ARTLAND

- I know only 35 movements, she says in a frail silent start of the performance “Unknown pleasures”. She dances some of the movements, and state their number at the same time. She compares the repetition it to our existence.

- And, the movements are not even mine! she continues. Somebody else invented them, I just repeat them. We smile and see the abyss at the same time.

-The evil eye, for instance, she says. Her mutual understanding and agreement with the audience changes. She distances herself from us by looking at us with dangerous eyes while swirling around in her dance-moves. It is a play, an act.

- So many messages! one of the actors exclaims over and over again. He is constantly surprised by all the ideas Michael Jackson spread in his videos. In a hilarious flow and mix of monologue and dance he tries to explain and understand where Michael Jackson got all his great ideas from, but always end up with “-I have no idea.”. The figure in the play repeats and live through the acts of the music-videos. The audience laugh and gulps at the same time.

The other dancers/actors are trying to catch our attention, but “Michael Jackson” speeds on. He does not hear anybody else, the others are only allowed to be actors in his run-through of the plots.  It’s lonely up on the stage for the others. She wants to please us and smiles. We don’t know whom to look at. The woman holds up A4:s with the names of birds to the other man on stage:  “chaffinch”, and he whistles and imitates. The “Who’s bad”-lyrics is heard from “Michael Jackson”. The tempo is speeded. Next, the turtle dove, and “Who’s bad?”. The nightjar screams and screams, MJ sings higher -Who’s bad? And it all turns out like a crazy duel.

One actor performs long dialogues from movies, for instance Wim Wenders “Paris, Texas”, played from a jukebox on stage. A giant inflatable bottle of the body fluid gall perform a dance and becomes deflated. If you had too much of the black gall in your body you became melancholic the idea was in antiquity. Here the gall is with mango-taste. A giant rabbit rides the automatic amusement-park-elephant. A man and a woman, sometimes behind masks, nods and nods in the same pace.

“Haunted dancehall” and “Music for a darkened theatre” are the first parts of the trilogy which ends with ” Unknown pleasures”. The scenography is a deserted fairground, a former amusement park. Carina Reich and Bogdan Szyber are one of a kind in Sweden in creating a very special mix of performance, theatre, interaction, drama, dance and art.

It is unpredictable.

About longing and belonging,

perishable transient life.

Our memories and the archives of our lives.

The disappearance of all memories.

Two beckoning cats, the ones we usually meet with their upright paws moving at a Chinese restaurant stands by the nodding couple on the counter in front of the paste-balloon-wall. Maybe they wish us good luck while waving goodbye as the stage turns dark.

A voice says: We learned how to evaporate. How to come to nothing.