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
- Georgiana Dobre / Ellen Jerstad / The Big Dig Research: Slathered Tongue
- STORSVEEN / KJØLÅS: Prepping
- Maja Hannisdal: Venison
- Teddy: LØPSK
Georgiana Dobre / Ellen Jerstad / The Big Dig Research: Slathered Tongue
“The tongue slathered up to lave bright mucus from the taurine pad enveloping the nostrils, muzzle tusked nearer boar than bull. It breathed cold steam in water-thin dawnlight. Its gut was heavy as some gone beer-hound´s, through muscle-ridget.”
– Samuel R-Delany, The Mad Man
The Big Dig is a performance research collective consisting of Maiken Rye, Georgiana Dobre, Annike Flo, Alejandro Chellet and Ellen Jerstad from Scenekunstkompaniet Øy. The company explores themes such as heterotopia, utopia, technology-symbiosis and spiritual awakening through prismatic-ecology, sexuality and feminism.
During Platform, Georgiana Dobre and Ellen Jerstad will share a soft-boiled experiment from an unfunded passion project.
Slathered Tongue becomes an exploration of the zombie as both a queer and untamed, monstrous body, but also as a mirror of society's obsession with superficiality and mechanical anti-aging disorders. Inspired by Romanian strigoi and Norwegian draug, mythology, melodrama and black-metal vocal practice are explored in a zombie-pornographic present-day apocalypse.
- Georgiana Dobre (she/they) is a Romanian dancer, performer and choreographer who lives and works in Norway. She has a master's degree in choreography from the University of the Arts in Oslo and a bachelor's degree in dance practice and choreography from the National University of Theater and Film in Bucharest. Deeply immersed in speculative somatic practices and driven by references from queer, neo-materialist and posthuman theory, her work explores ideas related to the naturalization of the body and its forms of escapism in relation to histories of violence and climate collapse. Georgiana has recently shown her work at Suprainfinit Gallery, Sandefjord Kunstforening, Høstutstillingen, Knipsu Gallery, TOU in Stavanger, National Dance Center and MNAC - Museum of Contemporary Art.
- Ellen Jerstad (she/her) is an interdisciplinary director, designer, performer and playwright whose work mixes ecology, mythology and speculative narrative. She has a master's degree in theater from the Academy of Arts in Oslo and has studied dance and theater at the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague and the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. Jerstad creates immersive, sensory-based landscapes that explore transformation, connection and the longing for community. She has recently created works for Teater Innlandet, Unge Viken Teater, Ultimafestivalen and Dansens Hus. As the driving force behind Øy, she works to challenge conventional narratives and redefine contemporary performance.
- Visual artist, costumes: Karoline Bakken Lund
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).
- Choreographer: Maja Hannisdal
- Performers: Unn Faleide (she/her), Alexandra Tveit (she/her), Maja Hannisdal (she/her)
- Music: Guoste Tamulynaite (she/her)
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.
