Dirt was a site-specific performance for the Wapping Hydraulic Power Station, commissioned by WPT, featuring unemployed, young performers. Dirt was about domesticity and obsession, something that fascinated the choreographer, Lea Anderson.
If dresses are in abundance, time is at a premium. Anderson, choreographer of the all-female Cholmondeleys (pronounced Chumleys) and all-male Featherstonehaughs (Fanshaws), usually enjoys 10-week rehearsals. But she has just two weeks in which to produce her dance piece Dirt, part of the Women’s Playhouse Trust ‘City Works’ project. And if that doesn’t make things dicey enough, Anderson has chosen a group of mixed abilities. Only half the dancers are formally trained. All are non-professional and unemployed.
extract from the preview feature by Marianne Brace, published in the Independent on 5 October 1993