Reykjavík Grapevine


Reykjavík Grapevine - 20.04.2018, Blaðsíða 22

Reykjavík Grapevine - 20.04.2018, Blaðsíða 22
sjavargillid.is SKÓLAVÖRÐUSTÍG 14 | 101 REYKJAVÍK | +354 571 1100 | SJAVARGRILLID.IS Ever-changing and always surpris- ing: these words could be the tagline of dancer, singer, choreographer and creator Melkorka Sigríður Magnúsdót- tir. The artist defies every label and genre you could pin her down in, push- ing outside the box of traditional art forms with every new project she pro- duces. From her dance-performance- turned-party-band Milkywhale to her recent pop opera Vakúm, Melkorka, in one word, innovates. In person, she’s just as captivating. Animated and often silly, her thoughts are non-linear, meandering through ideas until eventually circling back in an “aha!” moment, where you realise that everything she said was related. It’s a trait that makes her seem more like a scholarly intellectual than an artist—but really, she’s both. Calm changement “I started studying dance when I was around six years old,” says Melkorka, as we sit in Kaffibrennslan. It’s sunny outside so we have the place to our- selves. “I think it was a way to deal with my hyperactivity. I definitely would have been diagnosed today with some- thing if that diagnosis was around then,” she laughs. “But it shaped me, and sold me on ballet.” It’s interesting that ballet educa- tion—which is notoriously rigorous, strict, and physically challenging— was what calmed her down. Perhaps it was the concentrated accomplish- ment of the discipline; the unrelent- ing focus on perfecting m i nute movements. Dedicating your time and body to that creates a thirst for detail, which can easily be seen in her artwork nowadays. “Ballet is about dis- cipline,” she tells me. “It is an art form that you start the earliest and end the earliest. You have such a short life in dance and you get the most criticism and the lowest salaries, so you have to be super pas- sionate about it.” She pauses. “It’s a complex subject that I could talk endlessly about.” Inside/outside the box After graduating, her studies took a non-traditional turn for a ballerina, taking her at age seventeen to an ex- perimental choreography study pro- gram in Amsterdam. “Everyone was so different there and it was just an explosion,” says Mel- korka. “Ballet is a high art but some- times you can see the best dance in someone’s apartment at a party. I had never experienced that before.” While it was technically a choreog- raphy study, Melkorka explains it was more akin to performance in a wider sense. “You learn how to be a maker there,” she says. “For me, it was per- fect. I had always been in the box, and this was completely outside the box, so it made me look at things differently.” Having now learned about the fringe and alternative sides of dance, she enrolled in a more orthodox bal- let program in Brussels, later joining a dance company there. “It was a very hardcore school,” she says in a more sombre tone. “It had been a longtime dream of mine to go there and be in that company, but I was very unhappy.” She gives a small smile. “It wasn’t for me.” Melkorka then took up the life of a freelance choreographer, which of- ten meant spending up to 8 months of the year travelling. “It’s a strange life,” she says. “You never really know where home is.” Casio & Chinese dances Melkorka found stability with a group of her Amsterdam classmates when they formed John The Houseband in 2008. The project is pretty meta, aim- ing to blur the line between a band and an art installation. While the group does go on stage and play concerts, they hope to mix the idea of musi- cal performance with performance in general. All of the members are trained performers rather than musi- cians, so the project questions what being a musician means. Of course, all of this is overshadowed by the fact that were you not familiar with their artistic aims, you’d just think they were a great band. “On our first gig, no one really knew how to play music that well,” Me l k or k a e x p l a i n s . “We had this little Ca- sio piano that when you pressed it went…” she pauses then sings a cheesy keyboard tune before laugh i ng. “It got a great reaction, and it was so different from the contemporary dance world where ev- eryone just sits there in the audience super si- lent and focused like...” she puts her hand under her chin, and furrows her brow. “We’re all musicians that have never been trained in music. But we are also just a crazy group of people who do crazy projects together.” Most recently, the group joined up with the NorrlandsOperan Symphony Orchestra for a production of Tchai- kovsky’s ‘The Nutcracker’. Instead of following Tchaikovsky’s take on the tale, they decided to create their own story and perform cover songs from the ballet. “So we would do a cover of ‘Chinese Dance’ and then the sym- phony orchestra would play the origi- nal version,” she says. “For me, it was a once in a lifetime opportunity and I was very nervous, I’m not going to lie.” Words: Hannah Jane Cohen Photos: Juliette Rowland “I find it so interesting that there’s this idea that once upon a time there was one per- son who made sound and that was the first sound in the world.” Melkorka Sigríður Magnúsdóttir Melkorka, The Maker From choreographed concerts to a musical about genesis Culture

x

Reykjavík Grapevine

Beinir tenglar

Ef þú vilt tengja á þennan titil, vinsamlegast notaðu þessa tengla:

Tengja á þennan titil: Reykjavík Grapevine
https://timarit.is/publication/943

Tengja á þetta tölublað:

Tengja á þessa síðu:

Tengja á þessa grein:

Vinsamlegast ekki tengja beint á myndir eða PDF skjöl á Tímarit.is þar sem slíkar slóðir geta breyst án fyrirvara. Notið slóðirnar hér fyrir ofan til að tengja á vefinn.