Fri 04-05-2012 : Svenska Dagbladet, Anna Angstrom

on the Scandinavian premiere of nothing's for something

Fri 04-05-2012 : dagens nyheter, Orjan Abrahamsson

”Nothing’s for something” at MDT, Stockholm. Published 2012-05-04 08:37 in Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter
Everything is in motion in ”Nothing’s for something”. Örjan Abrahamsson has seen a playful and dreamlike performance.
 
As the audience sits down in MDT:s auditorium we are blinded by angry spotlights, only to, as the performance begins, be drenched in darkness and silence. Then sounds like distant street noise. And silence. As the light gradually returns the stage is empty but covered, yes, embedded by a seductive sea of silvery-grey, rustling silk fabric. And so we hear the world’s most famous waltz in the speakers.

Then the silk curtains begin to dance. Yes, really. And the curtains, suspended by black helium balloons, waltz on and on, absurd minute after surreal minute, in Heine Avdal’s and Yukiko Shinozaki’s hour-long ”Nothing’s for something”.
It is not only the dancing curtains and the Strauss music that bring to mind Stanley Kubrick’s film”2001”. Just like the film it seems that the whole performance – especially the seven remote controlled, floating planets of the finale – builds on everything being in motion. Granted that movement essentially is a matter of perspective, a fixed point in life, in the spaceship, in the auditorium.

Belgium based duo Heine Avdal and Yukiko Shinozaki have worked together since the turn of the century and have above all worked with a series of small-scale and intimate, site-specific performances engaged with themes of daily life. Next week an enticing sample of their style is presented at MDT,”Fieldworks – office”, for only two spectators at the time. Because in many respects it is a captivating, evocative and poetic, playful performance with a sophisticated, dreamlike atmosphere. In”Nothing’s for something” everything is set in motion and everything is treated as object; also the shows’ four performers who are hardly ever visible except during a section in the middle.
The strongest section is when the dancing curtains break free from the hegemony of the waltz and derail as tornados over the stage, to suddenly line up as a massive wall in front of the audience.

Here I think it is over, but instead the curtain is pulled aside to open the stage for seven white, remote controlled balloons that like planets float back and forth, up and down, aided by mechanical technology – two small propellers – which would have made Jules Verne a happy man.
The celestial bodies’ tranquil tumbling game is drawn out but beautiful, astonishing, purely magical. And danceable. Truly a giddying conceptual choreography.
 
Örjan Abrahamsson
dans@dn.se
 
 
Translated by Mariana Suikkanen Gomes, June 2012.

Wed 12-09-2012 : ”Dansande draperi”, Amund Grimstad

I sink back into the chair and want this to last for ever. Am I seeing what I am seeing? And is this reality?
Avdal and Shinozaki have recreated the wonderment of childhood and asked me quite a many existential questions. And that without saying a word.

Thu 22-03-2012 : H Art, Julie Rodeyns

Heine Avdal: “Onze motivatie om deze productie te maken vertrok vanuit de Fieldworks-serie. Daar bevonden we ons altijd in een omgeving waar we niet echt toe behoorden. Natuurlijk namen we onze theaterbagage mee: we vertrokken van de idee hoe afhankelijk van hoe je gebeurtenissen kadert, alles theater kan zijn. Toch waren we er ons altijd erg bewust van dat we ons op vreemd terrein bevonden. We moesten een delicaat evenwicht zoeken tussen ergens inbreken zonder er de dingen over te nemen. Met ‘Nothing’s for something’ wilden we onderzoeken hoe het werken op locatie ons anders doet kijken naar (werken in) een theaterruimte- onze ‘thuis’.”