Siri Jøntvedt
Meta.Morf 2024 – [up]Loaded Bodies / Multiplié dansefestival, Rosendal Teater / Dance performance April 18 @ 18:00. Ticket.
Fifty Ways to Leave a Shape (2023)
Fifty Ways to Leave a Shape is a personal solo that can be described as the internal process of having to say goodbye to a body part, a tribute to Siri Jøntvedt´s worn-out hips, and a welcoming of two brand-new joints. It is a reset in order to identify new opportunities. After more than thirty years as a dance artist, she has to teach herself to let go and not hold on. “Fifty Ways to Leave a Shape” is an exploration of the realization that everything changes, and of the search for new physical meaning – a sensory journey through the transformation and confrontation involved in leaving something behind, and finding the way into something new. Through various expressions of song, film, text, and dance, the audience can join this poetic and personal journey. The performance shows traces of what she has been through, what is to come, and a deep love of movement.
Credits
Concept, choreography, text, performer: Siri Jøntvedt
Composer, sound designer: Gyrid Nordal Kaldestad
Lighting design: Evelina Dembacke
Dramaturge, filmmaker: Darko Dragicevic
External eye, voice (Run That Body Down): Øyvind B. Lyse
Assistant: Amy Pender
Photos: Tale Hendnes (Dansens Hus) and Darko Dragičević: other pictures
Video, trailer: Vibeke Heide
Additional music: Run That Body Down (Paul Simon), Hips Don’t Lie (Shakira), and Pavane pour une infante défunte (Maurice Ravel) performed by Kari Jøntvedt.
Co-production: Dans i Trøndelag, Dansekunst i Grenland, and DansiT.
Supported by: Norwegian Arts Council, Fond For Lyd og Bilde, Ffuk, and Dansens Hus Oslo
Siri Jøntvedt (NO) is an experienced and fearless dancer with a distinctive style. Her dance is original, serious, and humorous. Since 1990, she has been active in the Norwegian and international dance field, operating between performing, choreographing, and teaching, as well as supporting other artists in their work.
Siri’s artistic practice revolves around the experimental, the personal, the human, and the honest, as an approach to creating art and to life itself.
She received her dance training at the Oslo National Academy of the Arts (KHiO), the Ballet Academy in Gothenburg, the Norwegian National Ballet School, and Merce Cunningham Studio, and through extensive studies of improvisation and various release-based and somatic dance techniques in New York and Europe.
Her body of work spans from personal to collaborative creative work, performing in works by others, as well as teaching and mentoring. Jøntvedt has performed in all sorts of venues, from large stages to small clubs, working within a wide scope of formats, from happenings to full-scale dance theatre productions.
Siri’s physical practices are based on a love for the art of improvisation, choreographic scores as well as working with voice and text. Exploration and listening are central methods, and through resonance and responding, her work connects with what goes on in society at large.
These practices support self-experience as a basis for developing material and create a space where the intuitive and formal can meet and where seriousness and humor can merge.
Siri is a dedicated teacher of release technique, improvisation, and composition, and gives classes and workshops frequently for professional dancers and dance students in Norway and abroad.
Header graphics and portrait photo: Tale Hendnes