As Oktoberdans 2022 comes to a close, Bergen’s theatregoers are invited one last time to partake in a feast of performative diversity made up of imaginative, close-to-the-bone and somewhat nostalgic works that shine brightly in the darkness of the stage, reminding us that in spite of the widespread despair of our post-natural world, there’s still hope to be found in the high mountains of the creative mind.
As noted by environmental humanities and deconstruction specialist professor Timothy Clark in his recent The Value of Ecocriticism – which focuses on recent explorations on the necessity of adopting a mode of thinking that allows for a reconsideration of humanity’s treatment of nature and society within the Anthropocene transition – ecopoetry (that is, nature poetry that has designs on us, that imagines changing the ways we think, feel about, and live and act in the world) is seen to make its creators «part of the entire universal assemblage, while also being made to carry its impossible weight». With this in mind, Oktoberdans 2022’s piece de resistance, Please Please Please by virtuous trio La Ribot/Monnier/Rodrigues could be defined as an ecotheatre performance capable of disassembling our current experience of the world from that most intimate internal point that is our heart.
Through a series of well-crafted, metaphorical stories, director and dramaturge Tiago Rodrigues (at the texts) and performer-choreographers Mathilde Monnier and La Ribot (at the movements, the voices and the costumes) «invent a form of loving consolation in the face of a coming demise and the tide-like swell of fear». Set in a cavernous underworld in which the afterimage of a «gigantic monster» is crystallised in all of its harmlessness, Please Please Please’s explicit eco-critical message hits home with great irony (a powerful tool that had been missing in action throughout the festival’s previous performances), delivering a simple yet astonishing feat of politically- and environmentally-engaged physical theatre.
With a clear investment in Fiction’s broader project of reshaping reality through the universalisation of individual experiences, Tiago Rodrigues’ dramaturgy twirls and coils through the untiring limbs of the two performers with fine-tuned pace and impeccable timing, building up plots and expectations alike for an entranced, yet unsuspecting audience. Indeed, by carefully introducing elements of an ominous future to come in its narration, «the La Ribot, Monnier and Rodrigues team of existentialists excels in bringing to light and questioning the foundations of stage-based constructions/illusions as well as psychological, social and lexical ones», thus plunging spectators in an unexpected exploration of the self in which the slow process of storytelling can offer deep knowledge to whoever is willing to listen.
And the emotions do not stop flowing also in the next performance, Lisa Colette Bysheim’s In-Betweenness, «a poetic investigation of soft power». Set in the bare space of Bergen Kjøtt’s main stage, Bysheim’s choreography invites the audience to focus on the «ability to influence the behaviour of others to get what you want», here declined in a balance-negotiating dance between two performers.
By implementing the fundamentals of the improvised partner dancing called Contact Improvisation (sharing weight, touch and movement awareness), Bysheim and Max Wallmaier’s somatic discourse (amplified and dissected by the live interventions of sound designer and musician Mike McCormick) takes the wraps off the creation of power structures and hierarchies, all the while «questioning inherited patterns of behaviour as a form of power roles». Far from being self-conceited, the 40-minute-long practice of transparency often meets the corporeal limits and the subsequent falls with light-hearted acceptance («You didn’t have me») and unfaltering playfulness («Let’s go there»), obtaining a well-deserved applause by a humanity that is all too perceptive to disequilibrium in these times of constant crisis.
A similar, yet more esoteric analysis of social structures can also be found in Ingri Midgard Fiksdal and Núria Guiu’s «hyper-modern ghost story» – Medium. Starting from post-humanism’s attempt to «reinclude other-than-humans and re-entangle Man as someone who is always already in relation», the performance presented on the last day of festival in eerie Studio USF wishes to take into consideration also «the supernatural and what lies beyond the material and visible», thus recognizing them «as more-than-human agents». Moreover, by drawing a parallel between possession-based death rituals and ideology-based life, the channelling duo also wishes to explore the power that images of bodies and movement have over our imagination, purporting that «all content on the Internet is seemingly a kind of phantasmagoria, colonizing our imaginaries, flesh, thought, and the natural environment».
By offering herself up as vessel for this choreographed séance, then, Guiu initiates a primordial succession of movements that slowly takes the shape of more or less familiar references to past and present dances selected from «personal, cultural and virtual archives». Indeed, the hour-long summoning sees the incarnation of many iconic works by seminal choreographers and performers such as Pina Bausch, Wim Vandekeybus and Anna Teresa de Keersmaeker, but also of more recent creative expressions such as those portrayed in TikTok’s challenges and YouTube videos. Using «collage, cover and re-interpretation where the body becomes a multitemporal transit channel», Medium «aims to negotiate the universes of the visible and the invisible, of materiality and volatility, spirit and flesh in order to question this threefold of the body as both natural, cultural, as well as channel for the supernatural».
Albeit interesting in both terms of research and intention, Fiksdal and Guiu’s co-conceptualisation and co-creation seems to lose itself in the folds of choreographic possession and intellectual elucubration, offering an upbeat and magnetic first half hour that gradually loses grip and credibility as movements become gratuitous and both the sound and set design miss their chance to contribute to the materialisation of a convincing hereafter.
The shows were played within Oktoberdans 2022 international dance festival
Bergen – Norway, various locations
19:30
Studio Bergen
Nøstegaten 119 – Bergen
Friday 28 and Saturday 29 October 2022Please Please Please
a performance by La Ribot, Mathilde Monnier, Tiago Rodrigues
with La Ribot, Mathilde Monnier
lights Éric Wurtz
translation Thomas Resendes
scenography Annie Tolleter
production scenography Christian Frappereau, Mathilde Monier
costumes La Ribot, Mathilde Monnier
costume production Marion Schmid, Letizia Compitiello
music creation and sound design Nicolas Houssin
technical direction and light design Marie Prédour
set direction Guillaume Defontaine
technical manager Hélène Moulin
international distribution Julie Le Gall, Bureau Cokot
production Nicolas Roux
thanks to Magda Bizarro
associate production Le Quai Centre Dramatique National Angers Pays de la Loire
with support from la Fondation d’entreprise Hermès dans le cadre de son programme New Settings
co-production Teatros del Canal, Théâtre Vidy-Lausanne, Les Spectacles vivants – Centre Pompidou, Festival d’Automne à Paris, Comédie de Genève, Teatro Nacional D. Maria II, Teatro Municipal do Porto, Le Parvis scène nationale Tarbes Pyrénées, Theaterfestival Boulevard, Les Hivernales – CDCN d’Avignon, BIT Teatergarasjen, Compagnie MM, La Ribot-Genève
supported by OPART/Estúdios Victor Córdon, CND Centre national de la Danse – Pantin
Ph.: Mila Ercoli
17:00
Bergen Kjøtt
Skutevikstorget 1 – Bergen
Friday 28 and Saturday 29 October 2022In-Betweenness
concept, choreography and text Lisa Colette Bysheim
creative performers Lisa Colette Bysheim, Max Wallmeier
sound design and musician Mike McCormick
playwright/outer eye Janne-Camilla Lyster
photo Dev Dhunsi
commissioned work by Den Norske Opera and Ballett Kvinnelig choreographic venture, presented during CODA 2021
supported by FFUK, the Cultural Council and Bergen Municipality
17:00 and 21:00
Studio USF
Georgernes Verft 12 – Bergen
Saturday 29 October 2022Medium
concept, channelling and performance Núria Guiu
concept and channelling Ingri Midgard Fiksdal
music pieces from the “Pyroclasts” album of SUNN O)))
spatialization Stephen O’Malley
costume and set design Ronak Moshtagi
light Phillip Isaksen
sound technician Ernst van der Loo
dramaturgy Guiu, Fiksdal, Isaksen, Moshtagi
costume and set design assistant Zoya Tahery
production and distribution Nicole Schuchardt and Ariadna Miquel
production and administration Eva Grainger, Ida Frømyr Borgen
produced by Fiksdal Dans Stiftelse
co-produced by Black Box theater and BIT Teatergarasjen
supported by Arts Council Norway
