Smiley Culture | Gary Clarke Company’s Wasteland (Photo: Yorkshire Life Aquatic)
Yorkshire Life Aquatic’s ZOE PARKER and LUCY MEREDITH enjoy a slice of working class history told through the medium of contemporary dance.
Wasteland is the Gary Clarke Company’s sequel to Coal, their award winning dance theatre piece about the 1984 Miners’ Strike. Dedicated to the memory of The Prodigy’s Keith Flint and picking up the story ten years later, this new work explores the strike’s impact on mining communities set against the backdrop of a burgeoning rave dance scene.
Gary Clarke’s Wasteland Tour continues at Newcastle Northern Stage in September. More details here.
Interview with Yorkshire Aquatic Life’s Lucy Meredith and Zoe Parker here.
Well I loved it, found it powerful and moving, really enjoyed the rave choreography, which was fun and slick and had me bouncing in my seat and the dancers had this amazing fitness that was super impressive. It was like exhausting just watching them. My favourite bit though had to be the the riot shields which are such a beautiful design by KLF and the speech at the end, which just had me so fired up.
LUCY….
I loved how much lucy enjoyed this – I was slightly worried because I ve seen lucy s eyes glaze over at contemporary dance as it can often be a bit abstract and can miss having an actual credible through line, but this wasn’t like that at all.
I loved that Gary dedicated this to Keith Flint and that in fact his whole career in dance began with that love of the music of the Prodigy.