A SPECIALLY-designed industrial-style set is the ambitious backdrop to a dance piece at Bedales about the construction of the Empire State Building.
At the Olivier Theatre, Bedales, on Friday, March 4, at 7.30pm, SAFE is a tale of bravery and skill, grit and determination, brotherhood and camaraderie, brought to life by five talented male dancers.
This is a tough word to inhabit, one where there is no room for error, where trust in your compatriots, your fellow ironworkers, is the key to sanity and survival.
The race is on to be part of history.
Deftly navigating their way across iron girders, swinging hundreds of feet in the air, literally scaling the dizzy heights, this band of unlikely brothers is an integral part of that history making.
SAFE is ZoieLogic Dance Theatre’s thrilling imagining of the daily lives of those workers whose Herculean efforts made the iconic building, which took 410 days to construct before opening to the public in 1931, a monumental architectural first.
A visceral music score envelops the company as they move within the set made of steel, aluminium and wood that cleverly builds with the performance.
Like the Empire State Building itself, SAFE is bursting with ambitious imagination, hope, optimism, collective spirit and the ultimate friendships that only feats like this can bring.
Says performer Zoie:?“We perform SAFE on a really unusual bespoke steel, aluminium and wood set which has been specially designed for this piece; it’s a very exposed set as if we’ve taken a bite out of the Empire State Building and it has a purpose floor, a truss framing - to symbolise the iron girders that were used to build the Empire State, and it has a life of its own that builds as the show progresses.
“It’s an exciting piece with some surprises along the way.”
Tickets are £12 and £10 for concessions.
Available from One Tree Books, Petersfield, and from the Bedales Arts box office on e-mail [email protected] or telephone 01730 711511.
Also visit www.bedales.org.uk for more information.