SONG

SONG is a collaboration with director/choreographer Maik Riebort. It’s about songs, about how they get to us and how they influence us, about how music can travel from the voice into the body and back into the voice again.

Idea, artistic development, direction: Maik Riebort
Artistic development, music, performance, text: Eva Pfitzenmaier
Drums, music: Øyvind Hegg-Lunde
Light design: Thomas Bruvik
Producer: Hjørdis Steinsvik

Co-produced by BIT Teatergarasjen & Tanzfabrik Berlin.

Supported by Arts Council Norway, City of Bergen, Bergen Dansesenter.

Remember that lead singer that was famous for flailing his arms like a mad man? Or the one that relentlessly jumped up and down through the whole concert, or the singer that would move her head abruptly from one side to the other to the beat? We’ve all observed what music can do to the body and we all dance to our favourite song like there is no tomorrow.

A song can store an emotion that we will remember for the rest of our lives, a feeling that will come back immediately when you hear that one song again. And often that rhythm, those sounds, lyrics and the emotions this song represents will cause immediate reactions in our bodies. How does music have that power, and will the effect remain when we translate the music into movement, light and scenography? What happens when the singer stops singing and lets the body take over? When the light is the only rhythmical element left? Or when the scenography “sings” the lyrics?

In Song, two musicians deconstruct a famous song, dissecting its elements and rendering them into movement in order to rebuild and create a new song. The performance is neither a dance piece made to fit certain music, nor music made to fit a dance piece. It is music travelling through the body, and the body creating music. SONG is a hybrid between concert and dance performance and an unconventional exploration of the artistic potential of the two formats.

Premiere: 3 May 2019, BIT Teatergarasjen, Bergen (NO)
Further performances: 4 May 2019, BIT Teatergarasjen, Bergne (NO); 11 & 12 July 2019, Open Spaces Festival, Tanzfabrik Berlin (DE)