Festive thanks to everyone who reads, comments, supports or sends me bits and bobs to write about. Most importantly, biggest thanks to everyone in Birmingham who does creative stuff, whether we get to write about you or not. There are loads of you and you’re ace.

In the meantime, there’s something odd happening in Berlin today. Check out this chap:

I’m going to just post the email that I received, there’s really no point me trying to re-write it.

Berlin Hoodening: Nagual for Bjørn Nørgaard

On 25 December 2009, a.a.s will perform the nagual performance Berlin Hoodening.

Hooded figures, wearing Fleischmasken, will process in a spiral up the hill at the centre of Volkspark Friedrichshain in Berlin, disembowel the treehorse, and make its organs circulate on its surface.

We will celebrate the depraved, deviant, tramp-spirit with the silver skull, calling forth disarticulation, experimentation and nomadism for the new decade.

This performance is part of the joint Parfyme, Reactor, a.a.s, Berlin residency 2009, and incorporates elements drawn from discussions with members of the other groups, and the guided walk developed by Reactor during their time in the city.

Hoodening is a British folk theatre tradition featuring a Hooden Horse – a wooden horse’s head mounted on a pole, with sackcloth attached to hide the bearer. The head would normally have a hinged jaw, which could snap shut with a mighty crack. Groups would tour around before Christmas, engaging in tomfoolery (horseplay) at local landowners’ houses and requesting funds to tide them over. There are also links to traditional Robin Hood Games and the Pantomime horse. Among the pagan Scandinavians the horse was often the sacrifice made at the winter solstice to Odin for success in battle.

A Nagual in Mesoamerican folk tradition is a  “transforming trickster” or “shape shifter” ? someone who has the power to magically turn into an animal form. This relates to the belief of tonalism, that all humans have an animal counterpart, to which their life-force is linked.

The Berlin Hoodening re-performs aspects of The Nagual (2007), which was originally featured at Crowd6 in Birmingham. The pulling out of tinsel, representing intestines, and spiraling it around the tree refers to the mythological origins of tinsel as a shamanistic, solstice ritual involving the draping of animal guts on trees in the forest in order to bring about the return of spring.

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From 1930 to 1960 Bearwood Snooker Hall was a cinema, then a variety theatre and finally a rep theatre. Since then the building has been used as an ice rink and, in its present incarnation, a snooker hall.

Parts of the old theatre space remain and Nikki Pugh was recently invited by the people of Crowd6 to have an explore. There’s information on her blog and plenty of photos too.