LABOUR

A new creation by Emily Gualtieri and David Albert-Toth

LABOUR is a creation that embraces a minimalist and repetitive physicality. Raw, sweaty, visceral, and absurd, it rejects aesthetic politeness and imagines a shared power, both intimate and collective, rooted in a plurality of femme perspectives. The piece puts at the forefront womxn’s labour and the radical forces that build, sustain, reimagine and transform. Through unstable and yet simple rhythms, it turns the body into a site of metamorphosis, confronting today’s fragmented realities with gestures of resistance, care, and collective force.

In a discipline obsessed with control, LABOUR asserts that mastery and mess coexist. Front-facing, the work is both confrontational and welcoming. Its accumulation links us to each performer, making us witnesses and accomplices. The hypnotic rhythm distorts time, drawing us into a cadence that is precise yet elusive. The work opens space for reflection, recognition, and appreciation of dance as embodied labour and shared joy, while engaging with broader questions of effort and the real labour of bodies on and off stage.