FULL The Woman Who Refused to Dance (Shirley Thompson) London 2017 Nadine Benjamin, Tania Dimbelolo

Information on the Performance

• Work Title: The Woman Who Refused to Dance  
• Composer: Thompson Shirley   
• Libretto: Shirley J. Thompson    Libretto Text, Libretto Index
• Venue & Opera Company: Robin Howard Dance Theatre, The Place, London, UK  
• Recorded: July 27, 2017
• Type: Staged Opera Live
• Singers: Nadine Benjamin, Tania Dimbelolo
• Conductor:   
• Orchestra: Instrumental Ensemble  
• Choreographer: Monique Jonas  
• Stage Director: Anastasia Belina-Johnson   
• Costume Designer:   

Information about the Recording

• Published by: Tête à Tête  
• Date Published: 2017  
• Format: Streaming
• Quality Video: 4 Audio:4
• Subtitles: nosubs  

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION ON THIS PERFORMANCE

The Woman Who Refused to Dance is one from Shirley J. Thompson’s ground breaking series of operas, HEROINES OF OPERA, where she unearths submerged narratives of overshadowed women in history, creating heroines rather than femme fatales from the operatic convention. In 2006 she was invited to create a piece to open the Parliamentary exhibition, People and Parliament: The Act of the Abolition of the Trade in Enslaved African People 1807. While researching, she discovered a political illustration by Isaac Cruikshank that shook her to the core. It portrayed a young, ‘unknown woman’, being hung by the ankle on a boat filled with enslaved people! In 1792 the ‘unknown woman’ was on a boat heading for the island of Grenada from Calabar, West Africa and had refused to dance, as was the daily order by the ship captain, Captain Kimber. Her refusal led to an accusation of insubordination and she was beaten and hung as punishment for her act of defiance, and most importantly, as an example to the other enslaved persons. The ‘unknown woman’ died three days later, but the incident was widely reported. William Wilberforce employed the case to argue for the abolition of the Trans-Atlantic trade in Parliament. This was eventually passed in 1807 and 2017 is the 210th anniversary of the Act.

The opera conveys the drama of the incident on the boat but most profoundly the opera also represents the transcendence of The (unknown) Woman as she hangs on the boat. Thoughts of her idyllic past and of what her future life might have been, are paramount. The Woman Who Refused to Dance brings to the fore a significant period in our shared histories and feeds into the dialogue about present-day human trafficking, the second most lucrative trade in the world.

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