OUT NOW: ‘Frocks, Socks, and the Orange Fox’ Suite

Throughout 2023, I worked with East Lab Dance Company to provide the soundscore for their new children’s dance theatre work “Frocks, Socks, and the Orange Fox”.

This project was supported by Arts Council England, Inspire Libraries, Derby Libraries and Deda and saw us produce an engaging, interactive show for young children. It ended up taking the form of a 30 minute show followed by a 30 minute stay and play for children ages 3-6 with an educational story, tackling key life values in fun ways that children would engage with. In the press release from East Lab Dance Company, they describe the project as:

‘Frocks, Socks and the Orange Fox’ is an interactive family dance theatre piece, for ages 3 – 6 years. The work follows a fox and a mole, on a journey to find foxes’ missing socks. A fusion of rhyming, storytelling, dance, and comedy creates an immersive storybook environment for the children to learn, laugh and play within.

As an ACE funded project, we were able to work with an EYFS and KS1 officer, so that children were following the correct learning objectives, when developing rhyming skills. The piece was developed with insight from nationally renowned dramaturg Lou Cope, to include an emotional journey for the children to learn from.

The work uses colourful, eye catching set and props, designed by Hannah Boothman, to create a visual story book world, which the characters and audience can interact with. This allows us to successfully include audience participation in the performance, including children throwing snowballs (which are bundled up white socks) at the characters, in an audience versus character snowball fight.

Alongside the performance, we also include a post-show, stay, and play workshop, giving children the chance to craft their own socks, dance with the characters and play rhyming games.

Frocks, Socks, and the Orange Fox had its pilot tour in libraries around Derby, and soon after expanded, taking the production to libraries, schools and festivals around the country.

This project allowed me to explore a lot of different styles of music and have fun writing exciting music that would appeal to a new audience.

Alongside providing the musical score, I also provided the soundscore which included foley sound, requiring me to be inventive to create specific sounds that represented things the characters encounter on their journey.

At one point in the story they pass an erupting volcano, which I recreated using a combination of ambient noise repitched to sound deep, beans bubbling on the hob and boiling water. All of these combined provided the ambience of magma bubbling up to the surface.

You can listen to a sneak peak of the work via the media player and trailer below. East Lab Dance Company’s socials are linked below too alongside the show’s credits. The Frocks, Socks, and the Orange Fox Suite is OUT NOW on all major streaming platforms. You can listen via the player and links below.