Reykjavík Grapevine - 20.04.2018, Page 23

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———— 2016 ————
Life imitates art
With her experience in John The
Houseband, it’s clear that Mel-
korka’s next musical collaboration
didn’t come out of a vacuum. The
project is called Milkywhale, and
it premiered as a dance piece, or
rather a choreographed concert, at
the 2015 Reykjavík Dance Festival.
Melkorka wrote the music with
Árni Rúnar Hlöðverssson of FM
Belfast.
Like Spinal Tap or Dethklok,
Milkywhale tentatively walked
the line between mediums, forc-
ing the audience to constantly ask:
Is this a real band or not? While
they started as a dance piece about
band performance, the group
quickly started performing at mu-
sical festivals, and later released
an album. To an outside observer,
they’d be considered a real band.
Life imitates art.
Genesis
Her next project, “Vakúm”, was
even more ambitious. A pop opera,
the recently debuted performance
has taken Iceland by storm, cre-
ating perhaps the first buzz sur-
rounding a musical in Iceland in
modern memory. Everyone from
classical musicians to hip-hop
heads attended the premiere. The
cast was equally diverse, featur-
ing everyone from a recent dance
graduate to a popular R’n’B singer.
“In the story, we start out in
this void, this unknown place that
is full of emptiness,” Melkorka
explains. “So we have to create a
new world and all we have are each
other and these aluminium isola-
tion blankets on stage, hundreds
of them. It’s a story of creation.”
She pauses. “I find it so inter-
esting that there’s this idea that
once upon a time there was one
person who made sound, and that
was the first sound in the world,”
she says. “There was the first time
someone saw sunlight, or had
a conversation, or even had sex.
We’re exploring that. We are dis-
covering laughter and movement
and war on stage.”
Melkorka’s ‘Shark Tank’
It’s here, talking about discov-
ery and ideas, that Melkorka gets
passionate. “You know, the light-
bulb was invented in three plac-
es around the world at the same
time,” she says. “It’s so interesting
that ideas can spout up in many
places at once.”
Her passion is understandable
once you know she just finished
a Masters degree in innovation
and entrepreneurship. we side-
track into discussing innovative
ideas throughout history—how
the Mayans discovered the wheel,
but only used it for children’s toys;
how gunpowder existed in China
for hundreds of years, only being
used for fireworks.
“It’s funny,” she says, “in dance
and art, an idea is so valuable, but
in innovation, it is a very small
part of the process. Having an
idea is one thing but getting it out
there and working in a company is
90% of the work.” She talks about
how popular, mass-produced in-
ventions must have seemed crazy
when they were thought up. “A few
years ago, it would be unimagi-
nable that the biggest car rental
corporation in the world would
own no cars, or the biggest house
rental page in the world would
own no houses. Completely new
work is rare, but it does happen.”
Melkorka has now turned her
focus towards the concept of cre-
ation. “For me, what’s most valu-
able is our ideas,” she finishes. “In
a world where AI is taking over
jobs and such, ideas are the biggest
function we have in art, and in in-
novation.” She keeps mum on her
plans for the future, but says her
next work will continue mixing
and innovating concepts. “I am
a bit of an unwritten paper, but I
have the next ideas... and they’ll be
very different.” We’ll stay tuned.
23The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 06 — 2018
The dancer in the rare Reykjavík sun