STAGING A WOMAN

In NOW SHE KNOWS Ina Christel Johannessen (ICJ)  brings together 20 female Nordic dancers, whose ages span 30 years, with 26 children between them, they have a wealth of experience; particularly in the physical and bodily representations of Northern European women today.

Is there such a thing as an emancipated woman? Individually, in pairs and collectively these fantastic dancers pose questions relating to physical and mental scars which trace modern society, Western culture and personal stories. How does she communicate them, consciously and unconsciously?

The performance as a whole can be associated with the question that the professor of Literature Toril Moi posed in a collection of essays with the title What is a woman? And Other Essays in 1998. Influenced by the French intellectual Simone de Beauvoir she suggests an alternative to the rather unproductive question of gender being either biologically or socially determined and suggests a phenomenological understanding of gender and body. The body is perceived as a situation marked by experiences, intellectually and emotionally.

What produces a woman’s identity? As always with aspects of humour and elegance ICJ has created a room for the dancers personal and artistic contributions to the theme, and the subjects of the performance. There is the woman as doll or figurine, as mother, as professional, as super woman, and as lonely and insecure. We obviously cannot speak of one female identity. ICJ's method of contrasting images leads us to think otherwise. The female dancer is both tutu and trainers. Dance is choreography, movement, and voice (text). There is the Ophelia figure, the fragile woman who perhaps has more insight into her self than her male counterpart, Hamlet. Her question is not merely "To be or not to be?" but more "To show or not to show?" She has a bodily experience of the effect that mirror and reflection has on her sense of identity. She cannot afford to be rejected or made invisible.

In the choice of both music and movement a more classical atmosphere rings through than we have seen in the later works of ICJ. This leads to the idea of the cultivated body. Cultivated by what? Culture, collective and personal expectations, the male gaze? Probably a combination of all these. With a fear of sounding too deterministic, the female body as situation seems to be caught in a web or crossfire of dreams, expected roles and the ordinary tasks of life.

And finally there is the beauty of it all. The dancers move gracefully in solos, duets and as the perfect unity, as a whole. Only to be contrasted by a sequence where they lie in a heap on the floor. Massacred or just asleep? Or where animal like noises fill the room with the sound of uncultivated nature.

Siren Leirvåg
Lecturer in theatre studies
University of Oslo




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