Fruits of Labor

All is Life

‘Let’s try to go beyond, leaning over the balcony of language.’
What else can be an alternative to plain reality than trying to grasp the soul of things?
Now, Miet Warlop stages real people with open minds that reach straight for the heart.

Five performers swing around major themes such as religion, martyrdom, slow-motion terrorism, romanticism, tradition, leadership, psychosis, time, drugs, trips and nature…
The piece begins with a movement of lights, colours, sounds and emotions reflected onto the audience.
Through the depths of darkness we perceive a man moving about with large steps. Unlike in Warlop’s earlier piece Mystery Magnet, where a stout guy absorbs everything, the focal point now is a roadie, a figure we know from rock concerts. He is a young muscle who connects things, amplifies them and plugs every item into the network on stage.
Still in the dark, we start singing about what terrifies us. Shaking ourselves loose from fears and desires, we nestle in the open arms that this performance can be.

‘I know that you know what we know. Embarrassing!’, we sing. And ‘Tell me, is this my world? Where I belong?’.
Popular tunes and deep thoughts exorcise the issues we all have, shaking off the panic and anxieties that cloud our hearts.

Through songs, Fruits of Labor aims to create the space and momentum to breathe in unison with the audience.
After paint and plaster, in Fruits of Labor Miet Warlop now explores music and lyrics as material to build a performance.
And while her previous stage piece Dragging the Bone uses the aesthetics of art exhibitions, Fruits of Labor can be seen as a concert, a rolling revue of songs and dances, with at its core an awkwardly oversized white cube in constant transformation.

 
Press

“Fruits of Labor jumps to the beat of Miet Warlop’s heart and is a poppy, sparkling gift to a world where all forms of sparkle are in danger of being restrained. It is a dazzlingly crazy attempt to turn art into a purification ritual. One that shows how to glitter and glide in and through a world that’s twisting madly like a life-sized spinning bobbin.”
Els Van Steenberghe – Focus Knack – 23 May 2016

“Especially given someone as accurate and at the same time subtly ironic as Miet Warlop who understands how to play clichés: the postures, the slightly sluggish movements, the grip on the instrument… this is what creates charm and the substance of the performance and in the meantime gives cult status, at least judging from the applause in Hamburg, to Miet Warlop.”
Irmela Kästner – Tanz – October 2016

 
Focus Knack – 23 May 2016
Cutting Edge – 24 May 2016
Tanz – October 2016
Le Monde – 30 November 2017

 
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LIMITED EDITION VINYL WITH MUSIC OF FRUITS OF LABOR FOR SALE ON BANDCAMP