Still Life
- nature morte with five bodies
Dance performance for four dancers and an accordionist.
Premiere: 15th February 2001, Kanonhallen, Copenhagen.
Concept and direction: Anders Christiansen
Choreography: Anders Christiansen and the dancers
Dancers: Jytte Kjøbek, João Lobo, Ole Birger Hansen, Jean Hugues Miredin
Accordion: Minna Weurlander
Live accordion music: Vesa Tuomi, J.S. Bach, Vladislav Zolotarjov
Original music and sound: Jørgen Teller
Words: Isaiah 11, 6-8; Psalms 139, 7-12; First Corinthians 13, 11
Set design: Nanna Arnfred
Costume design: Lise Klitten
Lighting design: Lars Egegaard Sørensen
Producer / PR: Gerd Shottländer
Production: (stillleben)
Duration:ca. 2 hours inc. interval
Press quotes:
Fulfilled expectations
”Anders Christiansen has made a great effort over the last 6-7 years as a dancer and choreographer to communicate directly with his audience. He is breaking down habits in so many ways, that one can hardly call his work dance or dance theatre. It is more exactly necessary movement. Without artistic gestures, or any soft-soaping of the beautiful. The same goes for his new Still Life - nature morte with 5 bodies.
...There are bodies in the image. Every body characteristic and unique as a type. The androgynous mulatto, the ageing sex-diva, a porky macho man. One after another they draw the purple backdrop away and allow us to peep into the machinery and pull-ropes of the image, where rules about sex and age have dissolved to allow them to move in a common space, where there are, as yet, no rules. Here the cello is turned upside down, and used more as a partner than as an instrument. The Masai warrior is white, men are breast-feeding men. And the accordion, which played earlier, breathes like an enormous, exhausted lung. Everything takes on a new life.”
Janus Kodal (Politiken, 17th February 2001)
”Anders Christiansen is a man of stillness and minimalism in the world of dancing. It therefore seems only natural that he has chosen to employ the tradition of still-life for his new dance performance for four dancers and an accordionist. Inspired by pictorial art’s nature morte or still-life, Anders Christiansen’s collage of movable images not only focuses on symbolic objects – including the body – but also, with great humour, on the grotesque details of the borderland between life and death.
In a smoke-filled room dominated by red velvet and semi-decadent atmosphere, we are introduced to an elderly woman with flowing grey hair who, in the shape of Jytte Kjøbæk, charismatically and continuously challenges sensuality. Whether she is accompanied by a cello, a man or with flowers in her arms, putting on or taking off high-heeled shoes, elastic stockings or other body-supporting instruments. The nightclub atmosphere is underlined by the extremely flexible Jean Hugues Miredin who crosses his limbs into fascinating positions under a radiant mirror ball like an androgynous beauty in a white dress.
Ole Birger Hansen appears as a giant albino Masai, and with Jean Hugues Miredin he performs absurd pas de deux steps and positions, while João Lobo dressed as a macho man in a suit is crawling like an animal on the floor. The enchanting musical centre of it all is Minna Weurlander who, dressed in a sailor's dress and heavily tattooed for the occasion, entertains with her exquisite accordion playing.”
Vibeke Wern (Berlingske Tidende, 17th February 2001)
Venues:
Kanonhallen, Copenhagen, 15-28 February 2001.
Still Life was produced with support from The Danish Arts Council, The State Arts Foundation, Augustinus Fonden, Wilhelm Hansen Fonden, Københavns Kulturfond.
Photographs: Christoffer Askman
1 Ole Birger Hansen, Jytte Kjøbek, Jean Hugues Miredin, João Lobo, Minna Weurlander
2 Jean Hugues Miredin, Minna Weurlander, João Lobo, Ole Birger Hansen
3 Jean Hugues Miredin, Ole Birger Hansen, João Lobo
4 Jean Hugues Miredin, João Lobo, Ole Birger Hansen
5 Jytte Kjøbek, Ole Birger Hansen, João Lobo, Jean Hugues Miredin
|
