Review - February 26. Matters of existence in people's daily lives are being looked upon and reflected in fundamentally different ways by the two choreographers: Stijn Celis and Jo Strømgren.
Celis' piece - Looming Sky - explores movement as a human activity starting from one aspect of it: the surprising consequences of simple situations and minor impulses. The ballet is a vivid performance where dancers oscillate between powerful firm and apparently chaotic movements and milder ones suggesting short moments of peace. Pieces of industrial music inspired by SKF's production process make the movement even more technical and powerful as its intensity grows towards relief in the end.
The colourful Looming Sky is constructed around an essential moving element - the sphere - and reduced to one big word - Olé. As Celis himself explains in an interview with the Gothenburg Opera, olé, a word of Spanish origin, has spiritual connotations and suggests lightness and ease.
Utkanten (The outskirts) by Jo Strømgren reveals completely other aspects of life than Looming Sky in the most delightful hilarious way. The show is a combination of theatre and dance where the voiceover adds up to the humorous tone of the performance (English translation of the Swedish voiceover is available!).
The life of a small community in some unnamed outskirts around Gothenburg in 1964 reveals spicy aspects of human relationships. Murder, sex, and religiousness are some of the daily matters pictured in Utkanten. Life in the small community appears to be very colourful and the threads connecting its inhabitants knit themselves in intricate patterns. Private becomes public, dangerous becomes ubiquitous and promiscuous becomes normal. In other words, a good laugh worth having!
Strømgren /Celispremiered on Saturday, February 26 and will run at the Gothenburg Opera until March 26.
