Photo by PETER

There is a guitarist with electric guitar
There is a door in the middle of the space
There is a green rug
There is a table
There are seven chairs
There is a loaf of bread
There is a tub of Lätta butter spread
There are plates and cutlery

PETER is a choreographer, a dance maker, a dance dance dance… maker, a dance, a dancer, a person, a bodies, a community, an activist, an anarchist, an artist, art, a child, a cleaner, a candidate, a biography, a list, a ex-, a non-ex-, a title, a name, a document, a history, a challenge, an author, a moment, a smart ass, an annoyance, a liar, not peter, alive, another, a promise, practice, problem, performance, place, position, parameter, predictable, pest, pretense, plan, pipe, pop, pfff… https://stillpeter.com/

I am PETER, I am awake, at 4.38am, the sun has risen, I can’t sleep, I'm sick and my mouth hurts, my eyes twitch, the cells in my legs feel as though they are vibrating, the screen light bounces off my fingers, my stomach knotts. This is a life, to be dancing. A career unfairly recognised and compensated. Yet dance is so often, for those who find their way in it an amazing way to be with being. Linda’s work is amazing, I hope it continues, I demand it is funded.

One of the central questions of choreography is “how do you choreograph people?” In my opinion (which this will be for the remainder of this text) Linda Wardals answer to this question is quite simply “you don't”. Seven dancers plus guitarist plus audience, plus lights, plus supervisors plus plus, these people are a part of Linda’s choreography Orca, the whale, the elephant in the room, the killer, natural anarchy.

The piece is sparse yet highly representative and not at the same time; it is theatrical yet extremely dancey.

Whining guitar sounds set the tone as we enter the space, wielded by a queer punk as tall as the sky, beautiful and clear with their message, they can not be controlled, they are freedom.

Anarchy is a strange topic for choreography. As choreography is historically steeped in domination. Yet as more people, easily mistaken as characters of a nuclear family in a patriarchal farce, enter the scene through a door in the middle of the space, we see this is far from the truth. As each person's non-governable essence is brought to the stage. In a fight with normative conceptions they use the sheer power and subtlety of being to smash us, the audience in the face, breaking the conventional gazes that construct our sense of meaning, and leave us with a sense beyond representation of something more real, community, people, bodies, families, lovers, friends, I don’t know. But as these people arrive, they look, they shift, they move, they stand, they sit, they lie, they jump, they spin, they pose, they twist, they walk, they they they they they they be.

It's a beautiful dance with power.

A contemporary factor of choreography today is its inclusion of social contracts and or the everyday, all the pre, conceptions of what this is and should be. Dance, art, Swedish, hetronormative, radical etc etc… These are all acknowledged as if to say don’t worry I know they’re there but they’re not what is important here.

Choreography fails at its promise to dominate, and yet choreography is everywhere, and dance un-ruleble, not ungovernable or a rebellion as this would assume it can be governed, subservient. No dance is raw freedom clashing with the violence and the insane megalomania of politics. No here dancing is non-governable.

As the constellations of people arrange and rearrange themselves, and more people join, my heart weeps for the mere magnificence of these beautiful creatures, full of more complexity and beauty than could ever be imagined, or written into word, a meaning beyond comprehension but felt in its immediacy and presence.

I know words are messy when dealing with existence, and is why words like sonder are invented and choreographies explored.

A year ago I was on a boat on the pacific ocean looking out to sea to spot a whale, if only I thought to stop and look around at all the beautiful whales around me.

Orca by Linda Wardal is about people, if even that word can approximate the experience of being in the presence of: Darya Efrat, Maja Grimsted, Mariê Mazer, Yari Stilo, Johan Blomberg, Zák Valenta, Andréa Ravache, Eric Bäckman, Linda Wardal, I think I see you, I know I feel you, rest in power.

BY PETER

LINDA WARDAL / ORCA