The Requirement

Erick Odriozola and me at work in the studio in Ytre Arna, Norway.

The Requirement is probably a piece for three performers (dancers Erick Odriozola and Romane Petit , and myself) and an onstage choir. Thanks to pre-project funding from Arts Council Norway, I've made a start but am still at the very earliest stages of development—so things could change!

The Requirement began with my interest in deconstructing the physical process of laughter. As a solo performer, I made a short performance in 2023 that researched this, and I have become interested in unpacking the processes over a much longer duration—possibly several hours. What happens, in this case, to the body and the voice? What kind of choreography, vocalisations and narratives might emerge? Something that we associate with spontaneity and joy reveals itself to have complex components that can imply many other, darker states of being. If you've seen the 1969 film They Shoot Horses, Don't They?, about a dance endurance competition, you'll have some idea of what I have in mind.

The work I’ve done so far has been not only about researching these processes, but also looking at some of the tropes of comedy—in particular, how uses of perspective, timing and context might feed into the project as it evolves, and how these might address some of the broader cultural, social and political questions of the day.

“Comedy by its nature is difficult to pin down with concepts and definitions, but as artistic form and social practice it is a mode of tarrying with a foreign object – a means of including the exception [...] Real, subversive comedy thrives on the short circuits that establish an immediate connection between heterogeneous orders. [...] comedy lets the odd one in”.

- Blurb for Alenka Zupančič's book, The Odd One In: On Comedy