CODA collection: four dances from Norway

“Collectivize Facebook” is a lawsuit aimed to turn Facebook into public property, initiated by artist Jonas Staal and lawyer Jan Fermon. Based on world events in times of the Corona pandemic, Jota Mombaça conceives a diffuse future, one in which borders, escape and freedom of thought play a central role. A sound piece by Susan Stone and Esther Broner after a performance by Suzanne Lacy. La Mama is a world-renowned New York cultural institution dedicated to the artist and all aspects of the theatre.

Through its wide range of events, the project explores several ways in which artistic presence can be manifested, traveling not only within physical territories, but also in time. The events that bring the works from the road into the art institution do not feel like a show at the arrival station, but rather invite the spectator to embark in a multidimensional moving vessel. The project is a wide co-production between TrAP- Transcultural Art Productions, Black Box Teater, IKM/Oslo Museum, Teaterhuset Avantgarden, BIT Teatergarasjen and Mia Habib Productions. Stranger Within heads thereafter to Oktoberdans in Bergen and SITE in Stockholm. While developing the project HEAD(S), Mia implemented the pre-project MIND(S) in Tel Aviv in February 2012 – a research and dance series of three meetings in Shop31 Gallery.

Habib’s All – a physical poem of protest presents a walk-on cast, pulled from a previous Movement Research workshop and/or three days of development at La MaMa. The group circles the stage, and eddies form within as those closest to the center slow down while those on the outside speed up. Occasionally, the cast establishes a shoulder-to-shoulder ring around the stage’s perimeter as they wait for someone to restart the perambulatory pattern.

Mia Habib (choreographer, CSC)

Thus in Limbo, Oslo-based choreographer with Iranian roots Roza Moshtaghi intricately plays with intertwinement between codes of her ancestral culture and dominant Western aesthetics. Through movement, live video and music created by the performers on stage, two bodies travel through different landscapes in a white space, in an attempt of relating to each other. The setting is a installation made of objects collected during the duo’s tour, spread on the wooden floor of the exhibition room.

Except for that, we did not encounter any other problems than repositioning the sensors to work every night, because the stage had to be cleared after each performance. We tested with a normal laser pen, but the thin beam was merely invisible on stage. Luckily, I happened to have access to a professional laser used for physics experiments. Since we only had one good laser, we used a narrowed down spotlight as the light beam in the back of the stage. He played with artists who helped to define aspects of American jazz, and his approach was deliberately minimalist in order to support the other musical voices present. Gruppo Nanou’s choreographic proposition reveals a deep ignorance of his music.

Mia Haugland Habib (1980, Houston) is an Oslo-based dancer, performer and choreographer working at the intersection of performance, exhibitions, publications, lectures, teaching, mentoring and curating. Habib holds a Master’s degree in Conflict Resolution and Mediation from Tel Aviv University and choreography training from the Oslo National Academy of the Arts. Mia Habib founded Mia Habib Productions in 2004 and is Mia Habib supported by the Norwegian Arts Council.

The difference is mostly that in the Laser Dance project, a sound is more a tool for the dancers to work with, than a musical piece. It soon became clear that the visual beams were not good for motion detection. Henrik Sundt at NoTAM suggested using pairs of IR-senders/receivers instead. When the sender and receiver are in contact with each other nothing happens, but as soon as the signal is broken the receiver sends a pulse. The sensors were quite cheap consumer electronics and when we tested the equipment at NoTAM we found that the reaction time was somewhat slow. This triggered some nerves because the whole project would not be much worth it if the sensors were not capable of detecting fast movements from the dancers.

Written by Deise Faria Nunes

Premiered in 2005, the solo marked the beginning of Mia Habib’s career and has been the subject of several lectures and publications. The leading role in couple is often exchanged; the longing for the two women (or the two men) to dance with each other is often disrupted by the urge of an excluded dancer to bring them back to the original couples. Mastering a specific technique for turning, each dancer competes to be the fastest, to find new virtuosities, to catch the attention of another partner, to be noisy and bold, rewriting the rules of what seems to be a courtship in times of fluidity. All these have become parts of a choreography from the end of the world that slowly yet inexorably tightens its grip.

Co-producers in Norway

The installation grows from the centre of the room into the audience, branches and fabrics becoming ties between audience members and between performer and spectator. For a moment of beauty, we are all part of the same construction, a shared constellation. The duet “ a couple dance” uses the stage as a space of possibilities to unfold, discover and subvert the complex layers in a relationship between two people. The relation, and Mia & Gui who create it, constantly changes appearance and lingers in a multiplex play between fiction and reality. With keywords such as apartheid, gender identity, aging, disability, immigration and Black Lives Matter, six solos offer different perspectives on ecological grief, cultural panic and the feeling of collapse.

There are books, photographs, maps, drawings, masks, reindeer’s horns, stones. The same sort of material used to decorate the table in the contiguous room. The lighting is usual and the sounds give associations to unknown, maybe hostile, maybe abandoned, atmospheres.

After growing accustomed to the running pattern, the eye searches for more subtle relationships among the performers. Unfortunately, their internal gaze cuts them off from one another, despite their physical proximity. As part of the festival “The Present Is Not Enough – Performing Queer Histories and Futures”, HAU initiated an open call for artists based in Berlin, who were invited to submit proposals for their Manifestos for Queer Futures. Ali Chahrour will present his dance performance “Iza Hawa” as part of the festival “Love is a Verb”. A conversation with HAU curator Petra Poelzl about politics, grief and love. Luckily, the Mac did not crash and the sound turned on and off as it should, every day.