Leave.Two.House

Leave.Two.House (2012) is a dance production by zero visibility corp.

Information

(Objekt ID 28231)
Object type Production
Premiere September 26, 2012
Produced by zero visibility corp.
Coproducers Dansens Hus
Audience Adults
Keywords Dance, Contemporary dance
Running period September 26, 2012  
Website zero visibility corp.
More

At the webpage of zero visibility corp. the following, among other things, is written about Leave.Two.House, text by Siren Leirvåg:

"Two women sit in a room, enclosed by a rear wall, and facing the audience. Each of them is sitting on a stool in front of a door located in the middle of the rear wall. The shape of the door leaves an ambivalent impression of being both locked in and unable to get out, and of being locked out and unable to get in. Atop the rear wall sit 20 stuffed crows.

The location of the crows, precisely in this grey zone between an outside and an inside, strengthens the sense of a spacious ambiguity or ambivalence. The crows sit on the threshold between the outside and the inside, between a here and a there, between the actual and the perceived.There are many stools in the room. Have more people been here, and then left? We hear footsteps from behind the door. Is someone coming to get them out? Is someone trying to reach them?

The women would appear to be twins: identical costumes, one fair and one dark. One might also regard them as a split self, as two sides of the same person. Can they get out? Do they want to get out? Midway through the performance there is a wonderfully beautiful scene in which the women sit close up to the door, with their bare backs facing us, naked and vulnerable, while also strong and muscular. One of them turns and looks at us. We hear strains of remember me – remember me (Purcell, Dido's Lament). It is as if she is asking to be remembered, and that we remember: Our collective oblivion, all the stories and tragedies that we leave behind a closed door.

Later in the performance there is another strong scene in which the women attempt to create a partition, a barrier in the room, by using the stools. Are they trying to escape from one side of themselves, to become whole and at one with themselves? Impossible. They quickly take apart the barrier.
Two stuffed black ravens sit on a stool. The old Norse God saga recounts that Odin had two ravens. They were called Hugin and Munin, signifying 'thought' and 'memory'. Each morning they would fly out into the world and take note of what was happening, before returning to Odin to recount what they had seen and heard:

'Hugin, the devourer of thoughts, like a hungry wolf among sheep.
Munin, the searcher of memories, the lost years of the sagas.'

Could this be a picture of the contradictory forces we witness in and between the two women? Is this the very stuff that memory is made of? Reason and emotion, reflection and perception - in an infinite ritual game.
The women return to their original positions on the stools. Did nothing happen, was it all a dream, set in amiddle ground- between the actual and the perceived? It emphasises the ritualistic aspect of the performance as a whole: the ambivalent room, a real and abstract state of crisis, like a threshold experience: both near and far, life and death. Have the women existed within a time frame, for somebody else, in order to find themselves on the threshold of being forgotten?"

Leave.Two.House by zero visibility corp. was supported by the Norwegian Ministry for Foreign Affairs/MFA (travel grant/performing arts).

zero visibility corp. is supported by Arts Council Norway 2009-2012 and 2013-2016.

Source:

zero visibility corp., zerovisibility.no, 07.09.2012, http://www.zerovisibility.no/performancesschedule/leavetwohouse

Contributors (8)
Name Role
Ina Christel Johannessen – Choreography
Kristin Torp – Stage design (graa hverdag as)
Kristin Torp – Costume (graa hverdag as)
Morten Pettersen – Sound
Kyrre Heldal Karlsen – Lighting design
Pia Elton Hammer – Dancer
Line Tørmoen – Dancer
Erik Berg – Photo
Performance dates
July 18, 2014Palazzo Reale Show
July 18, 2014Piazza San Giovanni Show
Navember 23, 2013 20:30 – Sala Show
October 1, 2012 19:30 – The Main Hall, Sandnes Kulturhus Show
September 28, 2012 19:00 – Hovedscenen, Dansens Hus Show
September 27, 2012 19:00 – Hovedscenen, Dansens Hus Show
September 26, 2012 19:00 – Hovedscenen, Dansens Hus Worldwide premiere
Festivals (1)
Dansat! Navember 23, 2013