“Dancing is a spiritual exercise in a physical form” – Merce Cunningham

In every shift of weight, in every movement that doesn’t follow an expected pattern, there is an invitation to inhabit the abundance of life.

L’exposé exists where the dancer’s precision unfolds, allowing stillness and motion to coexist in a dissonant flow. The dance materializes through movements vibrating between chaos and excess, gravity and intensity. With elasticity, the dance twists into different spatial patterns, as the performers move through these complex paths with high intensity.

The piece addresses the necessity of true excess, aiming to embrace abundance as a vital aspect of existence. The concept of excess is not approached through the llusionary lens of consumerism but as a fundamental need in which it becomes an inner drive that can be directed and transcend beyond economic and material limitations.

The dance becomes a catalyst for true poetic waste arising from precision, disorientation, sensory weight distribution, expansion, and fragmented approaches based on multiple, overlapping techniques. The aim is to create a pathway for the dancer’s >>spirit<<.

Rooted in Merce Cunningham’s choreographic method, through the DanceForms software, the method is applied as the foundation for the material, but used entirely in an analog way. The dance is performed through anti-harmony, with constant movements in glitch. The choreographic method of the work derives from the desire to develop movement material of high complexity, advancing the idea that dance consists of a multitude of elements, where the various components of the choreography independently transform into an unpredictable yet organic system.

«Le Scénario» revolves around jumping from the modernist dance tradition of the 60s and 70s. This blends with post-punk, confetti rain and male renaissance fashion. The work investigates the finale as a format, and aims to create dance of high complexity that addresses the pleasure of jumping expansively across the stage. The work explores the moment when the dancer is in the air, and is rooted in high frequency dance and interacts with abstraction, sensory overload and expansion: jumping through space with a multiple changes of direction, like deers.

The project is based on movement material that plays with constructed disorientation, sensory overload, expansion, multiple and simultaneously overlapping techniques. Le Scénario pursues the thesis of creating dance made up of a large number of elements, where the different parts of the choreography are independently transformed into an unpredictable yet organic system, a choreography whose foundation comes from glitch and collision, with a desire to embrace expansive jumping and to be transcended by it.

The costumes are made by Daniel Åkerström Steen and Philip Berlin. The costume takes its cues from historical renaissance fashion, in particular male fashion ideals. This is blended with organic latex inspired by contemporary queer fetish culture.

Le Scénario is a project initiated by the dancer and choreographer Philip Berlin. The piece premiered at Dansens hus in Stockholm 2023, and has been performed at, The Oslo Opera House, Hjalmar Bergman Theater Örebro, Dansstationen Malmö, Lokstallarna Karlshamn, Slottescenen Ljusdal, City Theater of Gävle, Region Theatre of Växsjö, Saga Teatern Linköping.

“The driving post-punk music, rain of confetti, male renaissance costumes, numerous floating entrances and exits turned into a series of spectacular finales that I didn’t want to end.”
Berit Einemo Frøysland, Shakespearetidsskrift Norway, 24 December 2024