Publications
Emilia Adelöw
Choreographers Foreword
The process project Site Specific Nordic Project was conducted in studio and in public places in Stockholm, Helsinki, Copenhagen and Oslo in 2009. As much as these were ment to be part of a working process and collection of material, the presentations in public spaces became 11 small performances on its own for curious random by passers in each city, day and night.
Site Specific Nordic Project puts several questions about the urban room and the body as a carrier of communication. Public spaces were used as a thematic and narrative resource. The idea was to experiment with choreographic material and movement in different urban surroundings to give several expressions and angles of approach to the presentations. Nordic cities were researched as space and choreographies were developed for dancers and walkers-on. The concept involved choreography, dance and movement with inspiration from individual spaces.
Experiences, developed movement language from the Site Specific Nordic Project became a basis for the development of the theatrical performance City Fragments, in 2010.
City Fragments
The performance is inspired by the Nordic urban landscape. The landscape that shapes personalities, the streets that change character from day to night, from a moment in busy meeting street to the next surrounded by its silence. The key element is the people in this landscape, their perception and memory, the distance and the closeness to their own experience in life.
The dance takes place in a room of collected images from the city. Simple parts as a car, window, and a wall are fixed points for movement between reality and dream. The original soundtrack is a contribution to the movement between different moods and rooms and has a slightly cinematic approach. The light defines the urban space and refers to a more abstract notion of the Nordic cities. We are exploring split focus – parallel focus – pulse – light – life. The moment is always present. There is no start, and no end. Only fragments of time and moods.
The Urban Room and the Dance of it’s Citizens
Sharing her tool box with a number of leading contemporary artists both within dance and the art world in general, Adelöw brings dance, and henceforth art, into the spaces where people live and breath, or even into spaces people left a few minutes ago. She brings her dancers into the city streets and asks them to perform, just given certain directory instruments on the way, some marginal rules about theme and expected result. She knows very well how she wishes her dancers to absorb the space they enter, and at the same time she waits in patience and curiosity to see the impact of her choreographic choices.
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Her dancers re-creates City life and stops it, all through interactivity and their use of the Citizens themselves as integrated parts of the performances. She instructs them to charge their dance with a whole spectrum of feelings or forces, from the smallest and barely visible movements to an almost direct mimesis of City life as we know it. And as she points out herself, the inside out effect of the first of these practices is striking.
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As the movements of the dancers are reduced to a minimum, the movements and activities of the citizens become all the more visible! Additionally the pure silence of the Nordic Cityscapes of the afternoon (we are few in the North, and the streets seem empty compared to lively capitals on the continent), resulted in a particular atmosphere both among the dancers and in their communication with the public.
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by Arnt N. Fredheim, August 2010