

Halo by Illumaphonium

Flaming arches curve above huge crowds, which move in the dark. We process down a path lit by torches and fairy lights in the grass. People are moving slowly, drinking it in. There’s no rush.

Slow down, the fire seems to be saying, and something about the quality of the light, the layout of the path, reminds me of a church aisle, of weddings and funerals, ritual and remembrance. It feels elemental.

We pause to buy rum punch, and a woman with a glowing lantern guides us toward a route which is punctuated by fire contained in metal balls - all kinds of shapes carved out of them – trees and animals are silhouetted against the small infernos.

These give way to tall silver cylinders, lit from within by flame, which give way to black billboards, words and pictures picked out in a soft yellow glow. A sculpture of entwined metal pipes burst into ignition, playing notes as flames flare and expire.

There’s a fine metal sculpture, dappled by stars and moons aglow. Trumpets atop a metal frame ignite at intervals, creating a dance of fire that flares and is gone. The air is heavy with the smell of smoke and oil.

Deblozay by Rara Woulib

I would have stayed longer. I think I could have stayed there for hours. But we have an appointment with Deblozay.

We gather in a large crowd on the cobbles of Posterngate, until we’re called to form a queue and enter Zebedee’s Yard, where we gather again in a holding space, our crowd shifting and moving as the night deepens and the temperature begins to drop.

There’s a kind of steady, slow excitement building, like a thread being pulled slowly tighter.

I don’t know when I was last in a group of people this size. I don’t know how many of us there are, standing here in this space, flanked by the high brick walls of buildings with the star-speckled sky above us. At least 200. Maybe 300. 400?

The sounds of the installation we passed in Zebedee’s Yard earlier ceases as it approaches 9pm. In the new absence of other sound, the tension grows again.

Fire in the Park by Out There Arts

A gate opens and we begin to move forward, through it. A babble of excited voices grows, but as we spread out in the torch-lit space, hushes again.

There’s a sound like the whoosh of a bat’s wing; a tail-coated figure appears on a wall, and Deblozay begins.

It’s everything I could have hoped for. Theatrical, atmospheric, gothic, spooky – small children cling to the hands of adults, teenagers giggle nervously.

After a while in the yard, we take off. A tide of people that flow and stall and pick up pace again as we move through the streets, spurred on by voices and drums and horns, spectral figures flitting among us, faces painted white, clad in long black dresses, dress suits.

It’s like being caught in a scene from a Batman movie, or a carnival, or, or…I’m struggling for comparisons now. I have none.

At times it felt not only like I was transported to another time or place, but like the streets themselves had been. This was Princes St in 1950s New Orleans, or Trinity Square in 1890s Marseille.

If you can still get tickets for Deblozay tonight; get them. Go. If not, wander a while in the changed spaces the festival creates before it fades away.

And if you seek out some of the echoey places between Zebedee’s Yard and the Tidal Barrier, maybe you’ll have an extra encounter you wouldn’t expect, like so many of the pub-goers, people-watchers and passers-by we passed as we paraded last night; the women dancing along in the windows of Crown and Cushion, the chef in an upstairs restaurant window, the couple who hung out of a third-floor flat to see the sudden crowd of people dancing in the narrow street below.

Deblozay by Rara Woulib

There have been many ‘Do you remember when?’ moments in Hull over the last six years, but this is one that will stay with me for a long time.

For the last couple of years, it felt like the city was in many ways, lost to us. But last night, Freedom Festival Arts Trust and Hull City Council, with The Awakening, gave it back.

I remembered the rhythm in the way a crowd moves, felt the pleasure of hundreds of feet moving to a shared beat.

Was this a festival to welcome the light back in? If so, it worked. It came rushing back in last night, and with it came movement and mischief and music and transformation.