The Norwegian contemporary dance company "Jo Strømgren Kompani" once more perfomed in Belgrade. This time with the new production "THE HOSPITAL“. Performances took place from 9 - 13 May in the big hall of Dom Omladine.
19/05/2005 :: THE COMPANY- JSK PRODUCTION 2005
In a not so remote country. Three nurses are stationed at a provincial clinic, a humanist outpost forgotten by both the sick and the healthy. The have very few patients. None actually. Something must be wrong, but no further instructions have yet arrived. The inevitable lack of motivation threatens to undermine their heroic nursery virtues and they decide to take counteraction by practicing exactly what they are educated to do – pain relief. The question is just who should each time volunteer to ungergo pain for the others to relieve…
Isolated people in forgotten places. How to endure the emotional emptiness of a stagnated situation? Hope and nostalgia usually work well for a while, but what happens when the nostalgia is recycled into shreds and the hope has long ago faded away? The show starts where the performers decline to rather abnormal substitutes for real life experiences. The hazardous circle of self-inflicted pain and a following collective relief gives an emotional dynamic which under some conditions can remind of the ups and downs of normal daily life. Through this frame of painful abnormities comes a new kind of pain – that of recognising the substitute itself as a substitute and not a real experience. And further down the pain drain lies yet another painful question – whether the power of control belongs to oneself or the substitute.
The theme is closely linked to the increasing amount of substitutes in contemporary life. Actions we do and things we use which give us a false sense of a rich and real life. Instead of introducing contemporary objects and situations onto stage, the performance seeks to create an isolated and surprising universe with few but associative elements regardless of time period or geographical identity. Nursery as a profession is traditionally utterly innocent and trustworthy. With high moral standards and tremendous sacrifice of personal needs, nurses have for centuries saved lives, treated, helped – and provided hope. This is an elementary associative base when the message circles around the task of helping oneself and solving one’s own problems. Through being experts on pain relief but yet unable to overcome their own sufferings, their situation stand out as an apocalyptic witness to society itself. If one has the desire to associate in such direction. It is at least a sad little situation which can evoke a certain sympathy for the general attempt to solve a problem. A problem which indirectly matters us as viewers – with our own daily consumation of superficial substitutes.
Jo Strømgren Kompani will premiere the new production of 2005, THE HOSPITAL, in Riga 26th of April 2005.
THE HOSPITAL will be toured extensively during the spring and autumn 2005. See the touring schedule at http://www.jskompani.no/pages/schedule.html.
Jo Strømgren Kompani was officially founded 1998 by Jo Strømgren and Agnes Kroepelien in Bergen Norway with the aim to produce independent contemporary dance and theatre and tour widely throughout the world. Closely connected to the creative environments around Bergen International Theatre and the growing optimism on the Norwegian free scene.
For more information please contact Dom omladine at 3220 133.