Reykjavík Grapevine - 05.11.2010, Síða 33

Muscle on Fire and Ice: A
Bodybuilding extravaganza
Icelandic Fitness and Health Expo held in
Mosfellsbær and Reykjavík
Laugardalshöll, Saturday, November 20, 19:00
4500 ISK
Are the cold and darkening November days
beginning to get you down? Do you feel the
need to clear your mind of heavy thoughts?
Nothing like a little bone-crushing, power-
shake guzzling, muscle mania to clear the
head. Described as “probably one of the
biggest bodybuilding events in Europe this
year,” the preliminaries of ‘Muscle on Fire
and Ice’ will be held in Mosfellsbær while
the finals are to be held in Reykjavík. With
competition names like Atlas stones, Circus
Dumbbell, Farmer's walk and the Jón Páll
Sigmarsson Classic, this event promises to be
an unforgettable experience.
AK

20
Nov
The curtains open and we find our-
selves in the middle of a porn scene.
Platinum blondes, dressed in colourful
plastic-clothes, are doing some sexy
pole dancing. Pimp-like men walk
around with a rolling gait. The setting
is industrial and cold, illuminated by
very bright neon lights. When a woman
offers to give a blow-job to a costumer,
two grey haired people in front of me
huddle together whispering. They
remind me that we are in the Icelandic
Opera.
The trashy stage design made quite
a contrast with the classy ambiance of
the opera. Behind the inconspicuous
looking façade we found a posh foyer
with chandeliers and old wooden bars
where you can buy a glass of wine and
snacks, which seems a little unusual
for the opera though. Painted in pastel
green, rose and gold with rose coloured
upholstered seats, the two-story audi-
torium made us feel like we were living
in the Roaring Twenties.
A lot of—mostly grey haired—visi-
tors got dressed up and came to see
Verdi's Rigoletto that night, blessing the
Icelandic Opera with a full house. Rigo-
letto, a hunchbacked court jester, has a
tense relationship with the Duke, who
seduces Rigoletto's daughter. After two
hours of duplicity and a lot of singing,
the daughter dies, and it’s kind of Rigo-
letto's fault. This is how I understood
the Italian arias with Icelandic subtitles.
But understanding the story is maybe
not what the opera is about. It is about
the music, the emotion, the expression,
right?
Everything was a little too much:
too much emotion, too much tulle on
the princess-like dress of the daughter,
too much trying to be critical of the
over-sexed society—or was this just
another contribution to it? However
there were brilliant moments, like
when Ólafur Kjartan Sigurðarson, AKA
Rigoletto, filled the whole room with his
strong voice, or when the men’s choir
came on—those were my favourite parts
of the opera.
After a very long applause and
uncountable bows, we leave the opera
and find ourselves in downtown Reyk-
javík once again. It is Friday night and
when we watch the skinkas and hnak-
kis drinking beer and flirting. We think:
this might have been the inspiration for
the porn-like stage design.
by Wiebke Wolter
Rigoletto is showing at the Icelandic Opera at
Ingólfsstræti, 101 Reykjavík. The next sched-
uled performances are Saturday November 6,
Sunday November 7, Saturday November 13
and Sunday November 14. More info at www.
opera.is.
Sexy Italy In Iceland
The Grapevine takes a trip to the opera
Transaquania: A Breath of Fresh Thin Air
Review of Transaquania: Into Thin Air
Breath. What is not seen? What is taken
for granted? What is repressed? What,
through years of neglect, vanishes as
its protest?
To breathe. We love to love what
we do not know. We hate to love what
sustains us.
To breathe to death. Exhale: water
molecules voided into oxygenic abyss.
Dry smoke and wind-sound pan across
the spacious Borgarleikhúsið as dim
dawn-yellow light creeps across the
stage to drag something from darkness.
That something is oversized, multi-
bodied, spectral living sculpture. Nine
somethings pull themselves to crawling
long tones; their beaten forms foretell
the coming of the drawn and quartered.
Iceland Dance Company premiered
‘Transaquania: Into Thin Air’ on October
7, a new theatrical dance production
authored by Erna Ómarsdóttir, Damien
Jalet, and Gabríela Friðriksdóttir, with
music by Valdimar Jóhannsson and Ben
Frost. Early, gripping success in ‘Trans-
aquania: Into Thin Air’ was evident as
the dragged (drugged?) somethings
reached their trembling forms toward
heaven, and the collapse to the ground
to lay still and then swarm in their
burlap skins and wombs. This haunting
gesture rendered all nine shrouded
dancers as extra-human, deformed and
grotesque as they thrust their foetal
appendages against dry uterine walls.
With ‘Into Thin Air’, collaborators
Erna Ómarsdóttir, Damien Jalet, and
Gabríela Friðriksdóttir (whose previous
collaborative credits include Ófætt in
2005, created for Theatre National de
Bretagne and the Venice Biennale)
expose a surprising shift in use of the
dancer’s form. Here, the artistic team
offers the audience a look at how to
make human bodies not bodies, at
asensuality. The score growls and
warbles an unsettling baritone.
Out of this opening sequence
follows a series of stunning acts. All
nine somethings proceed through
multiple metamorphoses to reveal their
alien selves, barely alive and barren.
The consistently skin-tight flesh-toned
costumes cause a dizzying, perfect
incongruence with the asensual chore-
ography—expert execution of the artistic
team’s collective vision to explore hu-
man reality in a post-water existence.
Dancers’ movements are at times
reminiscent of water but no longer in
the water, as the land-locked sea-legs
tremble, epileptic, from repetitive vio-
lence turned ritual. They roll, spin, jump.
They lift and support one another. And
in a pivotal sequence, head-banging
becomes rite, the ultimate communal
maturation.
As the evolving humans birth into
their horrific reality, all elements of
the performance (sound, movement,
visual in costume, props, and lights)
conspire to present the swirling, whirl-
ing confusion of conception. Then, later,
as the suck and bounce of early life
turns parasitic and violent, the creative
team again deftly translates this into
a chilling mirror, where the audience
is invited to confront themselves with
psychoanalytic subjectivity. Thin voice
wheezes and screams into air.
Breath. To breathe. To breathe in this
death.
Applause at the end of ‘Into Thin
Air’ feels a decidedly inadequate
response. From anal fixation and
asphyxiation, ‘Into Thin Air’ is a work
crafted of rare and challenging vision
to raise questions and concerns about
awareness, to propose dialogue and in-
ner monologue around how now is and
how else it may be. Here we consider
our own adaptability and our subse-
quent clumsy, addictive rituals. Here we
explode our monotony in whimpering
hope that we wake up tomorrow brand
new.
by a.rawlings
Upcoming performances of Transaquania: Into
Thin Air show at Borgarleikhúsið (Reykjavík
City Theatre) on November 7, November 14,
and November 21. Tickets: 568 8000 or www.
id.is.