The Cost of Living: Equality among Everyone
The Cost of Living is a dance film made in 2004 by DV8 Films Ltd directed by Lloyd Newson, the founder of DV8 Physical Theater. The film uses dance, dialogue and physical theatre to tell the story of two street performers and their interaction with other performers in Cromer, a seaside resort town, at the end of the summer season. The film is about people who don't fit the norm of society due disability and homosexuality. The characters in the film are circus-like performers who live differently than most people. The film is different from most dances because it uses dialogue and abstract movement to deliver the message. Newson’s Cost of Living explores the constant struggles and discrimination encountered by people who don’t fit society’s norms though notion of humor and pathos of tragedy and multiple emotions.
The Cost of Living is about the people who don’t satisfy the society’s definition of market value. This includes homosexuality, physical and psychological disabilities.The dance is highlights that it's okay to break away from tradition because either way there is a "cost" to everything. The plot of the dance piece was at (24:48-25:00) where the disabled man dance with a woman in a dance studio where…show more content… The dance probes the hierarchies of art and audience, who gets to the top and who’s left out in the cold, what we buy into when we buy a ticket, the gap between the come-on and the pay-off. His work is very significant because of the message he wants to share, given norms has been dominating the society in the contemporary world. The cost of living challenges our perception about ability and the critique of society’s obsession with image which has been apparent in different historical periods. Newson has truly proven himself as someone who carries a frisson of risk without packing the punch of a challenge through the Cost of
