Diskussion af den mandlige anatomi
(Discussion of the Male Anatomy)

Dance performance for seven dancers, one choirboy and a pianist.

Premiere: 25th February 1997, Kanonhallen, Copenhagen.


The performance moves from quiet compositions of images to transvestite-like variety theatre in its uncovering of the male. A strictly subjective examination that seeks to shed light on the nature of masculinity in general by focusing on tendencies associated with the homosexual male.


Concept and direction: Anders Christiansen
Choreography: Anders Christiansen and the dancers
Dancers: Camillo Vacalebre, Birger Persson, Svend Bunch, Marisa Zanotti, Mat Voorter, Gorm Neergaard Jespersen, Jean Hugues Miredin
Pianist: Christer Irgens-Møller
Choirboy: Søren Birch Plum
Composition for piano: Christer Irgens-Møller
Psalm performed live: Grundtvig - Midt iblandt os er Guds rige
Taped music: Samuel Barber - Adagio for Strings; Charles Trénet - La Mer; Techno etc.
Set design: Christian Q. Clausen
Costume design: Lise Klitten
Lightning design: Morten Lyster
Producer / PR: Gerd Shottländer
Production: (stillleben)

Duration:110 minutes




Press Quotes:
Macho - as quiet as a mouse.
” ... in this performance too, 32 year old Anders Christiansen shows that, more than anything else, he seeks to uncover the unknown. He skips banalities – instead he digs up unseen images with his steady hands: Images of bodies quivering with mystique, and souls that appear through a single gesture...

...The existential crisis of identity is depicted not only through the male anatomy, but through male beauty. Tense muscular torsos are bathed in light, sinewy calves twist towards the floor, sensitive elbows press silently against the sky."
Anne Flindt Christensen (Information, 27th February 1997)







Between flesh and bone.
Strip is only a poor word, when Christiansen seeks out the borderzones.
”Sure it is quiet, with an almost ritualistic slow pace, but when the evening's discussion of the male anatomy finally catches on, the images of the silent shadows on the open, black plane sits in the flesh like ticks.

...I have never had this fleshy powerlessness, self-hatred and self-exposure demonstrated more hair-raisingly than when a man, like Dostoyevsky's basement-dweller, is displaying himself. With a magnetic, repulsive aura Gorm Neergaard Jespersen shows everything from the stringy hair and the back of the brown underpants, to the pale sinews of the legs. Strip is only a poor word for this. It was total exposure, shameless as well as vulnerable.
Monna Dithmer (Politiken, 27th February 1997)



”Loneliness is lurking everywhere, and screams for closeness and love go through many of the quiet images. Dutch Mat Voorter stands lost on the stage, when Jean Hugues Miredin, almost like a saving angel comes and leads him to the bathtub, where one of the performance's most beautiful and sensual images unfolds. Religious undertones appear throughout the performance in the postures and the gestures of the dancers.

...And when a small boy soprano, singing his psalm, moves down through the violent adult dancers, and lays down alone in the front of the stage, where the young man lay in the beginning of the performance, one experiences both a prayer for tolerance, a reminiscence of the pain of loneliness and an emphasis on the potential of the male sex.
Vibeke Wern (Berlingske Tidende, 27th February 1997)



Venues:
Kanonhallen, Copenhagen, 25 February - 9 March 1997.


Diskussion af den mandlige anatomi was produced with support from The Danish Arts Council, The State Arts Foundation, KODA's kollektive båndmidler, Københavns Kulturfond.



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Photographs: 1 Ole Haupt, 2-6 David Amzellag
1 Svend Bunch, Jean Hugues Miredin, Birger Persson, Mat Voorter, Gorm Neergaard Jespersen, Camillo Vacalebre
2 Svend Bunch, Mat Voorter, Birger Persson, Gorm Neergaard Jespersen, Camillo Vacalebre
3 Mat Voorter, Svend Bunch, Jean Hugues Miredin, Camillo Vacalebre, Birger Persson, Gorm Neergaard Jespersen
4 Camillo Vacalebre, Mat Voorter
5 Gorm Neergaard Jespersen
6 Svend Bunch, Marisa Zanotti