Professional performing artists are invited to apply for a four-day site specific and performance workshop during this year’s Sånafest – a magical festival week of art in Hølen/Vestby, 40 minutes south of Oslo.

The workshop is developed and led by the Belgian performing arts duo «Still life». The course is interdisciplinary and explores how you can create artistic content from engagement with one place in the world and by observing the people who live there. Specifically, the workshop will focus on private homes along a picturesque narrow road in Hølen: Parkveien. The Still Life team inspires to playfulness, absurdity and non-verbal tableaus through developing character narratives, costuming and theatrical staging.

Sånafest is committed to exploring different ways of creating artistic material. This commitment gives inspiration for the workshop content.

About the workshop
Starting with particular sites, surroundings and encounters, the workshop is premised in a fundamental curiosity about what can arise. Starting from a couple of houses in a small street and a selection of adventurous neighbors, Sophie Linsmaux and Aurelio Mergolas, together with the workshop participants, will explore and experiment with everyday absurdities. In this interdisciplinary workshop, dancers and actors will create something together. The residents and their private homes, possessions, garden, garage and everyday life are the inspiration.

Course instructors «Still life» usually engages with familiar environments (a cafeteria, a hospital, a funeral). The artistic duo behind this workshop produces dialogue-free performances that are a combination of physical theatre, mime and movement. At the workshop, professional dancers and actors who participate will be able to influence and inspire each other. The workshop is very much in the spirit of Sånafest and the festival’s curiosity about the potential of creative processes that play out in a supportive and playful yet professional environment.

In sum, performers are invited to an experiment and a laboratory, a workshop out of the ordinary, about a neighborhood and its characters we have not seen before. We are excited about both process and result, and are curious about the combination of Sånafest as a workshop venue and Still Life’s unique voice. The workshop will end with a work-in-progress performance during an art walk in Hølen on 24 June.

Practical information

• The course takes place 21-24 June; 11-16 on the 21st-23rd, and 10-15 on the 24th of June
• Sånafest will try to find discounted accommodation through a group booking, based on participant request. Alternatively, we will do our best to support you in coming to and from the train from Oslo or points south as needed.
• The course fee includes free admission for the entirety of the Sånafest programme
• Workshop location: Local homes and the gym of nearby Hølen School
• The workshop will be in English, but it is not requested to perform in English.

About Sånafest
Sånafest is an annual international festival that showcases performance art, art installations, dance and theater performances, concerts and various cross-aesthetic projects in and around two villages linked by the river Såna south of Oslo – Hølen and Son. We are interested in how art projects can shape and challenge the place, and how the place, including those who live there, can influence a work of art. Through close dialogue with artists and joint exploration, we seek to create and arrange distinctive experiences. We are a professional and playful festival with an emphasis on and respect for artistic practic. We are keen to involve professional actors to be part of the festival’s events and help color our village. The courses facilitate professional artists visiting the festival and strengthens Sånafest as an inspiring meeting place.

All informasjon om workshopen finner du på norsk her.

Still life (BE) is Sophie Linsmaux and Aurelio Mergola’s theatrical playground, in which they create playful, unsettling performances that mix humor and weirdness. Through their productions, they develop their own form of carefully written visual theatre. In their dialogue-free plays, they deal with a world in which everything goes very, very wrong. A place where time is distorted, and our bodies and emotions are revealed. Deprived of words, the characters try to find meaning and purpose at any cost.

https://still-life.be/en/