The rollercoaster ride of incessant social media is evoked in this phenomenal and challenging piece by Norwegian choreographer Alan Lucien Øyen. Performances exemplified by that the Canadian dancer Zander Constant combine non-stop self-narrative and virtuosity in movement, as dancers perform an attempt to perfect and market themselves – their sense of self inevitably comprised of external references, deemed to be successful. The stage features a mere door: a symbol of self realisation, perhaps? But walk through it, and… you’re at the back of the same stage you left.
Øyen, artistic director of the company Winter Guests in Norway and an associate artist at Oslo Opera House, works with both theatre and dance. His marathon play Ceolecanth won a Hedda Award, a Norwegian theatre award named after the Henrik Ibsen character. He created a full-length piece for Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch, and is set to work with Nederlands Dans Theatre in a subsequent production.
Story, story, die is very much collaborative, says the choreographer, “It started through dialogue. We were looking at this concept of theatricality, where fiction meets reality, I wanted to see how we apply this to our everyday life. In its extremity, through social media: you make a little film clip of your life telling the world how you feel. But it’s not limited to social media, in any kind of conversation we reveal something or we hide something in order to be perceived in a certain way. We want recognition, we want to be loved… it's something very human.”
Hyperactive and gruelling, effervescent and cloying, this approach from the self, from the ‘I’ is not an easy ride. Nor should one think it is new or reflective of a generation; the dancers are in their 30s, ‘veterans’ in the dance world, says Øyen. However, social media has provided a means to bring out the worst in a human being: “There’s one duet we called ‘Grindr Duet’ and we were exploring ideas like, what it means to have encounters facilitated through the internet and what it means if I want something for me from another person; and if a few people do that, how does that work choreographically. This concept of need translated into movement.”
While we all desire intimacy, the elaborate barriers we put up make it even harder to achieve, says Øyen: “The process of getting to know someone intimately is overwhelmingly exhausting; one dreads the process of gaining intimacy and letting go of all the masks. We also asked ourselves, if we do manage that, is there anything actually left?”
