A powerful, funny and touching piece of song theatre, Dalston Songs is a unique blend of music and choreography about memories of home and what ‘home’ means.
Performance creator and self-taught composer Helen Chadwick was inspired by the stories and memories of people in her local community in Dalston, East London, where many different cultures co-exist. Stories emerged through interviews with her neighbours and Dalston residents. For some ‘home’ meant life in a new country, escape from a war zone or arrival from a destroyed homeland, for others the tales were more domestic. These stories became the basis for lyrics used alongside powerful texts by Serbian, Argentinean, Palestinian, and Turkish poets.
Chadwick’s music is influenced by meeting singers on her journeys to remote villages in Georgia and Bolivia and for Dalston Songs she has collaborated with Laurence Olivier Award-winning choreographer Steven Hoggett.
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