Harald Beharie: Sweet Spot

Lees in het Nederlands

In the dance performance Sweet Spot, six dancers transform a traditional Norwegian chain dance into a wild, hypnotic whirlwind. The starting point is the leikarring, a folk dance where dancers form a circle hand in hand. Beharie pulls this tradition apart, allowing the chain dance to culminate in a possessed ritual where all control is surrendered.

The performance is based on legends of dancers possessed by demonic melodies; think of the myth of the red shoes that never stop dancing. It is a feat of endurance where the dancers balance between explosive eruptions and tender abandon. In this work, Nordic folklore is not treated as a fixed reality, but as something to be bent and stretched. 

This approach is also reflected in the music. Composer Ingvild Langgård processes the sounds of the traditional Hardanger fiddle into a compelling, modern soundtrack. Visual artist Karoline Bakken Lund designed an environment in which objects and materials sometimes support the dancers and at other times work against them. Sweet Spot is the final piece of a trilogy about the queer body and explores how ecstasy and collective surrender can lead to new ways of being together.