Robert Barry’s review of ONLY CONNECT Oslo, Seismograf

Photo: Kristian Trana.

“Totally Captivating” - Body, voice and what almost becomes music

The final performance of the festival was also its strangest. Performed by percussionist Owen Weaver and dancer Malin Nøss Vangsnes, Declaration (Unwriting, Part II) nonetheless featured no percussion instruments, save the performers’ own bodies and some plastic sacks, nor anything much you would call a dance move. In a brief talk held the day before, composer Alwynne Pritchard had insisted the work was »definitely not a piece of music«, but I would argue it was also not not music. […] Drawing on a diverse tradition, from Fluxus happenings to Expressionist and absurdist theatre, its structure felt associative in a dreamy, distinctly musical way. […] A cracked and splintered sexual psychodrama, Declaration made the perfect finish for a festival which shone the brightest in the gleams of its most fragmentary moments.