Swedish choreographer and performer Louise Ahl is bringing her new experimental solo opera work Skunk Without K Is Sun to the Take Me Somewhere Festival while Elisabeth Schilling’s new dance concert Hear Eyes Move – Dances With Ligeti will also be touring the country.
It’s an exciting time for both artists, particularly given their affinity to Scotland – a place they both hold close to their heart.
Hear Eyes Move – Dances With Ligeti
Following a series of highly acclaimed European performances, Hear Eyes Move will be visiting both The Byre Theatre in St Andrews on October 17 and Aberdeen’s Music Hall as part of Dance Live 2023 on October 21.
Created by Schilling, it’s a celebration of the music of Hungarian composer György Ligeti and is a work that sees a number of performances interpreting his music through both sound and movement.
The show celebrates the work of György Ligeti (Image: Bohumil Kostohryz)
Additionally, Schilling will be working with dancers from the National Youth Dance Company and Fusion dancers at Citymoves in Aberdeen to create an exciting opening for the show.
The choreographer has a fond love for Scotland, having lived here for one year whilst being a guest artist with the Scottish Dance Theatre.
She’s taken her work all over the country including the Highlands, Shetland, Orkney and the Outer Hebrides.
Speaking to the Sunday National, Schilling said she believes Scotland has an “openness towards a diversity of artistic aesthetics”.
“It’s been a long-term vision of mine to bring Hear Eyes Move to Scotland,” she said.
“After having performed my solo work across the country pre-Covid, it has been a deep wish of mine to reconnect with my Scottish audiences with my first group work, which has enjoyed so much positive resonance across Europe. I genuinely hope they will enjoy the piece and I cannot wait to bring it over next week.
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“Since I started touring my work here in 2017, this openness and the conversations with the audience have supported my artistic development tremendously.”
Skunk Without K Is Sun
Ahl has spent her career making experimental solo and collaborative multi-art-form pieces using movement, vocals, writing and sound.
Her work is often centralised around how we interact with the world around us and the ways in which people experience reality.
As much as it’s about the story, it also makes use of poetic audio description and bespoke environmental scents as part of the performance environment of each act to add additional layers of detail to the narration.
The opera is an experimental work (Image: Julia Bauer)
This particular work is a three-act opera that explores a number of ideas including blind accessibility, opera and storytelling.
Ahl explained: “With this work, I am interested in using the often inaccessible art form of opera to subvert ideas of what opera is and who it is for.”
Her work will premiere at the Take Me Somewhere Festival in Glasgow on October 20 and there will also be a performance on October 21.
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She added: “I’m really looking forward to presenting my first opera work Skunk Without K Is Sun, as part of Take Me Somewhere Festival this year.
“It’s the most important festival for presenting experimental and multi-disciplinary performances – practices that are more established and recognised in mainland Europe – so it’s really great to have this mix of Scottish and international work presented in Glasgow, where audiences are really open to receiving it.”
