– dreams, memories, sounds, chaos, bodies, utopias, swing
'Samtaler med' is an autobiographical dance performance and therapeutic examination of body, memory, identity(s), queer awakening, inner narratives and outer disturbances. About being away, awake, aligned, misaligned, present and absent. About protecting and peeling off.
Through movement, sound, lights and objects the audience is invited into a personal space where Caroline Hawkins Skjørshammer tries to visit and stage this. An internal conversation with the known, unknown, old and new. A bodily conversation with, and processing, og everything that was not given space in conventional conversational therapy.
Background: Over the course of twenty years Caroline has been to many different therapists and healing practitioners. Some good ones, some average ones, and some unfortunate ones. She also grew up with two psychologists as parents, and has in addition to dance studied psychology and family therapy. This has made her curious about what good therapy and help really looks like, and why many therapists are more concerned with words and language then they are with the body. The one we experience, digest and heal through, the one we experience the world in.
The work with conversations with started in 2017, while she was both in therapy and studying family therapy, as an attempt to create an alternative healing practice for herself through dancing, singing, writing, babling, drawing, self-massage, meditation and witnessing. During this process she also came out as gay. samtaler med as a performative work is the extension and continuation of this practice. The performance is the therapist.
Duration: 65 min + 10 minute break + 30 min after-talk
Credits: Dancer/Choreographer: Caroline Hawkins Skjørshammer
Composition/Sound design: Vidar Løvstad and Caroline Skjørshammer
Musical supervisor: Vidar Løvstad
Scenographer/Visual artist: Katarina Caspersen
Text: Caroline Skjørshammer
Lighting designer: Benjamin Fjellman
Light installation: Adrian Knutsen
Credit outside composition: Voicen (2021) - Tristan & Yearling. Fredrik Heidemann/Mathias August Andersen. Petrola 80
Sound sampling: Caroline in conversation with family, friends, therapist and collegues
Producer/Production assistant: Lisa Pedersen
Co-producers: Bærum Kulturhus, Dans Sørøst-Norge, and Sprang regional stage
Mentoring herd: Steffi Lund, Hanna Filomen Mjåvatn, Anders Engebretsen, Siv Gaustad, Ingunn Rimestad
Voice consultant: Ingrid Vetlesen
Funded by: The Norwegian Arts Council, FFUK and Kulturetaten/Municipality of Oslo
Photo: Katarina Caspersen
