The Jobs Project

RealLivePeople(in)Motion, a company known for creating accessible and inventive contemporary dance, takes on the workplace with their latest piece, The Jobs Project. With original music from composer Ilan Isakov (composer of the hit film, “Ai Wei Wei, Never Sorry”) and set design by local artist Andrea Caldarise, the company transforms the Latvian Society into a space where audience members can absorb, laugh and reflect upon what work looks, sounds and feels like in Philadelphia today.

Seamlessly interwoven through the piece are the voices of the 25 working Philadelphians interviewed by director Gina Hoch-Stall: from CEOs to sanitation workers, all discuss their working lives and how their jobs affect their sense of identity. These interviews have inspired choreographic segments filled with heavy lifting, gestures honed by the precision of repetition, and physical explorations of how people respond to the question “what do you do?”

From Interviewee David Griesing: “I was behind one of those interview voices, and can tell you this: while there’s nothing quite like sitting in a darkened theater and suddenly hearing your voice coming through the speakers, the experience jumps several levels when highly accomplished performers start responding to what you’ve just said.”

From Dance Critic Carolyn Merritt: “Equally at home upside down and right side up–headspins, handstands, and inversions abound–[RLPiM] are seamless improvisers, skilled in partnering. Particularly fulfilling are repetitive gestural phrases that evoke recognizable tasks–mouse-clicking, counting, cranking, pouring, filing–only to evolve and transcend the literal, and physical manipulations that make bodies object and concept…”