Sun 9 Feb, 7.30pm
Laban Theatre
Laban Building
SE8 3DZ
Duration 50 mins
Amplified Edition explores hierarchy and co-dependency, allowing the elements of the theatre to meet in illogical ways. In a continuous quest to find new relationships the performers use voice and movement to set the objects in motion, making theatrical topographies, revealing what is usually in the background or hidden.
If the theatre is a space operating to promote imaginary images, then what lies hidden and tacit within that operation? In this work H2DANCE throw light on the fictive materiality at the heart of theatre, allowing us to peek behind the curtain to see that the strings being pulled are always only in turn pulling other strings. Ultimately there is no singular control, just webs of connection, and illusion and reality are knotted in ways that it is never easy to untangle.
Amplified Edition is an interruption in the logic of bringing a story into focus and it follows other threads of consequence to allow objects and performers to exchange their agency in back and forth plays. The choreography fluxes around who is manipulating what and what is manipulating who. Loops of song echo back on themselves, as sound becomes material, and material starts to sing. The objects, actions and mechanics of theatricality are reordered in order to question the ways in which we are seen by each other. In turn this asks how well we know each other, and what the filters of fantasy can do to unsettle this knowing.
Amplified Edition premiered at Rosendal Teater Trondheim (NO) in October 2019.
Choreography and performance: Hanna Gillgren and Heidi Rustgaard
Dramaturg: Martin Hargreaves
Architects/set and costume design: what-if:projects
Lighting and sound design: Andy Hammond
Technician: Ming
Costume maker: Rosie Whiting
Photos: Hanne Frostad Håkonsen
Producer: Natalie Richardson/Konzept Arts & Ideas
Funded by Arts Council England & Nordic Culture Fund, Det Norske Utenriksdepartementet
Co-produced by Rosendal Teater, DansiT and Black Box Teater NO, Dance4, MetalCulture & Earl Street Creative Space, Dansens Hus SE, and Dance All Year Along DK.
H2DANCE
H2DANCE is choreographer/ performer duo Hanna Gillgren (SE) and Heidi Rustgaard (NO), working between Norway, Sweden and the UK since 1999. Their work sits in between performance and dance and can be characterised as interdisciplinary, often taking a humorous approach to serious subject matters. Hanna and Heidi have an ongoing fascination with meetings of differences, exploring ways in which we negotiate hierarchy, conformity, power and manipulation. Taking their own collaboration as a starting point, the work explores two distinct and different characters and voices co-existing, agreeing to disrupt each other during process and performance. Interested in deconstruction, breaking down the hierarchy between performers, light, set, sound and costume, their work is presented in and outside the black box, sometimes with Hanna and Heidi as performers, and other times in collaboration with professional dancers and amateurs. Their work is often informed by workshops and conversations with people of different ages and backgrounds, and these encounters influence and inform the ideas and aesthetics of the work.