Strange things from the past

Posted on by Dale

Here’s an image:

Sort of scary, isn’t it?

This is a photo called “Animal Dancers,” from the archives of Valdosta State University. It seems that back when the school was the Georgia State Women’s College, each year the young ladies would stage the Old English Christmas Festival with lots of costumes and skits and singing and dancing. This is from 1930’s Festival.

Animal dancers.

Now your job is to imagine what we might stage legitimately that would produce a photo like this.

20 thoughts on “Strange things from the past”

  3. Cats eating cows.

    Hoofing.

    Pinter paws.

    Live summer stock, livestock summer.

    Feline bovine chorus line.

  4. COWS, the musical.
    I laughed, I cried, it was better than CATS. I’ll see it again and again.

  5. It probably WOULD be better than cats. Chik-Fil-A just called. They’re offering a stipend for someone to write the libretto.

  6. Mammaries, all alone in the moo-nlight
    I can smile at the old days
    I was moo-tiful then…

  8. Whatever happened to “don’t be afraid to fail”, “safe environment” and “don’t judge others”? There was no need to bring out the expulsion cud-gel.

  9. There’s a difference between risking failure and wallowing in it, a difference that I fear is already way too familiar to the members of this collaborative.

  13. THE UNSPEAKABLE TRUTH: PRIVATE SCHOOL FOUND TO BE RUN BY PAGAN CULT

    Parents in anguish over harrowing “play” performed on open house night

    Or you know, the horror film in which in the distant past there were children involved in “unspeakable rites,” and we see an old newspaper clipping and no further explanation. Like the Pig Man on the bed in The Shining.

  17. CATS AND COWS

    It’s a musical based on T. S. Eliot’s Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats. But with cows, too.

    The producers were a little iffy about just doing a bunch of cat poems. “Add the cows,” they said. “We want to guarantee our investors a decent return,” they said. “Can’t go wrong with cows,” they said. Cats…and cows. See?

    “Cats are fickle, unpredictable, but cows inspire loyalty. If there are cows, people will come back again and again. Tim Rice took time off from working on the Patty Hearst musical to write some really solid cow lyrics. Very adventurous stuff, actually. But you know, Andrew let’s him really stretch out. He was grateful for the opportunity; said he felt like he was really writing from inside the cow at times.

    This lonely meadow
    Makes me groan: Muaauhrghhaugh!
    I am a cow
    And to be a cow
    Is to be alone
    Ooommphrmgh-hsst
    Always alone.

    And you know it wouldn’t be Timmy without that touch of ironic distance, that playful wink:

    I’m so alone.
    No bull.

    And Andrew’s settings were lovely, really. Cats and Cows would have been something very special.

    What happened was what always happens in the theatre. Lack of backbone. Turns it all into mush. First the cows were their safety net. Then the cows were confusing. Then, finally, the cows were too…frankly, too challenging. Same old story.

  19. Back to your original post, Dale, it’s not “sorta” scary. It’s expletive deleted terrifying. Actually, what it makes me think of is a stage presentation of a hybridization of Brave New World and (rather obviously here) Animal Farm. I think it’s the coveralls that do the BNW thing to the picture. If that’s a bit too obvious to speak, just substitute Harrison Bergeron for Brave New World.

  20. I agree. This is a very scary photo. I cannot think of anything we could do that would create this as a production photo that wouldn’t be very disturbing to our audience. Deliberately disturbing: Dickey’s poem, some Marxist fable, an animal rights polemic.

    I think it has to do with the proportions of the eyes to the heads to the bodies. Also, the surface of the masks, hard, shiny, non-cuddly, contribute to the weird factor.

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