opera, dance and music theater

CRAWL CRAWL CRAWL, 60’ (2022) - a choir piece for 12 singers staged in a swimming pool

CRAWL CRAWL CRAWL is a staged choir piece with 12 singers, experienced from the edge of a swimming pool. In a physical study of water resonance, the singers float in weightless sequences while pondering on the paradoxes of a welfare state. 

CRAWL CRAWL CRAWL is a sensitivity analysis in the nature of inequality. A choreographic portrayal of the welfarestate and its many flaws. The singers become a group searching for a common voice, insurgently longing for meaning. In their polyphonic strive, they uncover the imbalance that a class-based society creates.

The work is created by Convoi Exceptionnel and Jon R. Skulberg in close collaboration with composer Lil Lacy, dramaturge Astrid Hansen Holm, conductor Mathias Skaarup Sørensen, designer Kit Wan, and the vocal ensemble ENSEMBLE EDGE.

CONVOI EXCEPTIONNEL is a performing arts company led by scenographer and stage director JON R. SKULBERG. With his bold vision, Skulberg orchestrates immersive sceneries, using saturated images, bodies, sounds and lights, which he imprints onto the audience to mark them with impressions and memories. 

LIL LACY composes the choral work for the twelve singers from ENSEMBLE EDGE. Lil Lacy challenges the vertically standing classical singer we know from churches, stages and concert halls. Lacy is a recipient of the Léonie Sonning Talent Prize.

ENSEMBLE EDGE is an Aarhus-based vocal ensemble that challenges conventions. In this work, they explore the singing body immersed in water and the architectural acoustics of the swimming pool hall. The choir conductor is MATHIAS SKAARUP SØRENSEN.

KIT WAN is a fashion and costume designer from Hong Kong. With textiles, he creates distinct silhouettes in a fictional and holistic expression, bringing contrast to the functional architecture of the swimming pool hall. 

Concept, stage direction: Jon R. Skulberg
Composer: Lil Lacy
Conductor: Mathias Skaarup Sørensen
Costume design: Kit Wan
Vocal Ensemble: ENSEMBLE EDGE
Singers: Nadja Marie Schmedes Enevoldsen, Susanne Cecilie Nielsen, Frieda Funk, Kirsten Voss, Malene Rohden, Andrea Krüger Holm, Erik Buchreitz, Oliver Runge Skovbo Hansen, Troels Geil Thalling, Malthe Hvidegård Hartz, Malte Øster, Gunnar Sigfússon
Dramaturge: Astrid Hansen Holm
Libretto: Lil Lacy, Jon R. Skulberg, Astrid Hansen Holm
Production producer: Sigrid Aakvik, Art and About
Producer ENSEMBLE EDGE: Andrea Krüger Holm
International relations: Nordberg Movement
Communication: Anne Basse
Movement coach: Kenzo Kusuda 
Costumeassistent: Koh Taniguchi 
Production: Convoi Exceptionnel
Co-production: Bora Bora, Passage Festival, Dansehallerne 

Supported by: Danish Arts Foundation, Augustinus Foundation, William Demant Foundation, The Obel Family Foundation, Wilhelm Hansen Foundation, Danish Actors’ Association, City of Aarhus

PERFORMANCES:

JUNE 4TH-6TH, 2022 at 22.00
BORA BORA
LOCATION: IDRÆTSHØJSKOLEN I AARHUS

JULY 28TH & 29TH, 2022 at 22.00
PASSAGE FESTIVAL
LOCATION: HELSINGØR SVØMMEHAL

MAY 28TH & 29TH, 2023
DANSEHALLERNE
LOCATION: TBA

ENGLISH SPEAKERS, 70’ (2020) - sound performance

English Speakers is a sound performance about the English language, with manuscript and sound choreography by Sara Hamming and music-compositions by Anja Jacobsen and Lil Lacy.

English Speakers is a sonic performance that exploits the materiality of linguistic sound to make the struggle between etymological and grammatical conceptions of language tangible in a cluster of mythological tales of origin, influence, creation and destruction.

The massive pervasion of contemporary Scandinavian languages by English words, expressions and grammar has grown exponentially through the postwar era of American cultural dominance to virtually explode in last three decades – the age of internet. Many people even fear that it is threatening to swallow them all up over the course of the next generation. In a mythical, matriarchal, material, and humorously fierce tale the part-song part-speaking performance, both expands, complicates and reverses common conceptions about the linguistic imperialism of the English world language.

From a naked speaker we are addressed by a nameless narrator – a cross between an ancient seeress of Nordic mythology, an anarchistic philologist and a wise, willful and foul-mouthed woman of today – who takes us on an idiosyncratic journey through the intertwinements, cross-fertilizations and mutual aggressions of English and Scandinavian languages.

Assisted by nine other voices she knowingly traces the movements of sounds, words and structures flowing from Old Norse into Old English starting with the ships of the Northeners first crossing the sea to let their language contaminate that of the original settlers of the English coast, and lets her tale tap into the deep running streams that connect language to the fundamental sounds of the body moving through its surroundings.

The phonemes of the language are incarnated by the sounds of bodies breathing, eating, sighing, screaming, pushing, laughing and crying, as they collide with the sounds of the wind, the birds and the sea – or with the buzzing of internet data centers counting and calculating. And the complex ecology of world and word feeds back upon the speaker as language evidently shapes the identity, relations and perceptions of the voices that put it to use. But as the story progresses it is increasingly interrupted and disturbed by the other voices, by a rebellious chorus of girls, by the algorithmic language of Google and not least, by the narrator’s own forgetfulness.

Voices:
Narrator: Sue Hansen-Styles

Speaking voices:
Alexandra Jespersen
David Bateson
Emilia Gasiorek
Jonathan Bonnici
Linda Elvira
Malte Joe Frid-Nielsen
Ragna Solbergnes

Singing voices:
Anja Jacobsen, Kristoffer Jessen, Lil Lacy, Lucy Love and Simon Rønne Rischel

Manuscript and sound choreography: Sara Hamming
Music composition: Anja Jacobsen and Lil Lacy
Dramaturgy: Tanja Diers
Production management: Ragna Solbergnes
Historical language consultant: Seán Vrieland
Surround mix, design and mastering: Cato Langnes
Sound technician: Ingvild Skandsen
Assisting sound technician:
Tanya Theo Johansson
Light design: Clementine Waldelius
Light programming: Filip Vilhelmson
PR: Anna Ullman
PR-texts: Anna Ullman and Solveig Daugaard
Graphic design: Pulsk Ravn
Producer in the UK: Mary Paterson
Fundraiser: Malene Engelund
Documentation and video trailer: Søren Meisner
Booklet editor: Anna Ullman
Texts for booklet: Anna Ullman, Mary Paterson, Solveig Daugaard and Seán Vrieland
Podcast production: Anne Neimann Clemen

English Speakers is a Moribund production
Co-producers: Notam – Norwegian centre for technology, art and music,
Inter Arts Center at The University of Lund in Malmö.

English Speakers is supported by The Danish Arts Council, The Nordic Culture Fund, Nordic Culture Point, The Oticon/William Demant Foundation, The AP Møller Foundation

Kindly supported by The Danish Arts Foundation, Nordic Council of Ministers, NORDISK KULTURFOND

Download TECHNICAL RIDER.

Download PRESS PHOTOS.

One world above, another below, 45’ (2019) - chamber opera for solo soprano, ensemble and electronics

One world above, another below is a 45 minute chamber opera inspired by journeys abroad; nature and culture, the outer space and the inner person, electronic manipulated field recordings and classical traditions.
The piece is a reflection of one’s own reality in another context.

Composer Lil Lacy collaborated with electronic musician and composer Tobias Sejersdahl to create the electronic composition.
The piece is commissioned by Århus Sinfonietta.

‘Reading the air.
To listen and to respond.
One world above, another below.’

Concept and composition: Lil Lacy
Electronic composition: Tobias Sejersdahl
Conductor: Rei Munakata
Soprano soloist: Katinka Fogh Vindelev
Artistic curator: Allan Gravgaard Madsen
Århus Sinfonietta: www.sinfonietta.dk

Supported by: Statens Kunstfonds Projektstøtteudvalg for Musik, Dansk Komponistforenings Produktionspulje, KODA Kultur, Dronning Margrethes and Prins Henriks Fond as well as Musikpuljen, Aarhus Kommune. The concert is produced in collaboration with SPOT Festival.
Premiere 04.05.19, Symphonic Hall, Aarhus, DK

Review by Peter Elmelund of the premiere of premiere concert - 5 out of 6 stars

One world above, another below
- revised version, 17’ (2020) - chamber opera for 1 soprano and electronics

The chamber opera is inspired by a journey abroad; nature and culture, human and machine, the individual and the collective, the man and the woman, the outer space and the inner person. The piece is a reflection of one’s own reality in another context.

The revised version of ‘One world above, another below’ consists of excerpts of the 45’ chamber opera, premiered May 4, 2019 in Symfonisk Sal, Musikhuset, Aarhus by soprano soloist Katinka Fogh Vindelev and Århus Sinfonietta, with electronic musician Tobias Sejersdahl, as a part of the SPOT-festival. The original version was commissioned by Århus Sinfonietta.

Performed by Katinka Fogh Vindelev (soprano) and Lil Lacy (electronics)

Concert for a Space and Time, 59’ (2019)
- site-specific performance concert for choir + strings

Concert for a Space and Time is a 59 min. alternative Christmas concert written for choir and 2 strings site specifically, exploring the space and atmosphere of a shopping and congress center.

First the piece focuses on the material functions and concrete aspects of the place; the stairs, the escalators, the floor....
Then it moves into the material; wood, steel, glass...
Then deeper into the consistency of the material warm, cold, hard, soft and beyond to the time before the material; the time before the glass became glass; into the smaller components such as silica, limestone and quartz sand... and on to the sound of the waves rolling over the sand...
At one point the sound of the choir is intended to make the air in the passage of the center vibrate with beatings and to let the breeze lift the awareness from the material around of us to the material inside of us, and levitate the experience to energy, love and connectedness across time, life and death.
In letting go there will be room for new life, new light and new appreciation.

Choir: ENSEMBLE EDGE
Ensemble: Århus Sinfonietta
Conductor: Mathias Skaarup Sørensen
Libretto: Sonja Ferdinand and Lil Lacy
Composition and idea: Lil Lacy

Produced by Århus Sinfonietta and AUT in collaboration with Det Jyske Musikkonservatorium and ACC (Aarhus Congress Center).

Supported by Snyk, Statens Kunstfonds Projektstøtteudvalg for Scenekunst, Aarhus Kommune Musikpuljen og Initiativpuljen, Dansk Komponist Forening & KODA Kultur.

For Ever Four Seasons, 45’ (2019)
- dance performance

– The ability of man is the enigma of man, this for good and evil!
Human beings have developed, and survived as a species due to the ability to cooperate and develop mental structures and systems. For instance, technology, philosophy, and art. At the same time they have created: concentration camps, weapons, and nuclear power. In recent years, both art and philosophy have reflected on the fact that the man has become a similar geological force to volcanoes, rivers, and displacement of tectonic plates. For the first time in history, a majority of us lives in urban man-made landscapes rather than rural areas. Mankind has detached itself from nature. Is it because we no longer regard ourselves as part of it? The work For Ever Four Seasons investigates what value the term “nature” has today. Perhaps the idea of separation between the man and nature should be reconsidered?

The development of this work is influenced by a Nobel Prize winning writer Svetlana Aleksijevitj’s reflections and interviews with survivors of Chernobyl. Aleksijevitj uses the Chernobyl disaster as a potential picture of the future, and let the witnesses remember in a world that will forget. Her analysis is a hyper-concrete example that poses ethical, moral and metaphysical questions to the modern human. With nuclear technology, we have also gained an instrument so that we can act on the same scale as nature. A man-made natural power. What is the role of humanity in the geological period we are in now, the Anthropocene age? Convoi Exceptionnel gives space and form for an artistic explanation to the questions above.

Concept, choreography, scenography, light: Jon R. Skulberg Dancers: Marianna Kavallieratos, Kenzo Kusuda  
Composers, musicians: Soma & Lil  (Soma Allpass, Lil Lacy)
Composer, sound design: Kristian Hverring              
Dramaturg: Astrid Hansen Holm                                                                 Costumes: Mads Dinesen        
Light technician : Irene Lehtonen
Sound assistant : Johan August Dyrløv Høegh               
Creative producer, agent: Lene Bang                              
Communication: Kirstine Bauning
Photos: Søren Kjeldgaard
Premiere: Bora-Bora, Aarhus, September 4th, 2019

No Serenity Here - dance performance, 30’ (2019)

by Mohau Modisakeng, for CLICK festival 2019

inspired by the work of ntate Keorapetse Kgositsile

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An omelette cannot be unscrambled. Not even the one prepared in the crucible of 19th century sordid European design.

When Europe cut up this continent into little pockets of its imperialist want and greed it was not for aesthetic reasons, nor was it in the service of any African interest, intent, or purpose.

When, then, did the brutality of imperialist appetite and aggression evolve into something of such ominous value to us that we torture, mutilate, butcher in ways hideous beyond the imagination, rape women, men, even children and infants for having woken up on what we now claim, with perverse possessiveness and territorial chauvinism, to be our side of the boundary that until only yesterday arrogantly defined where a piece of one European property ended and another began?

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This performance work is loosely based on the words of Ntate Kgosietsile Keorapetse, it reflects a conversation/exchange of struggle between two characters, one represented in the music and soundscape played by cellist and the choreography of a dancer (played by Aphiwe) who speaks with his body to communicate across space.

The dialogue between the two encompasses the tensions between notions of home and exile, foreign and native, self and other within the context of the historic and often violent migration between Africa and Europe.

The work represents a dichotomy of two different worlds engaged in a dialogue characterised by moments of misunderstanding, and discord, which are sometimes reconciled in moments of harmony between the sound of the cello and the actions of the dancer.

Performed in Helsingor, Denmark 2019 by Mohau Modisakeng with dance by Mohau, Aphiwe Livi and music by Lil Lacy

Juli / Jon - cycle of dance performances

In 2012 Juli Apponen(Fi/Se) and Jon R. Skulberg (N) premiered with their first collaborative work, a site specific performance titled Everything Ends With Flowers in Fredrikstad, Norway. In this project they started to investigate choreography and the movements of a post operated body, a body that could only move for one hour per day in rehearsals.
JULI/JON are not interested in bodies with unlimited possibilities and virtuoso movement repertoire. They are interested in limitations, weakness, tiredness and bodies that are on stage not because they can, but because they can`t. Their work is minimalist and abstract, with no illusion or fiction imposed and every movement, gesture and image is strictly choreographed and composed. The material derives from different memories and the physical traces of them. The work is an intimate collaboration between these elements and creates their performances.
The french writer and philosopher Hélène Cixous texts about writing, litterature and reading of drawings forms a strong part of their methodology.
JULI/JON´s dance performances are Everything Ends With Flowers (2012) and Everything Remains (2015).
The music is composed, recorded and played by Lil Lacy.

Review from Supercell Festival of Contemporary Dance Brisbane, Australia (feb. 2018)
www.julijon.com

SOMA & LIL + Merete Smedegaard / dance performance (2015 - 2017)

Since 2015 modern dancer Merete Smedegaard has collaborated with Soma & Lil and Lil Lacy solo in different events among others at Kirsten Kjærs Museum, Gl. Holtegaard, Smag Ebeltoft and GIV.

Faderen & Sønnen - music theater, 60’ / 2015 + 2016

Assistens Kirkegård og Anna Kirke på Nørrebro danner rammen om forestillingen "Faderen og Sønnen - sandhedens øjeblik" en rørende, poetisk og humoristisk fortælling om tre sønners afsked med deres far.

Tre sønner mødes for at tage afsked med deres far. De har forskellige mødre, forskellig opvækst og forskellige opfattelser af, hvem han var som far og menneske. Hvem har ret? Og findes der et sandhedens øjeblik? Her kombineres audiowalk og forestilling i en nyskabende iscenesættelse, der sætter fokus på identitet og sandhedssøgen.

Forestillingen er blevet til med et hold af landets dygtigste og mest ambitiøse unge scenekunstnere, heriblandt dramatikerne Rosalinde Mynster og Thea Kulavig.

***** Kulturshot
***** Ungt Teaterblod
**** Kulturkongen
"... For ikke at spoile jeres oplevelse, har jeg kun tilbage at sige, at min maj-aften med andre ord blev brugt på at bevidne en dramaturgisk og skuespilteknisk genistreg." - Ungt Teaterblod

Instruktør: Jeppe Grinderslev
Musik og arrangement: Lil Lacy / Speak: Søren Sætter-Lassen
Medvirkende: Hans Christian Schrøder, Jeppe Alsgaard Pachaï, Johannes Frieboe, Kimmie Sennov, Madelen Larsen og Nannan Chen.
Dramatiker (Faderens fortællinger): Rosalinde Mynster
Dramatiker (Sønnernes fortællinger): Thea Kulavig
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