23.09 / 19:00
Performance
WHY I WEAR THIS SHIRT
Gunilla Heilborn (SE)
Kim Hiorthøy (NO)
A man who is alone recounts stories and events from his daily life. He takes singing lessons. He goes to the movies. He performs a series of physical exercises in his backyard. Before long, he finds himself lost in an endless, snowy landscape. All the while reminding both us and himself that everything could also be different.
Why I Wear This Shirt is a solo performance somewhere between comedy, poetry and contemporary dance. At times desperately sad, at others desperately funny, it stretches from the banal and prosaic (how to walk on a sidewalk, when to worry about how you look), to the metaphysical (what is time, what was music to the neanderthals), slow-cooking the deeper questions about who we are and how we live through a seemingly simple and engaging stage work.
Gunilla Heilborn and Kim Hiorthøy have worked together in various ways on various projects for more than 10 years. Their collaboration over the years has become a kind of long conversation; Why I Wear This Shirt is the culmination of that conversation.
PRESS
“Why I wear this shirt" is a bit like a mix between Basil in "Pang in construction" and Fernando Pessoa in “The Book of Oron", and a hint by Robert de Niro's psychopathic world improver Travis Bickle in "Taxi Driver". It could also be said that this is a very typical example of Hiorthøys and especially Heilborn’s familiar sparse, skewed humor, from both performing arts and film. And humor, of course, lives next door to despair, the form of isolation that is urban perhaps the least conspicuous but most characteristic reality of existence. The work contains one as strong as indirect measures of social criticism. “Why I wear this shirt” is comical, entertaining and intelligent (…) It's fun. Smart. And human - thus inhuman - gripping.” Örian Abrahamsson, Dagens Nyheter.
Credits
Text, Choreography, Light, Sound, Room, Clothes: Gunilla Heilborn and Kim Hiorthøy. Light and Sound Technic: Johan Sundén. Artistic Consultants: Katarina Wiklund, Jonas Williamsson. With support from: The Swedish Arts Council, The Arts Council Norway, The Swedish Arts Grants Committee.
Length: Ca 40 min
BIOS
Gunilla Heilborn
Gunilla Heilborn (Ljungby, 1964) is a choreographer and filmmaker based in Stockholm. After studies for Anna Halprin in San Francisco and the program of Choreography at the University of Dance in Stockholm she has created a large number of stage productions and films, such as The Lodge (2007), This is not a love story (2011) and The Knowledge (2015). Her interest lies in themes like collectivity, idealism and the failure of grand ideas.
Kim Hiorthøy
Kim Hiorthøy (Trondheim, 1973) is a choreographer and filmmaker based in Oslo. Since studying at art academies in Trondheim and Copenhagen and a short time studying film in New York, he has worked in a variety of fields such as graphic design, music and children’s book illustration. With Lisa Östberg he has made two works for stage, You (2012) and Black Warrior (2014).