Development Process

In January 2020 three dancers agreed to observe a car wash and later to take part in a workshop exploring their observations through movement. As a starting point we used images, key words and facts collected from our observations, interviews and reports as provocations to create two dance sequences.

The first sequence, Sharing a Mattress, expresses the exhaustion of car wash workers as they return home from work and shows the monotony of their daily routine. The soundtrack was created from 'found' car wash sounds.

The second sequence, Car Wash, turns the mechanical movements of car wash tasks into a stylised dance sequence which emphasises the co-ordinated and automated nature of the work.

The music in the second sequence is Stil by Acid Arab, reproduced with the kind permission of Hervé Carvalho and Guido Minsky.