GöteborgsOperans Danskompani: Skid

Every existence is pulled between a desire to rise and a fear of falling. We fall asleep, we fall in love, contractions pull us out of the maternal cocoon to confront the hard laws of a terrestrial invisible force.
In Skid, human relationship to gravity, and the poetic of resistance and abandonment bound to it, sets the dancers in motion. Between verticality and horizontality, Skid is performed on 34 degrees inclined platform diving right in the orchestra pit. The set is itself inspired by the measurement of earth’s gravitational acceleration measurement: 9.8 meters/s2. Only two entrance/exit: above and under, the dancers are drawing physical story lines between appearance and vanishing.
Every movement of this choreographic exploration is created from the limits and new possibilities the slope offers.
At times epic, dangerous, humorous or moving, skid creates a new landscape of physical possibilities, creating a chain reaction of physical and emotional events.
The human body becomes the crossroad between will, resistance, collapse and resilience where the relationship with others is often the only comfort against the call of the void.
 
New York artist Jim Hodges and Carlos Marques da Cruz has created the slope in Skid, while fashion designer Jean-Paul Lespagnard has created the playful and multi-functional costumes. Austrian composer Christian Fennesz provides the emotional electro-acoustic music, and lights by Joakim Brink blurs further audience’s perceptions of verticality by multiplying the numbers of the dancers with stark elongated shadows.