Louis Schou-Hansen
Tragedy
Podium, Oslo
October 11-13, 2024
Louis Schou-Hansen, Tragedy, PODIUM, Oslo
I'm told about last night's venue in Oslo; PODIUM, that it is today a third-generation artist-run gallery and that the overall direction of the programme is favorably receptive towards projects conceptualized around time and temporalities. As Louis Schou-Hansen’s permiere of Tragedy begins, it's understood that the two related fictional (some)bodies are distraught with what appears not just a sudden bout of pain, and that they have been crying. So much so that black mascara has been imprinting their faces into a disposition of The Crow around their eyes. It might be the emergence of a face mask, but the state of affairs here is beyond a point of any containment. Schou-Hansen's storytelling works from in medias res and the outset is the cathartic release. There’s that 80s song, Dancing With Tears In My Eyes by Ultravox that shoots to mind and this one line that goes ”…Weeping for the memory of a life gone by”. The song from there goes on about how hard it is to believe that a moment has seen its very last time. Only here, no matter how much the bodies disjoin and separate themselves into isolation, they come ”swinging” back for each other, for various acts, marked by different points of an emotional rollercoaster register. At times, there’s moments of reconciliation and temporary solace on display, until deliveries of a further ”message” disrupts ”bed peace”, sending the two into further despair or conflicted resentment.
I have to remind myself that PODIUM despite suitably transformed into a theatrical setting, draped everywhere in crisp black, indeed and in fact is a gallery, and not a stage per se for dance. What’s interesting is how Tragedy opens the floor up for opera-style performativity in this setting with as much or actually more emphasis in facial theatre than dance as choreography. This genre of ”drama” totally opposes the standard protocol of stone face and numb face that seems to be default mode in Stockholm. What's going on right here you could say isn’t ”trending” in contemporary dance. At least not back home. It also appears to me that Schou-Hansen with this piece has not been particularly interested in flexing the dance-choreographic chops, but rather in presenting performance art for a gallery in a way that works with the long-durational aim and set-up, and allows for his two performers to go on for the full 3-4 hours. Tragedy is more labor-intense in the acting department than the dancing as dancing. The L-shape space of the venue is cleverly used, with the performers moving around sometimes each in one different section of the L, where if you yourself don't move, you won't be in on the action taking place on both sides of the bend. In other words you can't afford to be complacent about sitting or standing comfortably in just one place as Schou-Hansen uses the venue's potential in ensuring at least some relocating-movements from his audience.
A staple in the structure of the performance, that it comes back to as a boomerang and axis of sorts around which it rotates, all the way towards the end, is one where the bodies get into sodomy formation. Mechanic animation, no pleasure exhibited or visible on the faces of the performers. It’s sex post a state of sex still serving the rationales of sex. Over the hours, this repetition never quite fails to invigorate the piece. The music which is perfectly scored here, and 110 % in alignment with the routine, has "love will you fuck good, then love will fuck you bad na na na na" marked all over it. It’s all broad gestures and quiet humour; what with an intended pun could be called tragicomic.
Tragedy does have me asking a string of questions about its quality. Is this good dance? Is this good performance art? Is Schou-Hansen's story-telling good beyond the cross-disciplinary and époque-bending pastiche (hey, Baroque drama!) , or does he care whether it is? As enigmatic as his two performers are together to a start; that's not going to get you through more than 30 minutes, and would not have me staying if not for the purpose of this review. In the audience you realize quickly the non-linear structure will not suddenly just change course, and you will know not to expect a big revelatory ending. The 360 degrees' roller-coastering will have it ending where it began, that much you get.
At one point, the very special person, a former dance critic and currently dance writer, who is keeping me cozy on Whatsapp in light of the crisp Olso temperatures in October, returns a pondering-faced emoji in real-time reponse to a video snippet I send him. I immediately ask him if he thinks from mere look of the few seconds, that it looks clowny and lacking refinement, as though suspecting this is really how it could come across, when mediated beyond live viewing. He tells me no, and that that's not what he was thinking. It makes me think further about how seriously Tragedy takes itself. I think the answer to that is that it takes itself as seriously as you take yourself, and the reason why you end up staying so long even after connecting all the dots, is the You factor. Tragedy is a projection surface for you to revisit your own tragedies in the love domain. At least that's what I make out of it.
There was certainly that moment I had to confront myself (in reality; casually remind myself, but for the sake of dramaturgical effect!) with the memory of that time ten years ago in a large swanky suite inside an Italian chateau, where two hyperbolic and opulent beds remained untouched. One was not touched at all, and in the other no touch was channeled between two people who by that point resented each other so much but still acted under the pretense of not all love lost. It never stopped raining in Italy that week in late May. It was wet, but they were not. Even in the presence of another it was lonely and miserable.
Tragedy I sense is about images; how we're molded by images and tropes, how we perform these images, cut and copy them into new images and reproductions. As such, Tragedy I believe is not interested in setting a new bar for originality or being praised for its inventiveness. Sure, it is different, but it's also so much more inclusive than most dance performances I've seen lately. I'm never at the fore, obviously not, I'm just me in my seat, in the the dark of the venue until the curtain call when I'm edited back in. With Tragedy, I'm pulled in by faces and never edited out in the first place.
Ashik Zaman
Tragedy plays at PODUM in OSLO over the weekend, in conjunction with Oslo Art Weekend, through Sunday October 13.