TankeSUS - Live hemmeleg
Venue: Theater Manu
Duration: 40 min
From 16 years
Performer: Nikolay Shchetnev (Samovar Theatre)
Voice: Jon Fosse
Composer and musician: Johan Sara jr
Set design: Niels A W Jensen and Franzisca Aarflot
Lighting design: Niels A W Jensen
Idea, dramaturgy and direction: Franzisca Aarflot
Jon Fosse, you've probably heard of him. We at SUS had heard that he was incredibly talented, but we were still a bit skeptical after reading the description that you might think Morten Harket had written.
Then to the performance itself. It started with a hand bringing the crabs out from the stage. Eventually, a person wrapped in a blanket came waddling out onto the stage, almost like a worm. We didn't quite understand the purpose of these movements, we thought this seemed a bit uncontrolled. We also struggled to understand what kind of music/sounds the dancer was moving to. For us, the sounds did not quite fit with the movements. Some would say the sounds are nice effects, but we found it tiring and confusing. In addition to strange music/sound, video was used. This video was of the dancer. In the video, he did the same movements as he did on stage. One thing that annoyed us here was that the dancer on stage was not synchronized with the video. The video didn't move up or down, we just didn't quite understand why it was there.
The main problem with the performance was the whole, things didn't hang together and we struggled to understand the plot. The performance became too abstract, deep and heavy. The result was that it became uninteresting and boring. We feel we didn't get any benefit from this performance. We sat and looked at each other and waited for it to finish.
This performance was so far away from a world we recognize ourselves in. This was a real letdown for us at SUS. If we were to highlight something positive, it would have to be the voice-over, which was thought-provoking and special. It made us reflect. We hope others get more out of the show than we did. This simply didn't work for us.
