Welcome to the first edition of Plattform, an informal viewing platform for smaller productions, performance excerpts and productions that are in a development process. Plattform is a social meeting place with free entry. This edition of Plattform is curated by dance artist Rina Rosenqvist.
Rina Rosenqvist is a Norwegian/Venezuelan dance artist with a BA in performing dance from the University of Stavanger. Rina works with performing, co-creating and creating in various artistic contexts and constellations such as performing arts, theater and visual arts. She has worked for companies and artists such as Bananaz, Ludvig Daae, Ida Wigdel, AURORA, Inés Belli, Linda Birkedal, Theater F, Goro Tronsmo, Hagit Yakira, Roskva Yasmin Andersen, Live Skullerud, Mari Angell and Infopsin.
Her own work has been presented at Dansens Hus, RAS, Bærum Kulturhus, LungA Festival and List in Ljosi in Iceland. Rina has also been an active promoter in the creation and managing of the Montebøllo art collective, which is a workspace and meeting point for artists with various disciplines in the free performance arts field in Oslo.
Program
- Teddy: LØPSK
- STORSVEEN / KJØLÅS: Prepping
- Maja Hannisdal: Venison
Teddy: LØPSK
In this introspective performance, Teddy explores themes such as gender and identity in a world filled with boxes, norms and expectations. Through his search for answers, he questions who really has the power to define us. Where are the boundaries between the masculine and the feminine? And who decides what is “girly” or “boyish”?
Teddy moves through life as if he were walking the catwalk during a fashion show – both vulnerable and in full control – he shows us how we all curate our own identity. LØPSK balances the personal and the political, and challenges the audience to reflect on their own preconceived notions.
Teddy (he/him) from Bergen is an interdisciplinary artist based in Oslo and a familiar face in the club scene. He is a stage artist and active participant in the Norwegian ballroom environment, where he goes by the name “Teddy Angels”. Teddy has left a clear mark on Oslo's queer club culture, with performances at events such as Bad Habits, EvrySome, Det Gode Selskab, QCC, KarmaKlubb and Oslo Drag Festival. Artistically, Teddy explores identity and how it can take different forms, which he does through innovative make-up, performances and his growing career as a rapper. Through his movements in the world, he reflects on gender, identity and his own instincts around these topics.
STORSVEEN / KJØLÅS: Prepping
Some choices we make ourselves, other choices it is as if the expectations of our surroundings make them for us. Who are we to ourselves, and who are we to others? In the performance Prepping (under work) we explore how staging oneself can give a sense of identity. But what if the self is fragmented, unclear and ambivalent? What actually creates an “I”? We work with the composition of semiotic signs in poses and sounds to create a character full of identities, and conflicting wills and emotions. A character who is never with others, but also never without an audience.
Natanya Kjølås (she/her) is a Norwegian-Chilean dance artist based in Oslo. She works performing and creatively with dance, choreography, performance and music. Natanya is educated at the University of the Arts in Oslo with a bachelor's degree in contemporary dance (2016–2019). Alongside her studies, she choreographed and danced for Nils Bech in Operaen (2017) and created her first solo work Bedra bedra bedra (2018) in collaboration with composer Fredrik Storsveen. Natanya is an active member of the art collective Montebøllo, employed as a dancer in Czardasfyrstinnen at DNO&B and as a dancer and assistant in Mia Habib Productions.
Fredrik Storsveen (he/him) is a Norwegian composer and performing artist educated at the Norwegian Academy of Music and Anton Bruckner Privatuniversität. His artistic production consists of musical theatre, music for theater and dance, and instrumental pieces for smaller and larger ensembles, where he incorporates light, video, samples and theatrical elements. He has also composed music for Den Gylne Drage at Hålogaland Teater and Melancholia at Den Nationale Scene, among others.
Maja Hannisdal: Venison
“When Munch was a boy… freedom was a potato. It was you didn’t get killed today. Freedom from hunger, from the rusty blade. But to free himself, the man ate first so others could not. He killed before he was killed. He wanted nothing more, because only kings had the freedom to want. But now, everywhere you look, you see kings. Everything they want, they call their own, and if they cannot have it, they say that they are not free. They even pretend that freedom should be free, that it has no cost. But the cost is always… death. Life for life. Me… or you.”
– Ole Munch, Fargo, season 5, episode 4, 2023
Venison is an artistic work from the very beginning that experiments with the themes hunter and prey, prey and predator, victim and aggressor, freedom and survival, care, law and court; a beginning of a showdown with man's self-righteousness and abuse of power.
2024 has been a dark year so far for violence against women with a wave of partner murders in Norway at the start of the year, mutilation, rape and murder of a 31-year-old female doctor at her workplace in India in August followed by demonstrations worldwide, and a rape case in France in September that includes over 70 abusers that are all men from all social classes of all ages. With this fresh in mind, we work from a disturbing traditional representation and normalization of gender abuse of power in popular culture, with inspiration from recent films and series that slowly but surely challenge the norm. Series such as Women Talking from 2022, Fargo season five from 2023 and True Detective season four from 2024 are recommended.
Venison experiments with textures in the body that can accommodate both predator, prey and everything in between in an attempt to touch on age-old power structures where the victim role is often more shamed than the aggressor. The material has been prepared by choreographer Maja Hannisdal in close collaboration with dance artists Unn Faleide and Alexandra Tveit. The soundtrack has been developed by composer Guoste Tamulynaite in collaboration with Hannisdal.
Maja Hannisdal is a Norwegian dance artist and videographer based in Oslo. Hannisdals work is rooted in an interest in the seemingly irrelevant, the unwanted and down-prioritized, and balances between the performative and the personal, the private and professional, the beautiful and the disgusting. Through her artistic practice she examines value systems with a special focus on power hierarchies and sustainability, and a fondness for the grotesque and complex. Hannisdal has a BA in contemporary dance from The Academy of Arts in Amsterdam and an MA in choreography from the program New Performative Practices at the Academy of Arts in Stockholm. Her work has been shown at, among others, The EYE (NL), The Kitchen (US), Mauer (DE), and Gothenburg dance and theater festival (SE).
The order of the program has not been set, more information coming soon!
