Twist theatre festival in Oslo opened yesterday

FULL HOUSE ON OPENING NIGHT. I entered "Riksteatret" Yesterday (31. Oct 2008) around 7.30 p.m. The lobby was crowded with young people (and some oldies like us) enjoying meeting each other on a Friday night as well as the opening wine and a key speech by Fabian Stang, the major of Oslo (relevant here to mention that he is son of Wenche Foss, an excellent actress in Norway). Standing in the back near to the ticket counter we could only hear a few of his words but I guess he underlined the value of this brand new theatre festival. It is indeed an interesting joint effort and creative collaboration among three theatres: Riksteatret, Nordic Black Theatre, and Det Åpne Teater.
http://www.twist08.no/home/
"SIZWE BANZI IS DEAD" GUEST PLAY. After the opening, most of us entered the stage room to experience "Sizwe Banzi is Dead," by Fugard, Kani and Ntshona.
The play is problematizing many things including the absurdities of power relations and ways of expressing this in work and societal relations between black and white people. Especially, it explores the shift of and playing with - even stealing - identity and manners when two poor guys in a township of South-Africa finds a dead man's passport... and plays with it in a hostile South-African city setting: "A black man stay out of trouble? Impossible! Our skin is trouble!"
With: Habib Dembélé, Pitcho Womba Konga

Regi/director: Peter Brook
Light design: Philippe Vialatte
Scenografi: Abdou Ouologeum

Production: C.I.C.T. / Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord

Translation to French: Marie-Hélène Estienne

BRIEF INTRO (in Norwegian): Handlingen foregår i en sørafrikansk township, bosetning, og er forfattet av en av landets mest kjente dramatikere, Athol Fugard, i samarbeid med de opprinnelige skuespillere. Urpremièren var i 1972. Men oppsetningen som nå besøker Norge, er fra 2006, og er satt opp av den engelske teaterlegenden Peter Brook og hans franske kompani Théâtre du Bouffes du Nord. - Kan føye til at noen husker kanskje oppsetningen i Bergen i 1972 med bl.a. Lothar Lindtner, også en teaterlegende!
Source: http://oslopuls.aftenposten.no/kunst_scene/article94807.ece

EVALUATION: 6 points! The two black actors were amazingly good and communicated excellently even when speaking French to a Norwegian audience. Among the best performances I have ever seen - with only two actors and sparse resources. Just a few cues: the two guys were excelling in using their body language, voice and facial expression and playing with gestures (smile!), movement, and sound... exploring the audience's sense of humour as well as empathy by being uniquely present on stage "with us"... but using only a very few stage furnishing tools (In Norwegian: en krakk og noen papp-plater, et par stativer som fungerte som dører og vegger, en sko som repr. en død mann).
PETER BROOK-DIRECTING. A background to understand their way of acting and using the few sparse tools creatively is knowing about the approaches and thinking of Peter Brook, one of UK's greatest theatre directors (recently awarded the Norwegian Ibsen prize). He is known, for example, for his 'empty space' approach, daring to take away anything that can hinder the actor becoming present and preparing hard for the performance as a unique event to be born, to put it very briefly.
TWIST LEADERS. Before the play started, on stage, three leaders of the three collaborating Oslo theatres were greeting us shoulder-to-shoulder, a very symbolic and warm welcoming to this new festival. Instructive handy program folders available as well. Congratulations!

Stabæk is celebrating

Finally Stabæk won "Serien" (the football liga of Norway) and celebrated at Nadderud stadion nearby where we live and where I also went to gymnasium.

This football club is famous for its leadership group - building up an interest for football and its club in a community not so very interested in football from the outset.

Things have changed, see pictures on e.g., this link

http://www.dagbladet.no/sport/2008/10/26/551637.html

Dansens Hus, Oslo

14 October 2008: Visited the new Dansens Hus (house of Dance) in the Vulcan area in Oslo, situated close to Akerselva (*the river dividing Oslo in East and West. Nowadays a growing area for creative industries firms, educational and cultural institutions.) 

Dansens Hus seemed very fit for its purpose, the main performance room could include around 350 people - seat rows were steeply built so that everyone should be able to see the dancers well.

The wooden stage floor appeared to be fit for its dancing purpose.

A long bar and nice mingling area is the first thing you meet when entering. It is also a flexible space for meetings and events. 

We were also guided outside and updated on the plans for this Vulcan area. A food hall is planned in the old brick building, and near to the Maridalsveien a new hotel (Scandic) as well as new theatre stage are going to be built.

The visit was arranged by our Culture and Media group of Polytechnic Society. 

100 years' celebration Geirr Tveitt

Jacob Culture Church in Oslo, 19 October 2008: We celebrated the birthday of the Norwegian composer who renamed himself Geirr Tveitt (from Nils Tveit). 

A great evening orchestrated by Lars Klevstrand and his companions together with also Gyri Tveitt, Geirr's daughter. 

Wonderful music ... incl. excerpts from Hardingatoner and well-known songs such as "Fløytelåt" and "Vi skal ikke sova bort sumarnatta." 

Some "refound" pieces were also performed. (to be filled in..)

I appreciated in particular the highly sensitive piano-playing by Håvard Gimse. 

Melancholia

2.10.2008 Den Norske Opera & Ballett
Interesting performance of an entirely new opera: Melancholia is narrating one day in the life of Lars Hertervig, the talented, enigmatic but highly suffering South-Norwegian painter while he was in Düsseldorf striving with his talents and doubts (Ich kann malen!) and fell in forbidden love with Helene Winckelmann, the step-dauhter in the patriarchal Winckelmann house where he rented a room.
It is performed during the Ultima festival in Snøhætta's white new opera in Oslo.
The libretto by Jon Fosse and music by Georg Friederich Haas, a young Austrian composer. I experienced excellent singers! and triggering new compounded music by Haas.

Geirr Tveitt's Balder's dreams rediscovered!

BALDUR LOST... OR NOT. The Norwegian composer Geirr Tveitt's main work, Baldur's draumar, is literally rising from the ashes (see below). Until recently, this his major work, performed in the University of Oslo's Aula 24. Feb 1938 and also in 1939 in Paris, has been thought lost in fire ... either as stored in his fairytale house in Hardanger (Bjødnabrakane high over the Hardanger fjord) that tragically burnt down many years ago (July 1970) and/or, according to Tveitt himself, the original "Baldur" was also said to have become destroyed in London bombing during WW2 (the first score was sent to London for review to a complete stranger at Covent Garden who Tveitt had got recommended).
SEVERAL VERSIONS - THE ORIGINAL REDISCOVERED. Yet, it recently turned out that two written down versions both are luckily now refound partly accidentally and partly as research and documentary projects. This is triggering news and attracts some interest because 2008 is the very year Norway is celebrating 100 years since the birth of this composer (1908-1981). See a new biography below!
It is amazing to rediscover art works but perhaps not entirely unusual, as vestiges of creation do seem to turn up again, I wonder.
- Thus, in Oslo, Norway, literaly arising from the ashes... half-burnt note-pages were found some years ago, first identified by a music student. It could be recognized and then recreated as Baldur's dreams (in companion with an NRK radio recording from the original live performance and contributions by two composers, incl. the Russian Aleksej Rybnikov, more on this later perhaps!), i.e., significant parts of Tveitt's revised music score have been found in a box, consisting of vestiges of his works from the ashes of the Hardanger house. The box was luckily preserved via Bergen Museum and then moved to the Norway's National Museum archives and reexplored recently by the musician Håvard Gimse and the conductor Ole Kristian Ruud. Ruud and Stavanger Symphony Orchestra performed a recreated version of Baldur's Draumar in May 2002 in Grieghallen during the Bergen Music Festival, an event I happened to experience.
- In London, the complete 1938 original first score has also late 2007 surprisingly been refound in music archives at Covent Garden (it was sent by Geirr Tveitt to Mr. Bruce Ottley, Covent Garden in 1939).
NEW INTEREST. This, and other interesting stuff is outlined both in a recent film documentary by the team of Sondre Hallvardsson Bjørgum (son of the exceptional Hardanger fiddle player Hallvard Bjørgum, I guess) and shown this autumn on NRK, and also in Reidar Storaas' revised biography of Geirr Tveitt, Mellom triumf og tragedie (between triumph and tragedy), a biography, launched in the new Litteraturhuset in Oslo (24 Sept) as well as Bergen last week. I enjoyed the launch in Oslo with the well-prepared biographer and journalist Reidar Storaas (also a friend of Tveitt), the singer and guitar musician Lars Klevstrand (who has performed with Tveitt's music for decades), and the musicolog (I think) August Albertsen. In additon, the Think (electric car) industrial designer and Hardanger/Norheimsund-born Stig Olav Skeie had prepared and presented contributions to a discography.

AN ARTIST'S LIFE AND WORKS. I will read the new biography with interest (only scanned some parts now), but I appreciate that Storaas' new biography expands on Tveitt's artistic works as well as life, part of that is controversial stuff, I guess. However, the fascinating artist who renamed himself Geirr Tveitt (rather than Nils Tveit) still is an enigma, not least after the recent discoveries!
INGEBJØRG GRESVIG. Although many of Tveitt's artistic and life connections are mentioned including his first wife, herself a musician, I still miss more information about what he learned from and came to do in inspirational collaboration with his first wife, Ingebjørg Gresvig. She can be thought of as "the Andsnes" of those days, because she already was a creative, distinguished, and known master of the grand piano when they married. She had performed e.g. for many audiences and notable families in the cultural Berlin. Personally I really appreciate our lively encounters in the neighborhood of Kalfaret, Bergen when she was still alive. We could also fully observe directly how she memorized the notes and played excellently even at a high age. So my thoughts in this Geirr Tveitt year also go to her, thanks for your inspirations!

PETER OPSVIK and ULLA BRANTENBERG - awarded Anders Jahre Cultural Prize 2008

Anders Jahre Winners 2008.
Courtesy photos Anders Jahres Humanitære Stiftelse

Yesterday, designer Peter Opsvik and glass artist Ulla-Mari Brantenberg received the Anders Jahre's Cultural Prize 2008, together with two young talents (Daniel Rybakken and Tuva Gonsholt) the prize winners had helped selecting.
Because I have a special research interest for designing, I will focus on the designers here. According to the press releases, this is the first time a designer receives this prize.
In collaboration with the prize winner, a young designer was also awarded, as already introduced this was Daniel Rybakken, educated from Industrial Design, AHO.
Congratulations to both designers Peter and Daniel!
The award ceremony was in Oslo's Gamle Logen, and the prize winners surprised the audience with a shared music performance - Peter Opsvik is a good sax player but few had expected Ulla to sing. It was terrific my brother told! Sadly I was not there but Princess Astrid was! (see link below to Kongehuset).
See more on the prize and prize winners here http://www.ajhs.no/scripts/ingress/read.pl?id=080630103026-95
http://www.kongehuset.no/c26939/nyhet/vis.html?tid=73195

Sitting with movement and variation. Opsvik is known in design milieus and beyond because of his contribution to innovating sitting. Among his commonly used designed products is his Tripp Trapp chair that "grows with the child" (produced by STOKKE). He has also designed a variety of human-centered chairs or "sitting tools" for people to sit actively at home, in the studio or elsewhere (including the balans and rocking-wise chairs codeveloped with STOKKE, now sold through Varier). Further, Opsvik has codesigned a range of office chairs and conference chairs for work settings aiming for "movement and variation" (codeveloped with HÅG, cf. especially the HAG CREDO and the HAG Capisco, the latter is a sadle-like chair. I sit in it at BI everyday, it feels very good for my back and whole body!).

Rethinking sitting. There are of course many sources of inspiration behind what has crystallized as "Rethinking sitting" (Opsvik's new book, 2008). Among the fundamental inspirational sources was the Danish dr. Mandal working on improving school children's seating possibilities, and Opsvik met Mandal and other specialists involved in ergonomics at HAG.
Furthermore, another critical source is the Norwegian Balans design group with its alternative sitting conception and models brought forward by a group of four in the late 1970s, i.e. three designers one of them was Peter Opsvik, the others were Svein Gusrud, and Oddvin Rykken and all of them worked with Hans Christian Mengshoel, an inventor who has been attributed for the concept. At the time all of them interacted in various ways to create an alternative sitting, which eventually contributed to the new thinking. Also a few companies became involved in this co-creation and further development such as HAG, STOKKE and RYBO).
Although complex design work often involves team work, it is a significant contribution over a life-time by Opsvik (who also is a musician and designs artistic cupboards). No doubt, his efforts have been crossing disciplinary and other borders, and this was explicitly acknowledged by the prize committee headed by Åse Kleveland.
For more elaboration on Peter Opsvik, Stokke and HAG and their design collaborations, see research articles and reports on my website:
http://www.bi.no/Content/AcademicProfile____37600.aspx?ansattid=FGL98006&siteid=2D93E6C6062086B2C12571C4005B9DF5&type=pages