Jonathan Burrows & Matteo Fargion (UK)
Both Sitting Duet & Body Not Fit For Purpose/​ Cheap Lecture & The Cow Piece

21. april 2017

Past showings

19:00, Store scene

”There are few performers who can hold an audience captive like this double act… the timing of every note, shrug, laugh and gesture is awesome.” Five stars, The Guardian.

”…occasionally feeling gloomy during some performance or other, I’ve wished that a fed-up theater goblin would whisk away the show I’m watching and deposit Burrows and Fargion in its place.” DanceBeat, New York.

Two one hour performances from choreographer Jonathan Burrows and composer Matteo Fargion, whose work sits somewhere between dance, music, live art and comedy, radiating delight even as it makes the audience think. Over the past twelve years the two artists have built a body of duets which mix the formality of classical music composition with an open and often anarchic approach to performance and audiences, bringing them a worldwide following.

Both Sitting Duet was the piece that made their reputation back in 2002, setting the tone for an original mix of humour and fierce intelligence that marks out what they do. In Oslo they’ll follow it with their most recent performance Body Not Fit For Purpose, a commission from the 2014 Venice Biennale which clashes politics against the empty joy of dancing, unravelling the link between meaning and action and raising questions in the midst of our laughter. (1 hour no interval)

Cheap Lecture initiates a game with the structure of John Cage’s Lecture On Nothing, and The Cow Piece then re-stages the lecture as a riotous celebration of the limits of logic, as 12 plastic cows dance, sing, speak, think, sleep, go, come and die. (1 hour no interval)

Workshop with Matteo Fargion 20 April 2017 12h-17h.

  • Extra credits Both Sitting Duet was supported by public funding through the National Lottery from Arts Council England and co-produced by Kaaitheater Brussels. Body Not Fit For Purpose was commissioned by the Venice Biennale and supported with public funding by the National Lottery through Arts Council England. Cheap Lecture was commissioned by Cultureel Centrum Maasmechelen and Dans in Limburg and The Cow Piece was supported by public funding through the Flemish Ministry and Kaaitheater Brussels. Jonathan Burrows and Matteo Fargion are co-produced by Kaaitheater Brussels, PACT Zollverein Essen, Sadler’s Wells Theatre London and BIT Teatergarasjen Bergen. The two men are currently in-house artists at the Nightingale, Brighton England