Nature Theater of Oklahoma and EnKnapGroup - The Pursuit of Hapiness

I've been to see the performance The Pursuit of Happiness by Nature Theater of Oklahoma, at the Under the Radar festival in New York.

The performance starts like a classic cowboy movie, with exaggerated movements and stand-offs. Each of the dancers is an unhappy cowboy who tells a little about himself and his situation. Throughout this sequence, the barman stands in silence and serves drinks. The cowboys talk about divorces and heartbreak. They discuss whether they are really happy with their jobs and their lives. The content of what they were saying was interesting, but they presented it in a way that was out of step with the rest of the performance, which would later develop into a witty and incredibly funny story. It went so slowly that you really got bored, and there were several in the audience who almost left. I would say that this part of the performance could have been cut down to ten minutes instead of forty, because it was unnecessarily long and had an incredibly slow course of action.

It wasn't until forty minutes in when the barman concluded that they were all unhappy and that he had a plan on how to do something about this inner emptiness they all felt - that the show really began. He and the rest of his dance company set out on a journey to Baghdad to make peace between NATO and Iraqi soldiers. In the RBM, the Red Bull Mobile, they drive out to the sandy plains and dance in the middle of the war zone. They plan to stop all the hate and killing, and create peace with their dance. For a while, they put the soldiers out of action, so much so that they join them in the sand and dance with each other despite their different political agendas or military bases. But when the dance company runs out of choreography, they can't stop the hatred any longer. The soldiers return to their posts, the war resumes and almost the entire company is shot down.

This story is, in a chaotic way, about what makes us happy. What makes you happy? Do you do what you do because you really love it, or just because you have to? Or even worse, just because you can? I think that even though the story in the performance seemed a bit wild and exaggerated, it was actually a really nice (and hilarious) way to deal with this topic. After all, happiness doesn't always have to be a perfect state; happiness can also arise in chaos.

I really enjoyed this performance. Despite the slow start, they managed to turn the mood around in the middle of the show and shone with quick humor and well-written text. Nature Theater of Oklahoma plays at the Black Box Theater sometimes, and the next time they do, I'll be there :)

By Anna Moberg