Premiere for HYPER by Margrét Sara Guðjónsdóttir
Margrét Sara Guðjónsdóttir (IS), living and working in Berlin, has created her first work for Cullbergbaletten with four of Cullbergbaletten’s dancers. The new piece HYPER will premiere at Inkonst in Malmö 8-9 February.
In HYPER Margrét Sara Guðjónsdóttir considers the embodied effects of the social political landscape we live in. The work dwells on and inside the deep tissues both of this reality and of the bodies trying to cope with it. HYPER conveys the essences of this grand human drama as a cry from the body to a viewer who is offered to experience extreme internal and sensorial states through the bodies of four dancers. As a performance, it silently creeps under the skin and slides around in spaces within, confronting the bodily surface as a gateway to what lies beneath and beyond our superficial facade. HYPER disarms with its crisp stillness, and gives access to the healing aspects of confronting the inner reality of the de-bordered body, providing an alternate reality of pleasure and pain that comes with diving into the hyper states.
Margrét Sara Guðjónsdóttir
Margrét Sara Guðjónsdóttir was born and raised in Iceland. She studied dance at the Artez University of Arts in Arnhem and Amsterdam. Alongside working as a performer with Gisele Vienne, Erna Ómarsdóttrir, Jan Fabre, Constanza Macras DORKYPARK, Nir De Volff /TOTAL BRUTAL. Margrét Sara co-founded the production house Panic Productions in Reykjavík (IS), with dancer and choreographer Sveinbjörg Þórhallsdóttir, which was active from 2004–2009, and focused on producing and initiating collaborative performance works with international artists.
Margrét Sara has toured internationally with her own work since 2010 and currently lives and works in Berlin. Displaying the politics of intimacy is a core theme within her choreographic work while working with and exploring pathologies of the social political body within our own bodies. Margrét Sara has collaborated with a consistent team of performers over the last five years and the soundscapes which accompany the works are exclusively created by and with Peter Rehberg (PITA), electronic composer and director of the record label Editions MEGO, Austria.
In 2014 Margrét Sara restaged her critically acclaimed piece Soft target installed in a speciel version for four of Cullbergbaletten’s dancers. In 2015 Margrét Sara became artist in residence at Cullbergbaletten in Stockholm. HYPER is her first work created directly for the company. She teaches periodically at the Icelandic Dance company, dance department of the Art University of Iceland, BA dance program at DOCH in Stockholm and choreography department of the Art University of Helsinki.
Margrét Sara’s work has been supported by network platforms and dance organizations across Europe, including: Wilderness residencies, Nordic-Baltic contemporary dance community organization keðja, Life Long Burning co-productions fund, Cullbergbaletten dance company Stockholm, Aerowaves, ICEHOT! Nordic performance platform, SLINGAN Swedish Performance Network, Tanzfabrik Berlin & Advancing Performing Arts Project (APAP) Production Studio Berlin / EU Culture Programme, WP Zimmer Antwerpen, Sommer.bar–Tanz im August Berlin, Barney’sCrossing Cologne, Hauptstadtkulturfonds Berlin, Senat fund Berlin, The City Funds of Reykjavík and the Cultural Ministry of education and science in Iceland, Kulturekontakt Nord
For the last seven years Margrét Sara has focused her professional research on physical doorways into physiological and emotional sub worlds association with myofascial release and beyond. Through this research she began the process of mapping out a new category of performative body language, ways of developing it further, and transferring this knowledge to others. The working methods directly inform the theme of the artistic works, and extend beyond the limits of professionalism and performance making. The first three years of research were done privately 2010-2012, whilst the performance works created during this period did not engage with this new physical language. The first artistic work created from this ongoing research where performers were included in the process was Step Right To It in 2013. Followed by the Blind Spotting Performance Series, in 2014, which was launched with the aim of continuing the research and creating working conditions which would make it possible for the group to dedicate a longer period of time to work in-depth on a specific artistic topic and develop the ambitious and detailed physiological language necessary to convey it. A new cycle in this ongoing research has already begun in 2015 and will extend over a period of 2 years, accumulating in a new performance work due to premiere in 2017.
Choreography: Margret Sara Guðjónsdóttir
Sound design: Margret Sara Guðjónsdóttir in collaboration with David Kiers
Lighting design: Martin Beeretz
Dancers: Adam Schütt, Anand Bolder, Eleanor Campbell, Vincent Van der Plas
Premiere at Inkonst, Malmö, 8-9 February 2017 at 19:00.
Duration: 35 minuter
HYPER will be presented at Inkosnt in a double bill together with the solo Against the Current, Glow choreography by Cristian Duarte, with the dancecrs dansarna Samuel Draper (8 February) and Daniel Sjökvist (9 February).
Press images are available from Tuesday 7 February.
For more information contact:
Erica Espling, Marketing and PR Manager Cullbergbaletten
+ 46-70-602 27 01
erica.espling@cullbergbaletten.se
Cullbergbaletten has performed all over the world and is an important contributor to the international presentation of contemporary dance. The company also engages in national outreach through its tours within Sweden. Cullbergbaletten collaborates with a variety of national and international choreographers and performing artists who create works for large as well as small stages. Cullbergbaletten’s activities encompass different projects and productions including collaborations with dance training programs. Cullbergbaletten was founded by Birgit Cullberg in 1967 under the auspices of Riksteatern – The Swedish National Touring Theatre, of which it still is a part. The company currently has 16 dancers from nearly as many countries. Since its inception, the stage personalities, creativity and technical strength of its dancers have been Cullbergbaletten’s defining characteristics. Gabriel Smeets is the artistic director since 2014.