Gjenstand og fortvilelse (Object and Despair) (2025)

In Object and Despair, Ingun Bjørnsgaard examines everyday situations and human fallibility, in close collaboration with dancers Catharina Vehre Gresslien, Ludvig Daae and Edith Strand Askeland.

The three experienced dancers have worked together in several performances by the choreographer, and have developed a common reflection that enables deeper movement-based exploration of the ambiguous and the vulnerable related to a visual dramaturgy.

By means of various literary and aesthetic references, new spaces for choreography related to relational trials and tribulations are explored. Methodologically, literal recipes of conduct from the Scandinavian 1960s, create opportunities for further exploration of designated ways of moving and behaving seemingly correctly.

The many pitfalls of uncertainty and shame in any situation are at stake, as well as the humane longing for clearer solutions in our time of great complexity. And at the same time, irrationality becomes all the more striking in the work’s investigations of human control and frailty.

Well-composed sculptural structures of movement create ambiguity and dynamics in the staged space. Construction and deconstruction of various tableaux vivants become part of the many layers of the performance.

The trio format opens up to the syncopated and uncoordinated in a private space where there are limited possibilities for movements that seem appropriate. Instead, the imperfect becomes a separate idiom in Ingun Bjørnsgaard’s choreographic universe.

As always with Bjørnsgaard, the choreographic work is developed in close connection between movement and music, and in Object and Despair she collaborates for the first time with Norwegian composer Jan Martin Smørdal.

https://www.dansenshus.com/forestillinger/ingun-bjornsgaard-prosjekt-helena

Dansens Hus, Oslo

Main stage

Then the performance will tour towards Trondheim
and be presented as part of DansiT´s program, played at Rosendal Teater:
27. november
28. november

 

Choreographer

Ingun Bjørnsgaard

Dancers

Catharina Vehre Gresslien

Edith Strand Askeland

Ludvig Daae

Stage design

Thomas Björk

Composer

Jan Martin Smørdal

Costume design

Solveig Holthe Bygdnes

Lighting design

Hans Skogen

Sound design

Morten Pettersen