Commissioned by Adolphe Binder for GöteborgsOperans Danskompani’s 2015 Shadowland/Neverland season, If We Shadows Have Offended marked the beginning of Alan Lucien Øyen’s narrative explorations with major contemporary dance companies. Crafted with dramaturge Andrew Wale and co-choreographed with Daniel Proietto, the work unfolds in a hybrid of spoken text, acting, and physical theatre, brought to life both by the full ensemble and guest artist Kate Strong.
Greatly impressive — Alan Lucien Øyen’s work expands the stage into a cinematic space: narrative, humorous and deeply human.
The title borrows from Puck’s farewell in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, while its central figure is drawn from Peter Pan — a man confronting his mother’s death and the terrifying prospect of adulthood.
Around this poignant premise is woven a layered tapestry of metaphor: a shrink named Think (or Think), the memory of his missed school performance, and the uneasy laughter that sits beside grief. Childhood fantasy and contemporary anxiety collide in a universe where imagination is both refuge and reckoning.
What emerged was a hybrid form: a full-length, narrative dance-theatre piece built from the performers’ own choreographic input, sharpened with actorly presence. Øyen — used to working with actors in winter guests — trained the dancers at Binder’s company in acting, introducing a new dimension to their movement language. The result is at once intimate and spectacular: a work that grapples with the Peter Pan complex as both personal metaphor and cultural symptom, reflecting on how we resist responsibility — and when, or if, we ever truly grow up.
Imagination yields no answers to the big questions — but it can render them infinitely beautiful.
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