Three questions for Magnus Myhr

Starting this spring, Black Box teater will show a performance from our archive every season. HEARTFELT by Magnus Myhr is the first performance in this series of gems that the audience will have the opportunity to see again - or experience for the first time. This interview with Magnus was made before the premiere of HEARTFELT in 2020.

Magnus Myhr has several solo performances behind him. What are his thoughts about working with the solo format? We sat down with him to hear!

This is not the first time you are showing a solo performance. Why are you continuing to work with and explore this format?

This is my fourth attempt with the solo format. I have previously made two full-night performances, as well as one minor work for a gallery space. I think the reason why I have been so interested in this particular format has been the challenge as a whole. It is a true gift being able to have the opportunity to gather good people who inspire, work together towards something and try to stand in it. I am by no means working alone, and when I end up seemingly alone on stage, I have many more or less visible people and energies with me. But the challenge I face as a performer; I think that is the one that teases me the most, as well as being allowed to work with topics that I have a heart for and that never cease to confuse and engage.

Would you like to call HEARTFELT a self-portrait – does the solo contain any autobiographical elements?

All my work has a personal starting point, but I work hard to ensure that it does not become private. So I think it would be wrong to name it a self-portrait, even though there is a lot of "Magnus in the monitor". My body and my experiences are part of the material, but I try to open it up so that everyone involved can contribute. In that way, we listen forward together, and the project is lifted out and up and hopefully over to the audience.

A solo work is often the result of a collaboration. How do you work with your artistic partners?

I work with the best people! I take a chance and invite people I admire into the projects. In this project, the work with Terje Tjøme Mossige, Ingvild Langgård, Jakob Oredsson, Melanie Fieldseth, Arne Lindberget and Ingeborg Husbyn Aarsand has been absolutely crucial. I come up with the idea and the terms, and then we work our way forward together. I often feel that my strength as a choreographer is the ability of assembling people. Terje has released so much new physical material in me, Ingvild and Jakob have created music and space / light that pursues and challenges my thoughts about how body and sound / space can dance together and independently of each other. Melanie helps me sharpen it and put it all in context. Arne and Ingeborg are power centers that allow everything to land. In addition, my harp teachers for almost two years now, Julie Rokseth and Sidsel Walstad, have been inspirers, as the project has grown through the work of learning to maneuver the harp.

HEARTFELT is on bewteen 23–24 February on our Main stage.