For the most recent Coda Dance Festival in Oslo Ballet de Lorraine from Nancy in France brought a new work from Norwegian dance maker Ingun Bjórnsgaard.
The work was part of a curated season of pieces made by female choreographers from company director Petter Jacobsson. For that season of work Mr Jacobsson wanted to question the way ballet and contemporary dance are perceived differently in terms of their masculinity and femininity.
Ballet de Lorraine say this much about the work;
Ingun Bjórnsgaard’s latest dance work is inspired by Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler from1890, an iconographic drawing room drama about a destructive and “dissatisfied” woman who takes her own life. Hedda identifies with heroic masculinity and holds the ridiculous and vulgar in contempt. She is a fascinating tragic figure in confrontation and dialogue with the ambivalent yearning for passion and true drama of our times.
In this dance-theatre production, Bjórnsgaard has 16 dancers embody the complex, fragile, sensual and overdramatic play in and around an unbalanced individual seeking escape from herself; a hermaphroditic fury on anti-depressants.
As well as footage from the show we bring you an interview with Petter Jacobssen where the diseases the piece, Scandinavian dance makers and multiculturalism in dance.
Currently the company are performing ‘In The Upper Room’ by Twalya Tharp, check our their website for more details and touring information.
‘Hedda’ was filmed at the Opera House in Oslo, Norway on October 8th 2013