Sat 23 & Sun 24 JUNE 2018
Laban Studio Theatre
Saturday 23 June
3.30pm (55min)
Sunday 24 June
1.30pm (55min)
An open space offers a view of an individual, eyes covered, a woman looking out into nothing. She is tracing a world of signifiers, searching for a language to hold onto. She arms herself, and leads herself to becoming something new through transforming inputs and cliches that otherwise would have led her to another identity. It’s all a game. A game of perception. A game of agency and of who is in charge. She is being re-created becoming anew, together with the audience, the spectator. She unfolds the possibilities of what the situation itself wants her to become.
In “Prologue” Björn Säfsten and Sophie Augot explores the violence of language. The body and the mind and its connected actions are here laid bare. The focus is on creating identified representations and then engaging them in a role-play, juggling both their construction and their possible meaning. It’s a game with both the syntax and the semantics of the body and it´s gestures. Bringing images to life that visually problematize our notion of interpretation.
The work is a re-creation of a piece for two performers from 2012, moulded into a work for a single performer.
Idea and concept: Anja Arnquist, Sophie Augot, Björn Säfsten
Choreography: Björn Säfsten / Performer: Sophie Augot
Costume Design: Sophie Augot
Lighting Design: Susanna Hedin, Lumination of Sweden/SuToDa
Sound Editing: Jon Skoog
Photographer: Chrisander Brun
Production: Säfsten Produktion and Nordberg Movement
Co-production: Säfsten Produktion and NorrlandsOperan
Made possible with the support by the Swedish Arts Council, City of Stockholm, Umeå Academy of Fine Arts and the Swedish Research Council
Björn Säfsten
In the work and practice of choreographer Björn Säfsten the body and the mind and its connected actions are scrutinized, dissected and exposed. The focus is on creating ‘another body’, another notion of human physicality, bringing images to life that visually problematize our notion of the human nature. The physical practice expose images that occur from a certain physical action, in a chance method. The work thus takes visual turns and bends, often moulding itself whilst being performed, establishing itself anew each time for each audience encounter.
Säfsten Produktion is a platform for choreographic creativity and experimentation. A node of theoretical and practical standpoints where artists come together to speculate and visualize criticism in choreography, politics, language and the production of identity.