Still Life is a new creation by Alan Lucien Øyen for Mirai Moriyama and Daniel Proietto, two performers who have ventured far beyond contemporary dance in search for new physical expressions – together they share experience from working with Kabuki, Butoh, contemporary theatre, film and television.
Still Life, translates into French as Nature Morte - dead nature. Butoh is often described as living death, brought forward by distress. A state of dying, still alive: a suspension of grotesque dilapidation. What better image to describe our time? Nature is dying, and all the while we’re rendered immobile, stuck in our still lives – living, but dying. Through the windows of our little chambers, we watch forest fires and torrential floods tear away at the landscape – we stare life in the face – transfixed by the constant echo of our desires, what we think we want – predicted for us, on the basis of our fractured selves, millions of data-points re-hashed and sold back to us as advertisements for lives we wished we were living: Connected, disconnected.
With the incessant acceleration of communication, technology, and interconnectivity, more and more people are expressing increased feelings of isolation, alienation and polarization. The world has become a global village of a million minorities, each one a threat to one’s own - we’re living through crisis of identity, there’s a war for everyone - it’s chaos.
But there’s a terrible monotony in chaos. As we sit, wide awoke and transfixed, trapped in a terrifying stop-motion time-lapse, a white noise trembles underneath our still lives; humming, burning and screaming behind the mask of sophistication that has become modern social interaction.
"With Still Life I aim to create a work that innately deals with nature – within and without – exploring how we can mend our relationship with ourselves, and in turn each other and the living world around us.
Omnia mors aequat - In death we are equal."
- Alan Lucien Øyen, (April 2023)
Choreography/text:
ALAN LUCIEN ØYEN
with MIRAI MORIYAMA, DANIEL PROIETTO
Set and costume design: AIDA VAINIERI, ALAN LUICEN ØYEN
Light design: MARTIN FLACK
Sound design: MATHIAS GRØNSDAL
Composer HENRIK SKRAM
Sound Design MATHIAS GRØNSDAL
Light Design MARTIN FLACK
Technical Director/Lights Technician CHRIS SANDERS
Stage Manager DANNY HONES
Scenography Assistant AYANA ISHIHARA
Producer/Tour Manager ISAÏE RICHARD
Ocean Backdrop by: CHRISTOF BECK, CELINA FUCHTS, ANATOLI DETZEL
Additional Music by: OLAFUR ARNALDS, RICHARD SKELTON, HANAN TOWNSHEND, ALEX KOZOBOLIS, SYLVIAN CHAUVEAU, GOLDMUND, DANIEL HART, THOMAS NEWMAN
Still Photography: MATS BÄCKER
Touring Agent MENNO PLUKKER THEATRE AGENT, INC
The choreography is created in close collaboration with MIRAI MORIYAMA and DANIEL PROIETTO
Co-production:
BIENNALE DI VENEZIA, Venice Italy
DANSENS HUS, Oslo
JULIDANS / ITA, Amsterdam
RUM FÖR DANS, Halland
Supported by:
Arts Council Norway, Fond For Lyd og Bilde, AiRK Kobe, The Norwegian Opera and Ballet, Pfalztheater Kaiserslautern
World Premiere Dansens Hus, Oslo May 23th 2024.
Duration: 70 min. No interval
INTERNATIONAL TOURING
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Alan Lucien Øyen's Still Life: visions of ethereal beauty
Dansens Hus in Oslo is situated outside the city centre and built over a fast-flowing stream surrounded by trees. Alan Lucien Øyen’s Still Life takes us one step further into nature in a work where bodies find their primal state, lights and sounds create visions of ethereal beauty, and the space opens to the unconscious and the irrational. Øyen is an artist in tune with performance art in its widest sense and this is another of his choreographies where he takes the art away from any codified constraints to wander in Elysian fields.
Øyen in addition to directing his own company, Winter Guests, is Artist-in-Residence with the Norwegian National Opera and Ballet. His two dancers are well chosen: Daniel Proietto, a longtime collaborator, is joined by Mirai Moriyama, a dancer less known in Europe but with a high profile in Japan. With background knowledge in Kabuki, Butoh, contemporary dance and film, the dancers are the focus of the work and on stage for most of the evening.
The Still Life of the title is better understood as nature morte and relates to our cavalier attitude to the natural world which is being decimated in man-made disasters. However, it is the dance that is central and totally riveting. The choreography, by Øyen, is created in close collaboration with Proietto and Moriyama, dancers who have a fine-tuned understanding of their bodies. Simply dressed in black trousers with bare tops their hair tied back, they move in ways that are thought-provoking and eloquent, underpinning the message that to be human is to be at one with nature. The relationship between the two comes across most strongly in the close contact duets where the bodies move to the same pulse.
There is a fluid quality in Proietto’s musculature, an innate knowledge that remains subliminal offering no resistance and making dance seem as natural as breathing. Moriyama is a dancer of magnetic presence. He brings an exciting level of physical energy to his dance, as he leaps horizontally, falls and rolls with animal power and expertise. The dancers, despite the sometimes athletic quality, never lose the connection with the interior, the source and the centre of power both physical and mental. Whether they are in motion or stillness, they remain eminently watchable.
The lighting, sound and visual setting are an integral part of this production. Used minimally but in a potent manner, they are a constantly changing source of inspiration and delight. There is magic from the opening semicircle of black clad singers intoning with bell-like clarity to the final moments as the stage is covered in glittering metallic foil. The dancers briefly don masks which extend their heads into bird-like hybrids creating unsettling but memorable images. The chorus make a final entrance, their head-covering masks topped with a tangled growth of roots and branches and lit by shards of golden light conjuring the mysterious powers of nature.
It is in the images that the work communicates most strongly. The text, written by Andrew Wale and Øyen, is delivered on walkie talkie devices and opening on the banality of everyday chat: ‘Hello, are you there?’ ‘Yes, I am. Where are you?’ When the text has content of significance, it becomes difficult to usefully process within the density of detail in the production.
There is not a moment when design, (Aida Vaineri and Øyen) score (Henrik Skram) and sound design, (Mathias Grønsdahl) are not important. The grainy air surrounding the dancers seems thick and even murky, when smoke effect is used, it rises like tumbling pillows of cloud. Golden cloaks used by the dancers and chorus are made from a metallic foil that gives a rustling sound effect as well as its brilliant sheen that almost blinds in the rays of light. In the final moments the backdrop of a seascape is briskly lowered, the two dancers now simply dressed in brown trunks make their last dance, close and slow, like a devoted elderly couple. The entire painted scene drops to the floor as a sheet of golden foil is rolled out to cover the stage area. The effects are mesmerising and amazingly beautiful.
It is the quality of the dance that carries the evening, with the important message of climate inaction more hinted at than clarified. There is much to enjoy in the performance and probably a lot more to gain from further viewings to unpack the layers of complexity in a very dense work.
Copyright © 2021 Daniel Proietto I House of Drama I KNOW
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