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It is Sunday and my watch tells me that the time is 05.34 pm. The first week out of three, creating material for the final performance, has been completed and tomorrow the second one will start. The first two weeks will be spend working separately on the different lines, the third week on montage, putting everything together and working on common scenes, and in the fourth one, the curtain will open.
So basically Monday this week was the beginning of the end, and I think everyone was quite excited to get started.
The theme is "1812". Question mark? Yes. Interpretations are free and with best post-modern manners it opens up to a universe where truth only exists subjectively and any final explanation will never be given - brainstorm away! We gathered in the dance studio, all teachers and students, to have a talk and brainstorm about the subject, and it lead to many different ideas. Thoughts such as years, dates and times – religion, believes and politics – calculation, measurements and codes – numbers, games and people - and maybe most importantly; identity - or at least up until now I think that this is the one visibly common in every line. In the best existentialistic way this project touches upon the life of mankind, the search for and fear of identity, affected by surroundings, reason and insanity. That is, if nothing else, my idea of the final product - at least for now.
 Another character that takes part is the old building itself, after all the school is situated in an old paper factory. This gives us the opportunity to work in an industrial environment where humans may work like machines and machines like humans. With a headline as wide as 1812, I’m really impressed by the ideas we have come up with and the work we've done so far.
On each line work goes on separately from 10.00 am to 05.00 pm this and next week, and adding practice-hours, that leaves us with very little time and room to do any other activities together, like we're used to. Every morning though, we all (or almost everyone) gather in the big theatre to work on material for the common scenes, and I must admit that when I leave, maybe from time to time I will miss waking up drumming on barrels or climbing in and on cages.
People are working hard on each line, that being both solos and in groups, and I feel that this changes the school's entire atmosphere, and increases the intensity - mostly in a nice way.
 On the dance-line we started out creating characters for ourselves, that we had to express in different actions. Childish, frustrated, alienated and detached were some of them, and we worked a lot with exploring how to express these qualities/characters throughout movements and actions. Then, after a while, we were put together in pairs, forcing the characters to relate to one another. This was quite interesting and also quite difficult. We do a lot of showings for each other, which is a great, massive help, getting constructive criticism and good advises from our fellow students.
On Friday we had to show our work of the week to the other lines and Magnus and Michelle (the directors). This was something I think we'd all looked forward to, being isolated in our own shells the entire week, not really knowing what was going on in the other rooms. And even though the energy level was understandable low at some points, some really nice stuff happened and there were MANY great ideas to be built on.
After we had finished, a bunch of us went with the music teacher Sus to hear a sound check of, and meet the Danish band Nephew at the Jydske Musik og Teaterhus. When we came back for dinner, many had left and the rest were practically ready to go to sleep. The exhaustion was massive and I decided to go home to Århus, to breathe and in the need of a change of scene (literally), but also with a good feeling in my stomach, excited about the process of the next couple of weeks and the result that will come out of it, before the final curtain falls.
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Story: Sasja T. Larsen
Photo: Kåre Christiansen |
