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The knife-thrower who stabs his assistant, and the acrobat who falls. In his new work, 'The Dropouts', the internationally-renowned Norwegian choreographer Jo Strømgren invites school kids to an exhilarating human circus.
For Jo Strømgren the world is his stage, but he also has two permanent offices. One is at the Norwegian National Ballet in Oslo, where he is the house choreographer, the other is at home, and thatʼs where Skånes Dansteater finds him. Props from his recently ended production lie scattered around him, a box of Polish gold medals and a guitar he never learned to play properly.
– It’s a mess, more boho than bohemian chaos, Jo notes as he looks around, but at least I put on a white shirt!
He may not be a master of the guitar, but this 52-year-old Norwegian is almost intimidatingly productive in other artistic fields.
– Like so many others, the pandemic gave me time to scrutinise my own life, and I realised I had made 200 productions, most of which are full-length works. What the hell have I done? Fifty should be enough, after that it’s okay to die.
What keeps Jo going is his lively imagination and his enormous capacity for work. But also, and perhaps most of all, the energy he gets from meeting new people.
– I sometimes get tired of myself, but never of meeting people on an artistic level in an open context. That’s a privilege.
For Skånes Dansteater he has created a handful of works, including 'The Hypnotic Wallpaper' – a conspiration play based on 1970's wallpaper – and 'A Dance Tribute to the Art of Football'. The latter is a ground-breaking work in the dance-about-football genre, which has been performed more than a thousand times in 40 countries since its conception in 1996. Jo sighs when we mention it.
– I’m not that crazy about it – it was more like a fun experiment. But I guess it was my 'Diggi Loo Diggi Ley' (the song the song the Herrey brothers won the Eurovision Song Contest with in 1984 – E.d.). And now it’s so old I regard it as a historical document.
We return to the present. And to the circus world, where 'The Dropouts' is set. Jo points out that he could never have created it in Norway, which has a weaker circus tradition than Sweden, where contemporary circus has revived the genre.
– I went to a proper old-fashioned circus with animals a few years ago. It was awful, the animals, horrible costumes and a ringmaster who had had too much to drink, I couldn’t bear to stay to the end.
The colour scheme of the sets and costumes for 'The Dropouts' nevertheless awakens dreams of traditional circus, a bit like stepping into an old sepia-tinted photo. But our artist’ acts don’t go according to plan. On the contrary.
– There’s a whole genre dedicated to ‘the show that goes wrong’. And the generation we address here is very familiar with bloopers and fails on TikTok and YouTube. In that way, you could see the stage as a screen too, says Jo.
He remembers when the iconic MTV series 'Jackass' was new – the pleasure of suddenly seeing how much it actually hurts to fail at difficult stunts. Perfection is not what Jo is looking for, whether in the circus ring or on stage.
And yet, here you are, working with some of the world’s best dance companies. How do you actively avoid perfection then?
– I’ve given a lot of thought to that. Because when you see a classical dancer doing ten perfect pirouettes in a row, the feeling you get is ‘Wow, that’s skilful!’ – but it’s unrelatable to 99.9 per cent of the population. On the other hand, if an actor with a beard can do 1½ turns before falling over, we feel for him. And that’s when the work communicates with the audience.
Tricks that go wrong also have a kind of inherent comical quality. And humour and warmth are words that keep popping up in descriptions of Jo Strømgren’s choreography.
You’ve said that all your works share an ambition to highlight the utterly sad behaviour of human beings. How do you combine that with humour?
– A lot of art is about exalting humankind. But the more I look at the contemporary world, at modern man and myself, the more pessimistic I get. We’re destroying the world. We can’t get anything right and shouldn’t pretend we can. We’re not powerful, we’re insignificant, and there’s something poetic and beautiful about being small and not understanding things. And as a Norwegian, it comes naturally to link that perspective on life to comedy, that’s black comedy for you, ‘underdog’ comedy. But I don’t think it’s the same in Sweden, Jo explains, and adds that he often laughs at and is amused by observing the sense of humour in the countries he visits.
He also stresses that the point of 'The Dropout's is not really the absurd show numbers, but the encounter with the artists. They are human beings who don’t fit in with a normal circus but have found one another and joined forces to create their own – singular – free zone. Their life stories are portrayed through one of Jo’s favourite devices, a voiceover, a pre-recorded narrator. This was inspired by a Swedish national icon.
– Like many Swedes, I grew up with Astrid Lindgren’s voice, for instance in the TV series 'Emil in Lönneberga'. Astrid Lindgren was a radical and progressive feminist, and a fantastic storyteller. And a voiceover is an incredibly effective form of communication, which also makes it easy for the artists to dance at the same time.
To wrap up, one of your earlier works is 'The Ministry of Unresolved Feelings'. What are your unresolved feelings at the moment?
– Gosh, that’s a tough one! But one thing that’s been on my mind... I used to feel so much anger against people and against the world. Now I’m not angry any more. Why not? Is it because I’m older? I ask myself whether that’s a good thing or not.
Text: Lisa Boda. Photo: Jacob Stage, Jakub Sobotka.
March 4 and March 11 at Skånes Dansteater, Malmö.
April 15 at Falkhallen, Falkenberg.
April 29 at Ystads Teater, Ystad.
Autumn premiere September 30 at Skånes Dansteater.
Se alla föreställningsdatum här
Choreography: Jo Strømgren in collaboration with the dancers.
Dancers: Kit Brown, Tomáš Červinka, Dario Minoia, Madeleine Månsson, Kat Nakui, Iris Telting.
Set design, text: Jo Strømgren.
Costume design: Bregje van Balen.
Lighting design: Ludvig Uppman.
The Dropouts is a co-production by Jo Strømgren Kompani and Skånes Dansteater.