Sweat Factory: A Contemporary Dance Opera was performed by Youth Music Theatre at the Lilian Baylis Studio, Sadler’s Wells, London.
Star rating: five stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
One of the new pieces being presented for Youth Music Theatre’s summer season and its first production at the Lilian Baylis Studio, Sweat Factory: A Contemporary Dance Opera depicts the uncompromising reality of a garment-nnnufacturing sweatshop whose monotony and endless labour drives some workers to despair and others to rebellion.
Sweat Factory’s all-female cast, led by Rebecca Allcock as the Mother and Rosalia Morales as the Outsider, deliver a suitably harsh-edged performance that provides a fitting reflection of the cruel and dangerous conditions of sweatshop labour. As a contemporary dance piece, Rachel Birch-Lawson’s choreography is ideally matched to the depth of the subject matter, notably incorporating some creative pair-based dancing using ropes to signify the workers’ metaphorical bonds, as well as a sequence involving a puppet to represent an unborn child.
Within the context of an ensemble show in which all performers are so similarly attired that it is difficult to identify individuals, specific cast members nonetheless make many unique contributions, whether singing solo passages or executing brief choreographic routines. There are even some impressive gymnastic moves woven into the dance. At the same time, in the sequences for full company there is something truly poignant about a 40-strong cast all chanting the same haunting ‘tick tock, tick tock’ refrain while performing sharply defined choreography in striking unison.
That the performance never formally starts and ends is affectingly emblematic of the unrelenting cycle of the production line. The company members are already onstage prior to the entrance of the audience, and they sustain their a cappella singing at the end until the auditorium clears. Equally chilling is the realisation that the piece yields no definite indications of location; as Birch-Lawson’s programme note suggests, the scenario it presents might be as applicable to the illegal sweatshops in the UK as anywhere else in the world.
While the work’s synopsis is more conceptual than book-based, Aoife Mannix’s libretto is laced with profound meaning from its very first line about the life into which the labourers are born. The score by Garth McConaghie, with additional music by Nathan Jones, features a judicious mix of discordant sound design, reflecting the brutality of the life depicted onstage, coupled to more conventional musical theatre-style numbers whose ironically optimistic tone sets into relief the sweatshop’s inherent inhumanity.
Sweat Factory breaks much new ground for YMT, placing contemporary dance against the fabric of a modernist score with minimal spoken dialogue. Within this innovative medium, the piece boldly explores serious, real-world issues whose interpretation by such a young cast of performers demonstrates a maturity beyond their years. The artistic direction activated by this work is one that YMT are keen to pursue further in the future, and this production certainly represents an excellent inaugural venture.
Christopher Wiley
SHARE THIS POST:
Comments are closed.