Martyn Ware’s epic sound and performance piece at Tony’s Empress Ballroom, Church of Rare Souls, blended Northern Soul classics from the Ballroom’s heyday in a soundscape intertwined with human voices and industrial sounds recorded live on factory floors across Lancashire.
Produced in collaboration with manufacturers and workforces at Cherry Tree Bakery, WEC Group, Darwen Terracotta, Silentnight and Graham and Brown, voices from the factory floor remind us of the ‘work hard, play hard’ cultures of northern towns, where work ruled the week and dancing ruled the weekend.
Small groups of Festival audiences were invited back into Tony’s for two incredible days to hear the sounds of factories and the stories of the workers, before the historic space erupted into life with Northern Soul dancers, spinning like ghosts on the sprung floor of the ballroom. Listen to the podcast about the work below.
