The Scorpion and other Tales
Solo.

Premiere: June 1992, European Dance Development Center, Arnhem, Holland.


A collage of movement about the frailty of the body and the transient nature of life. Scenes from Jean Genet's novel Notre-Dame des Fleurs are combined with animal fables, random press cuttings and situations from the final few days of a friend dying from AIDS.

Everything is linked together and performed to excerpts from Fauré's Requiem.


Choreography and dance: Anders Christiansen
Music: Gabriel Fauré – Requiem (excerpts)
Lighting design: Lars Egegård Sørensen

Minimum stage measurements: 10 x 10 metres
Duration: ca. 21 minutes

Press quotes:
Unusual dance talent alone on stage.
“Anders Christiansen works with tiny little steps and gestures and adds so much meaning and power, that each movement seems to hold the seed of a story. He has developed a formalistic language which is entirely his own. …And his intense face and personality roars across the stage - always perfectly balanced between strength and vulnerability.”
Henrik Lyding (Jyllands-Posten, 23th June 1995)


The Scorpion's evening.
“With Anders Christiansen's The Scorpion and other Tales, Danceforum reached not only its finale, but also an artistic quantum leap. A young boy in white shirt and short trousers pulls down his zipper, lifts his arms into a ballet position, eats a rose, and scrapes blood red stripes on his bare back. It is the flesh that is mortified and chastised, with undertones of humour and yet scalpel-sharp consistency.
A full-bodied solo, permeated with a personal expression, with a timing and concentration one seldom sees in this country.”
Monna Dithmer (Politiken, 8th December 1994)

“Anders Christiansen put an unshakeable end with the solo The Scorpion and other Tales, a collage about the frailty of the body and death by AIDS. With a single gesture he transformed himself from a bright schoolboy in short trousers, into a young man and dancer, until finally ending up as an illness-racked cadaver, which cautiously let the fingers slide gently through the thin hair. An arm became suddenly a hissing snake; a pointed hand a stinging scorpion's tail. As a deathly pale and greedy gecko, he doggedly consumed the flower of a blood-red rose. Mercilessly, the images of the body's perishable nature swarm forward when Anders Christiansen, knife-sharp, cuts right through to the bone, where it really hurts!”
Majbrit Hjelmsbo (Teater Et, January 1995)

Venues:
DanseRotation / Gran, Århus; Teaterhuset, Odense; Team Teatret, Herning; Randers Egns Teater, Randers; Odin Teatret, Holstebro: 30 January - 9 February 2002.

Dansescenen, Copenhagen, 2-3 June 2000 (Solo programme SUSHI).
Dansedage 97 / MBT-Scenen, Århus, 1997.
American Dance Festival (informal performance), North Carolina, USA, 6 July 1996.
Kaleidoskop, Copenhagen, 21-24 June 1995 (Solo programme Transgressor).
The State Arts Foundation 1993-95. Presentation. / Charlottenborg, Copenhagen, 17 September 1995.
Dansk Danseforum / Dansescenen, Copenhagen, 6 December 1994.
X-pos 4 / Dansens Hus, Copenhagen, 1 December 1994.
European Dance Development Center, Arnhem, Holland, 1992.



back


Photographs: 1-3 Anette Grunnet, 4 Ans Dekkers
In all pictures: Anders Christiansen