Sticks & Fur
Solo performance in two parts.
Premiere: 6th February 2003, Kanonhallen, Copenhagen.
[ A man is sitting in a steel cage, gluing fur on to his naked skin ]
The solo Fur is a mix of video projections, spatial installation and dance performance. It is a collage about the shedding of skins, performed to a sombre solo composition for electric guitar. Fur depicts the journey away from the child towards adulthood, and the great journey away from the animal towards the human.
[ A man is dancing wearing high-heeled shoes and crutches ]
The solo Sticks moves from a bizarre exhibition of a body to weird experiments with crutches and stilts. The body is examined as object - supported, raised and extended. The solo is performed to an original score performed live by Soma Allpass on cello.
Concept, choreography and dance: Anders Christiansen
Boy in video: Frederik Schmidt - Fur
Cellist: Soma Allpass - Sticks
Music: Soma Allpass - Sticks; Jørgen Teller - Fur
Set and costume design: Lise Klitten
Lighting design: Lars Egegaard Sørensen
Video: Mikal Bing - Fur
Producer: Charlotte Rindom
PR: Henning Krog
Production: (stillleben)
Minimum stage measurement: 10 metres deep x 14 metres wide
Duration:69 minutes
Press quotes:
Anders Christiansen fascinates, amuses and terrifies……
“Choreographer and dancer Anders Christiansen has a keen eye for the absurd and the bizarre. This talent is subtly employed in his new performance-like dance solo Sticks & Fur in which he both terrifyingly, beautifully and amusingly depicts metamorphoses between animal and human, child and adult, the living body and dead objects.
…Surprisingly and grotesquely Anders Christiansen enters the stage for the second part Sticks on high crutches like a cross between a long-legged animal and an amputated man, suggesting the painter Michael Kvium's universe. And decadence makes its ironic entry when high-heeled fetish stilettos replace the crutches. In this part too - now accompanied by Soma Allpass’ highly dynamic, electrically manipulated solo cello on stage - Anders Christiansen succeeds in creating magic and scary image transformations, and playing with the body as an object. With the crutches in his hands he lifts his arms like big, beautiful, hovering wings, and by means of a cunning optic illusion he makes four table legs work as crutches for his body’s limbs.
…In Sticks & Fur Anders Christiansen clearly and concisely manages to turn things upside down and open our eyes and sensibility in a space of imagery about man's different exuviations, with dance, music and set design working together perfectly.”
Vibeke Wern (Berlingske Tidende, 8th February 2003)
Potent, ambiguous dance imagery.
”In his double performance Sticks & Fur we once again find Anders Christiansen in the role of the searching, exploring human being, wandering through life’s dark corridors in a fine double exposure of video and living body.
The object of the performance is the transition from child to adult with all of its possibilities and limitations.
From male to female too – Anders Christiansen has always had an affection for the androgynous – in a beautiful mix of tai chi-like movements and Indian rituals with feathers and hide on the naked skin in which he tries to get a foothold as a human being. Later as a crippled, gender ambiguous fabulous monster on crutches - as if the painter Michael Kvium had just popped in - before he stretches out his body and brings it to rest. The metamorphosis seems complete for now.
…A strange, insisting force characterizes this little performance of music and movement. It is potent, full of abundant imagery and in its own special way beautiful too.”
Henrik Lyding (Jyllands-Posten, 10th February 2003)
Courage.
”During the 60 minutes of the performance I was pondering why so few men make an effort to find out who they are, and build on that knowledge. I was thinking about how many of them do things they don’t want to – and reach a point where they no longer feel they have a choice. And I was thinking about how far they are from Anders Christiansen's consistent work as he has shown for more than a decade - at its best, alone on stage - in the solo form, mixing dance, ritual and visual art.”
Janus Kodal (Politiken, 14th February 2003)
Venues:
MEM Festival, Bilbao, Spain, 10 December 2004.
Entré Scenen, Århus, 2 November 2004.
Teaterhuset, Odense, 27 April 2003.
Kanonhallen, Copenhagen, 6-21 February 2003.
Sticks & Fur was produced with support from The Danish Arts Council, The State Arts Foundation, Carlsbergs Mindelegat for Brygger J.C. Jacobsen, KODA's kollektive båndmidler, Danmarks Nationalbanks Jubilæumsfond af 1968.
Photographs: Christoffer Askman
1 Anders Christiansen, Soma Allpass
2 – 5 Anders Christiansen
6 Anders Christiansen, Soma Allpass
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