herStay in NY, Gramercy Park, September 20th 2009, at 2, 4, 5.30 pm, at ConfluxCity Festival
Quote, author Bertrand Besigye on Monica Emilie Herstad, in NY, September 20th 2009:
"...and there, she, the blackly dressed, black shadesly wearing slowmotion film dancing queen of athmospheres, enters that NY park, hurling her arms, slinging out, singing out the most quiet floating movements, she radiates the pedestrian daily life rush, with her dance, dance as the fracture differing from the monothony of the street-life factor, dance such as like the darkest layer of a fruitful glass of purple red ..."Dancing Queen Bertrand Besigye
herStay "Forever/ Yong/ EWIG/ Toujours" in NY Gramercy Park:
"The performance was outstanding. It was fresh and inspiring. New York needs more of this kind of innovative work. -Errol Rappaport, Black Tie Magazine, West Coast Editor and Photographer
herStay in Oslo, September 26th 2009
herStay "Forever/ Yong/ EWIG/ Toujours" performance i Slottsparken 26. september, kl. 21.00 vis-a-vis respektivt Litteraturens og Kunstnernes hus vs Det kgl. slott
herStay "Forever/ Yong/ EWIG/ Toujours" is initiated and developed since 2007, and funded in part September 2009, with Royal Norwegian General Council New York, in March with Oslo Munincipality for Earth Hour 2009, with FFUK in 2009, in 2007 - 2008 by Norwegian Arts Council (herStay Extended Universe/ EWIG), bought by Oslo Open, in July 2008. herStay "Forever/ Yong/ EWIG/ Toujours" is now on international touring. All rights herStay.
September 26th and October 2nd, both evenings at 8, 9 and 10 pm in Oslo, at Grev Wedelspl 1, Myntgt./ Glacisgt./ Kirkegt., beside Losjen, special event on Kulturnatt Oslo/ Oslo Open 2008
An expert comment on Monica Emilie Herstad´s work "Forever/Yong/ EWIG/ Toujours" at the premiere in Kvadraturen in Oslo, in September 2008:
"- I was first very interested in the use of the space. In a park of the popular part of the city, which is usually a place of transition and of transaction, a place of dealing and prostitution as well of wandering, (which remind me somehow on the dramaturgy of B. M Koltès theater plays, like the "Dans la solitude des champs de coton") there were placed some figures of dancers. I use the term figure on purpose: they were very hieratics and almost abstracts because of the quality of their concentration, the purity of the body and the sharp relation they had together. Through the figures of the dancers, the urban space was saying something else. "I" was not seeing something new, but the Thing, the urban space was watching me differently. As Bergson says "quand les artistes regardent une chose, ils la voient pour elle, et non pour eux." (When the artists look at one thing, they see it for itself, and not for themselves." It can apply to what Monica Emilie Herstad here has done.
To say it shortly and in other words, in that "corrupted" urban space, this dance provide a certain "transcendance", not in a mystic way, but like a body before the body and a landscape before the landscape. Somehow, an idea of "Ewig".
- In the same order of idea, what was very sharp was the relation between reality and fiction created by the performance, which allow a very original "friction" of those two elements. The border of the stage were structured by the architectural space, and eventhough the performance occured for the main part in an "allée" of the parc, under trees, its narrative power spreads out. The public, the people passing by, the light of the street lamps and windows, the different type of stones used for the building around, the sounds (very particular hybridation between the "music" of the performance and the everyday life sounds : cars, wind, muffling voices) were as if engulfed by the artistic performance. Here, a soldier walking by in his costume, going out of the military barrack close by, suddenly slow down his step, his body became more "here", present, he was interpreted somehow by what was happening. At every external event the spectator was lead to new range of associations, of interpretations.
- What was finally very beautiful was the ending, when those figures went out of the "imaginary circle" and continue their walk for two hundred meters until they turn at the angle of a building. I was focusing my attention on something which was now in a distance, changing my position, changing the perception. So, the vanishing of those figures takes some time, eventhough the performance was short it already triggers some remembering of them, of who they were when standing in front of me, and I felt that mixed feeling of loss when they disappeared.
I know that a performance is good when analyzing its effect on me.
After seing a (good) film, reading a book, watching dance or theater, the reality has a new density, new order and "correspondances" (to quote the title of the poem of Baudelaire) thanks to this esthetic experiment. That was the case of "Ewig" - Jonathan Chatel, Sorbonne, Paris, November 2008
Beata Kretovicova Idén (Slovakia/ Iceland/ Norway)
Anne Kathrine Fallmyhr (Norway)
Tatsiana Riber Sparre (Belarusse/ Norway)
Maria Ryther Hoem (Norway)
Et al.
Hair-styling, and make-up:
in collaboration with Pauline Nærholm, Oslo September 2009,
and in collaboration with Birger Løkeng, March 2008
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All rights reserved herStay
April 25th 2009, Monica Emilie Herstad at DNOB, The Norwegian Opera & Ballet, presents "Forever/ Yong/ EWIG/ Toujours" performance excerpts, April 25th at 13 hrs, Scene 2, UNESCO International Dance Day Celebration, Full House
On Monica Emilie Herstad, "Forever/ EWIG/ Toujours" herStay performance at The Norwegian Opera & Ballet, UNESCO International Dance Day, Txt: Bertrand Besigye:
"Nice to meet you beautiful, and I look forward to seeing the show, the whole format, outdoors, looking to highly suitable dance at its best, from your stage of shapes, I remember best the gold shimmering damsel unto the standing yoga poses and the pallet pulling one, and your black dress that goes in one with the black backdrop, the Egyptian wall relief-poses and the darkness lingering meditative music is opening, well-suited to the set (...) Must a muse be with you and do go fearlessly into the world, with a sword bearing sway posture leading your hips ... " -Bertrand Besigye, April 25th 2009
In Norwegian: "Det var hyggelig å treffe deg du vakre, og jeg ser frem til å se forestillingen, i helt format, ute, slik dans på sitt beste egner seg ypperlig til, av dine sceniske figurer, husker jeg best den gullglitrende pikens stående yogapositurer og palleslepersken og din sorte kjole som gikk i ett med det sorte bakteppet, de egyptiske veggrelieff-positurene og den mørke dvelende meditative musikken var åpnende kledelig til oppsettet (...) måtte musen være med deg og måtte du gå fryktløst ut i verden med sverdbærersvai i hoftene..." -Bertrand Besigye, April 25th 2009
herStay performance "Forever/ Yong/ EWIG/ Toujours" is a commissioned work, with Oslo Munincipality 2009, and in part with Royal Norwegian General Council New York in 2009 for herStay at Conflux City Festival New York. By Norwegian Arts Council, 2007 - 2008, Foundation for Performing Artists 2008, Oslo Open 2008
Choreography and project:
Monica Emilie Herstad
The herStay performance "Forever/ Yong/ EWIG/ Toujours" at the 2008 events referred to is related to a special collaboration with fine artists El Parche, in September and October 2008 exclusively.
herStay performance "Forever/ Yong/ EWIG/ Toujours" is performed in challenging, architectural environments, or referring to nature such as allées or parks, sub-relating to architectonic landscapes everywhere.
