[PSUBS-MAILIST] [Fiction/entertainment] Death dance for a submarine

[Ian Roxborough <irox@ix.netcom.com>]

Hopefully nobody will be offend by the imagery in this piece.
I would really like to see this if I get a chance.

Cheers,
 Ian.
--

http://www.belfasttoday.net/ViewArticle2.aspx?SectionID=3909&ArticleID=2013380
Death dance for a submarine

WHEN the 95,000 Deutsche Shell super tanker Myrina was launched
on the Lagan in 1967 she was too big for fitting out in Belfast.

So the vast vessel journeyed to Hamburg for her finishing touches.
A former U-boat commander skippered the voyage on behalf of her
German owners and a team of Harland and Wolff shipyard workers
were on board.

En route to Germany the ex-submarine commander proudly pointed out
the places where his U-boat had torpedoed allied ships.  On the
Lagan on Sunday, a short distance from the Myrina's slipway, half
a dozen submarine commanders danced a death waltz in the dark hold
of a barge; a disconcerting vision that would have severely
interrupted the commander's heartbeat had he been in the vicinity.
The intensely sombre depiction was beautiful, harrowing, disturbing.

It was the conclusion of a decade of creative thought and
composition by record producer and part-time mariner Tom Newman.
Tom put together Mike Oldfield's hugely successful Tubular Bells
album and has worked with a galaxy of pop stars; he now divides his
time between various recording studios and a charity called Pirates
for Peace based on a minesweeper in Carlingford Lough.

Last Sunday he was filming his latest composition Sarabande for
Submariners on Lagan Legacy's Dutch barge Confiance.  A sarabande,
I have since discovered, is a slow dance in triple metre with a
distinctive rhythm of crotchet and minim in alternation.
You learn something Newman every day!

Tom visited a former U-boat base on the eastern sea board of France
ten years ago and began thinking about submarines.
"They're mankind's most sneaky invention.
"They completely lack any kind of chivalry whatsoever and they're
something history shouldn't be proud of."
An enigmatic variation on his theme evolves from his love of ships,
Tom translated his thoughts into music, and Sarabande for Submariners
evolved.  Sunday's filmed performance was acted out by members of
a Belfast drama group called Knights of the Round Table.

They transformed the Confiance's hold into a scene described
by Newman as "a kind of a purgatory where submarine captains have
to dance with their victims for a few thousand years".

His intention was to show the extremes that man can go to; making
beautiful music, yet capable of sneaking up on a ship full of
innocent people and blowing them all to their deaths.
"It's no fun drowning in burning diesel!" he added, which was
obvious, but I'd never thought of it that way.
"All my music is written with a visual image, as soon as I saw
the Confiance I knew it would be perfect. A great big empty
cavernous space would be the sort of place purgatory would be
carried out."

In his film the commanders' eyes are wide with fear as they clutch
at the steel hull in ghastly slow motion, flailing, falling,
grasping at an immeasurable mid-distance, dancing their slow death
jig that will never end.  Waltzing with their victims, silently
screaming, surreal submariners.

The Confiance's motto is "a cargo of culture"; she's on a static
voyage of artistic discovery.  Sunday was her christening; the
first of a varied programme of events and exhibitions.  While she
rose slowly on the tide, gently rolling with the submariners'
sarabande, she seemed to know that she was floating on one of
the world's most creative waterways.

02 February 2007



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