Lyn Gardner for The Guardian
Charlotte Higgins for The Guardian

The sun is setting behind a cobweb of telephone wires in Chaco Chico, a barrio in the western outskirts of Buenos Aires. A drumbeat breaks out. Three teenagers are pounding away for all they are worth, …The drummers are joined by rows of dancers, whose slow processional steps gradually heat up into athletic floorwork and spiralling, high-kicking leaps: it’s breathtaking.

This is the murga, a Uruguayan and Argentinian street-artform that combines dance,protest song, music and intricate costumes. The dance that the 35 or so people are rehearsing now will form the finale of a piece of theatre written, sung, played and performed entirely by them. Most come from Moreno, an economically hard-pressed municipality, where unemployment is at 33%, and whose underachieving schools are the subject of news headlines.

This is theatre on the front line: a means of self-expression in a context where few have a voice.

Adrienne Sichel for South Africa's Daily Star