“What a vast screen one could fill if there were no edits…” For the final installment in their America Trilogy, the most political of their works yet, winter guests returned to the idea of American reality as cinematic fiction. Making a large scale installation, a set as wide as the United States – winter guests presents the blown up theatricality of the current American discourse onto a huge “si...
Simulacrum weaves together the true histories of two extraordinary dancers – to create a semi-fictionalized narrative that runs through what is essentially a dream play. As part of Simulacrum, Winter guests are proud to premier a specially commissioned piece by Fujima Kanjuro; the head of the Fujima school of traditional Japanese dance. Kanjuro is from a long line of highly acclaimed artists; his...
" There’s a terrible monotony in chaos. As we sit, wide awoke and transfixed, trapped in a terrifying stop-motion time-lapse, a white noise trembles underneath our still lives; humming, burning and screaming behind the mask of sophistication that has become modern social interaction." Still Life, translates into French as Nature Morte - dead nature. Butoh is often described as living death, broug...
With a cast of 7 extraordinary dancers – Story, story, die. looks at the interdependency between lies and love: The things we do to be liked. It explores how we constantly re-arrange everyday life in an attempt to craft a desirable narrative – how we "lie" about ourselves and stage reality for each other - as we meet in life or through social media. Relentlessly seeking approval – a fast and fadi...
America’s got a story. And it’s sticking to it. But where’s it written down? Where is the ‘Great American Novel’ for today? And even if America could be summed up in a single, great novel - would this really be the time to write it? When has America ever looked less great, or less novel? A week after the U.S. elections, Alan Lucien Øyen and winter guests celebrate their ten-year anniversary with ...
The American Moth is a hybrid, multi-medial performance combining dance, theatre in multiple languages and cinematic live video. Featuring an extraordinary cast, including the legendary Liv Ullman, The American Moth is a poetic exploration of the sympathies and resentments at play in inter-generational relationships – what’s loved and what’s lost, experience, memory, time. But leaping between hea...
Jingle Horse is Winter Guests’ first direct collaboration with the Norwegian Opera and Ballet, and was performed in parallel with the annual re-staging of the Ballet’s treasured Nutcracker. What happens when a bunch of world-weary actors (all with a rather complicated relationship to the festive season) are asked to create a Christmas show in collaboration with a handful of overworked dancers fro...
With Coelacanth we present our biggest and most ambitious project ever - an epic 5,5 hour theatrical event! As ancient as time itself, is our desire to tell stories. In Coelacanth we follow two playwrigts in desperate pursuit of a good story. In Williamsburg, New York they come across Frank, a struggling alcoholic who drinks himself to death, leaving behind an incomplete manuscript in the hands o...
Mum and Dad – It all begins with them. During our childhood, our parents’ experiences and choices become our points of reference, and fundamentally dictate how we regard and relate to the world. We must assume that our parent’s parents influenced them in similar ways, but in spite of their best efforts - why do we sometimes turn out to be the kind of people our parents warned us about? Andrew Wal...
Multi-medial two act play for three performers Essentially a piece about longing and coming to terms with ones current situation or predicament, Bird in Magic Rain With Tears centers around three characters whose fates are, more or less, coincidentally intertwined: A conceptual artist trying to get past the death of her son. A boy-prostitute vainly looking to find the truth about his past. A term...
With self-hatred as a jumping-off point, “FLAWED” looks at the contemptuous and critical dialogue which has become an everyday part of how we relate to each other. Using dance, drag, violent text and video as their armoury of weapons, Alan Øyen and, former Batcheva dancer, Léo Lérus explore the terrifying brutalities and unnerving subtleties of racism, sexism… any-ism, and the fury that's inheren...
AVENIDA CORRIENTES is the story of celebrated German choreographer Dieter Geier and his Argentinian principle dancer and muse Augusto Garcia, who return to Buenos Aires - the place of their first meeting - to create a new piece for a gala in honour of their 10-year collaboration. The events and routines of their savage and passionate world are revealed, as the two artists struggle towards the pre...
“AMERICA - Visions of Love” - a two act play based on original text and transcripts of recorded conversations collected whilst traveling through the United States. Why does the whole world seem to be preoccupied with America and American culture? It seems an image or movie exists in everybody’s mind about what “America” is. We decided to grab a-hold of our assumptions; our love, loathing and prej...
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With text and dance by Alan Lucien Øyen and 16mm film shot by Norwegian filmmaker Ulirk Imtiaz Rolfsen, “Before Long” centres on the end of a relationship between two people. The end, or perhaps the moment we realise the end - the beginning of the end. In "Before Long" the auditorium is turned sideways and the audience follows the two performers on a shallow stage in-front of a super-wide-screen ...
Drawing on references from cinema, television and theatre, “What’s Not to Love?” utilises many expressions to convey it’s singular message - 'there is nothing that cannot be loved' - nothing. Based, in part, on scenes from the movie “All about Eve”, (the iconic Betty Davis Movie from 1950), “What’s not to love?” becomes an ironic meta-piece about life, ambition and the roles we play. Text written...
Alan Lucien Øyen Alan is one of the most exciting artists from Norway today, whose work as writer, director and choreographer has been highly acclaimed in his home country and abroad. As the son of a dresser, Alan grew up in a small theatre, Den Nationale Scene, established by Ibsen himself, in the town of Bergen, Norway. Here he would watch theatre religiously from the age of 7: classical produc...
