Dragon spotted in Yorkshire: The Hatchling comes to Wakefield

Yorkshire Post

We went down to Wakefield city centre to check out 'The Hatchling'   The outdoor theatrical performance unfolded over a weekend of events and culminated in an extraordinary finale of spectacle and flight   With a wingspan of over 20 metres, The Hatchling is the world’s largest human operated puppet to fly

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00:00The dragon has landed in Wakefield City Centre, finally the Hatchling is here, after months of anticipation, Trigger the arts group have brought their huge puppet dragon to the city centre.

00:18The Hatchling is part of Wakefield City Council's Our Year 2024, the city's own city of culture.

00:28And there she is, in all her glory.

00:3520 metre wingspan, the dragon passes through Wakefield. It was hatched yesterday and it hatched again Saturday, outside Wakefield Cathedral and then tomorrow, Sunday, it will be flying over Pugney's Country Park.

00:57It's been amazing, meeting so many people across the district, different groups all coming together and just like the past two days, so many people out on the streets interacting together and working together, it's been fantastic.

01:22So I've been working with communities to teach vocal patterns and we've been singing patterns to the dragon, basically to welcome her to the city, becoming more and more familiar as she grows and she develops.

01:35So we've been playing games, cat and mouse games, repetitive pattern games, welcoming her to the city.

01:42I am, I'm one of the puppeteers and it's a real privilege, so lovely to work with such a big group of puppeteers, there's such sensitivity and it really is such a privilege and she's beautiful, isn't she?

01:56She's absolutely beautiful, so we love it.

01:59And what's been happening over this weekend?

02:03So yesterday the hatchling hatched and she was a small dragon on Friday and she grew and she was quite curious and quite a young dragon and needed to kind of spend her time working out who she was and how her legs and arms and everything moved.

02:23And throughout the day she got more confident, a bit more playful, some of the shopkeepers ended up with her nose in their shops and things and she had a really good time yesterday.

02:35And then she went to sleep about 7, she met loads of community groups which was fantastic, we had some singing, we had some dancing, we had some cheerleaders, it was magnificent.

02:49But she does get tired quite early so she went to sleep about 7 and then we had a special little wake up in the night where she had a dream and she was sang to around 9 o'clock.

03:02Today she woke up around midday, found herself to be much bigger and had to manoeuvre herself out of her nest that's around the cathedral which took quite a while because she's so much bigger.

03:16And today she's going to explore the city again, she's more confident now, she's starting to show a bit of dominance, she's starting to know her place.

03:30And then she'll go to bed again about 7 tonight, who knows maybe she'll wake up again in the night and have a little dream moment.

03:41And then tomorrow she'll wake up in Pugnese around tea time and that'll be where she starts to realise who she is and maybe she's not really part of this world and we'll see that she might take flight.

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