Book of Songs
Book of Songs (2002) by Ingun Bjørnsgaard Prosjekt: A man tries to convince a woman that they met last year at Marienbad and that she promised him then that she would leave her husband and run away with him. However, she doesn’t seem to recall anything about either him or the promise and tells him that it must have been someone else. At first the seducer’s advances manifest themselves as a somewhat novel and interesting way of approaching a woman, as he entices her to 'go into character' according to his prearranged story-line and create an actual story, in which everything she does, even her refusal of him, takes on meaning in relation to what might have happened at Marienbad.
Information
(Objekt ID 5326)| Object type | Production |
| Premiere | 2002 |
| Produced by | Ingun Bjørnsgaard Prosjekt |
| Coproducers | Dansens Hus - Stockholm, BIT Teatergarasjen, tanzhaus nrw |
| Audience | Adults |
| Keywords | Chamber play, Dance, Contemporary dance, Classical ballet |
| Running period | 2002 |
| Website | Ingun Bjørnsgaard Prosjekt |
At first, this 'game' of going in and out of character seemed to be reminiscent of the focal point of Alain Resnais’ film from 1960, Last Year at Marienbad. This 'game' was also the main underlying theme of Ingun Bjørnsgaard’s Book of Songs. But the film and the ballet had even more in common: a deeper investigation of Alain Resnais’ film as a whole revealed that the seduction strategy mentioned above constituted a too simplistic explanation.
The literary reference employed in the development of Book of Songs stemmed from an entirely different source: When We Dead Awaken by Henrik Ibsen. Ibsen allowed the different characters in the play to assume different sides of his personality and fight out the internal traumas of his life amongst themselves against a backdrop of the Norwegian mountains. In Book of Songs by Ingun Bjørnsgaard Prosjekt, this partitioning of Ibsen’s personality into a spectrum of different roles was turned upside down.
Source:
Ingun Bjørnsgaard Prosjekt, ingunbp.no, 15.08.2010, http://www.ingunbp.no/eng/pages/12-book_of_songs
| Name | Role |
|---|---|
| Ingun Bjørnsgaard | – Choreography |
| Henrik Hellstenius | – Music |
| Thomas Björk | – Stage design |
| Morten Pettersen | – Sound design |
| Jean Vincent Kerebel | – Lighting design |
| Marianne Albers | – Dancer |
| Christopher Arouni | – Dancer |
| Torunn Robstad | – Dancer |
| Halldis Ólafsdóttir | – Dancer |
| Emery Cardas | – Musician (Cello) |
| Frode Larsen | – Musician (Fiolin) |
| February 3, 2002 – BIT Teatergarasjen | Show |
| February 2, 2002 – BIT Teatergarasjen | Show |
| 2002 | Worldwide premiere |