Long version:
Butoh-dance/performance
Duration: Approx. 1 hour
Project description:
Imaginarium is a collaboration between movement- and performance artists Kristin Nango and Sophie Barth, printmaker Ragna Misvær Grønstad and guest sound-artist Yendini Yoo Cappelen. The project is a site-specific, nomadic multidisciplinary research with a main focus on the poetic room that appears in opening meetings through voice/sound/body/movement and images.
The Imaginarium is site-specific and nomadic through the element of water, and captures the changing memories within us that flow and never remain the same.
Here we research the water’s potential for transportation and transformation outside and within us – of sensations, fantasies and deep currents where things dissolve and disappear before rising up into new forms, figures and space. Our space is the Imaginarium: as space that appears in different places like water. Thus introducing a way of staying present in the space through being, sensing, listening and imagining. A sort of mystical dimension appearing here, now and between us.
The Imaginarium is based on Ragna Misvær Grønstads creation-universe where new forms of artistic dreaming can appear in a salt-water environment that connects the world in new ways.
This performance brings different elements together to move the limits between (butoh) dance, visual art, sound-art and performance. Through our work we research new thinking within choreography and directing.
Statement:
Our work emphasises the meeting with non-human elements (nature), and the search for their voices. We are hence creating premises that allows a deep listening to something outside ourselves. This is connected with a point of view where the world is created and experienced in co-existence with the elements’ own voice and being.
Our bodies are carrying nature within, and connecting our minds and emotions with the forces of nature and our human capacity for imagination. We wish to create a space to investigate art and imagination, and thus reinforcing the connections between the human and the non-human. This is inspired by an indigenous understanding of the world where humans and non-humans are equals.
Artists:
Sophie Barth is a theatre director and artist who works with physical theatre, and movement-based research. Barth uses her experience from theatre as a way in to investigate other fields of art. She established Schouskolletivet in 2016, which is a multidisciplinary platform in Oslo where she invites artists to develop and investigate new and old work.
www.schouskollektivet.wordpress.com
Ragna Misvær Grønstad is a visual artist and printmaker. She graduated from Khio in 2016 and has since then held exhibitions many places around in Norway and Netherland.
Kristin Nango is a movement artist with a strong influence from butoh dance. Her work moves towards performance art and the field between the body’s inner and outer reality. She holds an MA in Dance- Movement Therapy and is one of the core artists in the art-collective Oslo Butohlaboratorium.
http://cargocollective.com/butohlaboratorium/About-Butoh-Laboratorium-Oslo
Yendini Yoo Cappelen – guest artist: Yendini has a wide artistic background from (among others) voice, sound, acting and poetry. She has worked as an actor at Riksteateret and also collaborated with several artists throughout her many years of experience.
Images from Dreaming of Water, shown at Kulturtemplet in Gothenburg July 2017. In collaboration with Yuta Uno (JP) and Mocca Asano (JP)
Sophie Barth portfolio 