the tangible

As a fundament for the production tg STAN went to the area called «the lush half-moon» (Al Hilal Al Khaseeb), the enormous half-moon-shaped area in which humans began cultivating land approximately 10 000 years ago. Today it includes the countries of Egypt, Israel, Palestine, Lebanon and parts of Turkey, Syria, Jordan, Iraq, Kuwait and Iran. Based in this landscape and with the performers’ own experiences as source material, the artists created the production the tangible.

In the program of BIT Teatergarasjen one could read the following about the performance:

"Without being neo-Oriental this becomes a declaration of love for the after all alive, but damaged, stomped-on and abused cradle of civilization. With Palestine as the epicentre the tangible becomes a reflection surpassing opinions, more of an abstract and personal testimony about people rather than parties, more about loss and cruelty and their oppositions than about perspectives. The production springs out from the places and the reality of the performers. The Dante-like reality of Baghdad, the tears of Beirut and the rage of Palestine are impoverished and perhaps is it rather so that dance, music and images are more powerful as artistic expressions – though, it is yet not certain that the words come short."

In the beginning of a tg STAN production there is usually a text, but not this once. Three dancers participate - from Norway, Canada and Italy, three actors - from Syria, Palestine and Belgium and two visual artists from Palestine. The music is by Checkpoint 303, Mesh Kerbaj, Ramallah Underground, Glenn Gould, Nina Simone, George Wassouf, Burial, Vex’d, John Zorn, Nasseer Shamma, Rima Khcheich, Karlheinz Stockhausen, and the text material is by John Berger, Etel Adnan, Abbas Beydoun, Samih Al-Qasim, Zakariah Tamer.

«The next day I accompanied him to the ruin. There were several epicentres where everything had been reduced to dust, surrounded by tiny fragments. Except for pipes and wires no recognisable objects remained. Everything which had been assembled during a lifetime had gone without trace, had lost its name. Amnesia not of the mind but of the tangible»

- A to X, John Berger.

the tangible had its world wide premiere the spring of 2010 in BIT Teatergarasjen in Bergen.

Sources: BIT Teatergarasjen spring program 2010, 04.08.2010: http://www.bit-teatergarasjen.no/article/301

tg STAN, stan.be, 15.10.2010: http://www.stan.be/content.asp?path=z3f9g534

"The tangible, the character of art, is what the production is searching for. Or fumbling for. the tangible starts with the three dancers making their first delicate, cautious moves on the stage floor. The actors stand around them watching, along large screens behind and onstage, which display some dark, unclear projections. It is as if the dancers are searching for something, a beginning. All we can hear is their breathing and the sound of the fan for the projector in the roof. It is as if they are learning to know their bodies. The bodies prior to the surroundings. They are deeply concentrated and sense nobody but themselves."

Erlend Røyset, Review titled Ikke hat og hevntørst, men tomhet (literally: Not hate and thirst for revenge, but emptiness), Scenekunst.no http://www2.scenekunst.no/egenkritikk_7116.nml, publisert 20.04.2010