New LGBT dance theatre production at Albany, Deptford

Published: 26 January 2017
Reporter: Vera Liber

Developed as part of the Albany Theatre’s Hatched new writing programme, We Raise Our Hands in the Sanctuary is set in the 1980s with a focus on topics that are still relevant today.

The 1980s saw a major shift towards the emergence of a global gay club culture, but it was set against a backdrop of desperate levels of unemployment, riots, driven by racism, and AIDS casually reported as a gay plague.

Yet with the fear and repression, came hope and defiance—young gay people found a way to come together, to speak out against oppression—and nowhere was this more true than in the vibrant underground clubs.

With gentrification sweeping away LGBT clubs and pubs in the capital, Inky Cloak’s new work spotlights the importance of queer spaces and highlights why club culture matters on a political, emotional and human rights level.

Combining naturalistic drama, contemporary dance and underground nightclubbing, We Raise Our Hands in the Sanctuary runs at the Albany Theatre, Deptford, from Tuesday 31 January to Saturday 11 February and is choreographed by Mina Aidoo, who trained at the London School of Contemporary Dance.

Aidoo said, “creating the choreography for the show has been a wonderful challenge. The choreography is contemporary dance-based but you also see influences of jazz, disco and street styles of the time.

"The music chosen for the play reflects what was happening in society during the 1980s allowing the audience to experience how the music developed through time. With this in mind, we used influences ranging from avant garde dance icon Michael Clarke, the aerobics craze in the '80s to Vogueing and the ballroom scene.

"The dancers really had their work cut out to embody all of the different styles of dance and I am really proud of what we managed to achieve.”

DJ Severino, part of the long-running queer London club Horse Meat Disco, will play a set of sounds from the era at a post-show party on Thursday 2 February.

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