COMEWHATMAY; 2001 - 2008 and further

Choreography, manuscript, concept, video director, visual expertice: Monica Emilie Herstad

Monica Emilie Herstad: Text:

"FASHION AS MEDITATION:

Survival strategies and self-control are the themes of herStay’s production Comewhatmay;

Through a composition that cultivates the slow and disquieting, the dancers find a way of moving that both transcends and reflects a monotonous tempo, with all that this involves of boisterous information flow and compulsory decisions in involuntary situations

Within a framework of intense video projections and displacements of musical tempo, the dancer follows the observer’s eye

In the form, and particularly in the staging, there is a conceptual pattern of movement, while the content approaches the realm of the ritually meditative, almost the therapeutic; executing, repeating, enduring

The dancers seem distant from the events around them, but all the more intimately involved with the movements they perform

HERSTAy ensemble move through their positions slowly, often in silence

Experienced by the audience as a living work of art, the performance can bring to mind fashion shows, scenes from films, performance art

The performers evince certain similarities of feature, as if individual boundaries have been washed away

Characters are described, their identities are contextually and temporally contingent

The participants seem at once vulnerable and strong as they seek out their intrinsic value as individuals in a “society of noise” in which symbols and information are getting out of control, and thereby losing their value, in a landscape where all things become equally valid

Through herStay the wiewer discover different patterns of their movements as counteraction

The movement is cleansing if one can endure it; to endure it is to take everything in, yet remain quiet

A demanding and simultaneously refined atmosphere emerges out of the tension between abrupt patterns of activity and classical beauty

The herStay performers naturally have their own thoughts about and understandings of the situations they describe, but they keep these to themselves

Viewed in this way, Comewhatmay; is a subtle report from a private herStay´ish sphere, in which light is shed not only on the self’s need for protection but also on its ability, and desire, to harden itself"

Txt: Monica Emilie Herstad

Scenography and room: Monica Emilie Herstad

Comewhatmay; is realized with financial support from director Kai Johnsen representing the Arts Council in 2001. The project is syclus oriented in the matter of presentation, premiere in September 2001, further international tour in 2002 to Moderna Dansteatern i Stockholm, to Carte Blanche in Bergen, and other places. In 2003 to Los Angeles at Post Gallery, and in NY to Collective Unconcious space in 2005. To different Filmfestivals in NY and in LA in 2005, and in 2005 the video still print edition was premiered. In 2008 an exhibition and book is available on the project, and further tour to come.

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This upcoming review on herStay is written by Grete Indahl for Klassekampen in 2001, who now represents The Norwegian Arts Council:

"Comewhatmay; is created in a dialectics between inner movement and surface esthetics

Choreographer Monica Emilie Herstad in herStay is furher actualized with the danceperformance Comewhatmay at Black Box Theater, in Oslo, in where she repeat not only her remacable stage language, influenced by elements of Japanese butoh and modern dance. Ms.Herstad goes a step further from earlier productions and enlargen the aesthetics that earlier surrounded the choreography as a visual theme

In Comewhatmay; Ms.Herstad is blending fashion aesthetics from avantgardemagazines like Fjords, Dutch, Surface and ID into her own expression and mirorizing the fusion between the artscene and the fashionbusiness, which also has become a continental trend

Ms.Herstad integrates fashion, fine-art and text in her choreography, in addition to music by Japanese Aoa, a Tokyo based group which music has been special edited by Paolo Vinaccia, for the soundpicture in Comewhatmay;

She establish a stageroom giving the impression as a gallery and catwalk, more than a room for contemplative dance

The dancers are styled in collaboration with the fashioneditor of the Norwegian Fjords Magazine and they are almost reduced into the image of mannequindolls in their posingly walk wearing higheels, in a distant state of mind, similar to models posing in front of a camera

In Comewhatmay the movement is accentuated as an element among the utterly elements of the performance. The refined integration fullfill an aesthetic wholeness that illudes fullfilment towards perfection - shallow, empty

However, Ms.Herstad is not falling into the illusion of fashion

The dancers break through it all with fragments of her text, that is inspired by Milan Kundera and Choderlos de Laclos text upon Slowness, and thereby asks the questions upon the utter chaos that is significant to the dailylife`s shift in tempo dynamics

The fact that the performance is expressing something about survivalstrategies and selfcontrol, is sensed as a rythm, not as a theme

Monica Emilie Herstads ideas is not spreading immediately to the observer, because the movements private character is just as introvert as the stageroom is extrovert

The intimate expression is inviting the audience to transfer his or her own private stories into what is going on at stage

Comewhatmay is created in a dialectics between inner movement and surface aesthetics, and is guiding the audience to enter a meditative state of mind, wherein the observers meets their own pulsation"

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Direction and choreography video and stage, scratch animation: Monica Emilie Herstad

Her scenography is inspired by The Prada Universe, by the Rotterdam based architects OMA and the Swiss firm Hertzog de Meuron

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