These Cost the Earth [video link]
choreographic and vocal performance
Conceived by Elaine Mitchener in collaboration with performers Tommaso Petrolo and Wai Shan Vivian Luk, These Cost the Earth is a site-specific performance reflecting on the environmental and human impact of textile waste. Commissioned by Somerset House Studios and premiered during Assembly 2024, the piece transforms the New Wing’s Chairman’s Staircase into a multi-storey performance landscape.
In a continuous cycle of descent and ascent, Luk and Petrolo navigate the staircase through movement and voice, embodying the weight, accumulation, and emotional cost of discarded materials. Interwoven with the live sound design of Michael Picknett, the work becomes a reflection on consumption, disposability, and endurance — an urgent choreography of resistance and remembrance.
concept|Elaine Mitchener movement|Tommaso Petrolo, Wai Shan Vivian Luk sound design|Michael Picknett photography|Anne Tetzlaff commissioned by|Somerset House Studios
premiere 23 March 2024 – Somerset House, London – Chairman’s Staircase presented as part of Assembly 2024
