Dancing - Deborah Hay trio, 2025

Light/Space. Dance Piece. Dansens Hus. Oslo. NO

Description

Black Box teater Masks (BBt Being) is a celebration of Black Box teater, of its 40 years of existence, the ways of being the theatre hosts, has hosted and will host in the future.

Black Box teater Masks (BBt Being) is an exhibition of photos which depict traces of stories mediated by the material environment of Black Box teater. Images of marks that have been created by people working in the building, images that are signs of theater production, images of forgotten and remembered events, images of accidental and intentional actions, images of intimate interactions and collective care.

The exhibition consists of a selection of 40 images deriving from over 2000 close-up photos which were taken inside Black Box teater during the development of Jakob Oredsson’s work Symbiotic Surfaces (Black Box teater Beings). A work which was presented on the facade of the building as part of Oslo Internasjonale Teaterfestival in 2022. These photos form an extensive visual archive of Black Box teater. In the exhibition each image derives from one photo which is doubled, mirrored, and separated into its lightest and darkest colors. Oredsson creates images, with two surfaces which mirror each other, or two faces, referencing the ancient form of the comedy and tragedy masks, bound to the history of theater. The mask simultaneously reveals and conceals its carrier, as reality and fiction. One can imagine the mask as the first scenographic object, existing through relation to the face it describes. A mask is one symbiotic object, a meeting between two surfaces, carrying visible and invisible qualities of the being it is both part of and separate from.

Dancing (2024) is a new work initiated by the iconic American choreographer Deborah Hay, who has been an internationally influential dancer and choreographer for many decades. Hay has invited the three experienced Norwegian dancers Ingrid Haakstad, Geir Hytten and Gry Kipperberg onto the Deborah Hay’s Trio Project – a series of works exploring ‘the practical magic of the trio.’ Based on an earlier solo score, the Dancing Trio was developed in a joint process in Austin, Texas in the spring of 2024. The choreographic course of the production develops in interaction between Hay’s instructions, the score, the dancers’ changing relationship with the work, and decisions made in the moment.

Dancing is a mutual developmental relationship through a process of interpretation, perception and choices, which results in a choreography that is never quite the same each time, but which can be regarded as ‘samples’ in a continuous process. By surrendering to the reality and complexity arising from the fact that it is impossible for them to know what is going to happen from one moment to the next, the result is a thrilling and childlike joy, with the production unfolding in this tension – in a continuity of discontinuity.

Choreographer

Deborah Hay

Dancers

Ingrid Haakstad, Geir Hytten, Gry Kipperberg

Light/Space

Jakob Oredsson

Lighting assistant

Shiva Sherveh

Outer Eye

Janne-Camilla Lyster, Orfee Schuijt

Production

Haakstad/Hytten/Kipperberg

Co-production

Dansens Hus Oslo, DansiT, Dans i Trøndelag, Vitlycke-Centre for Performing Arts.

Supported by

Norsk kulturråd, Fond for lyd og bilde, Fond for utøvende kunstnere og Oslo Kommune.

Materials/Dimensions

12 x halogen flood lights, 3 x tripods, cables, light controller, black velvet curtain