Björn Elisson: «Volt»

The most pleasing thing about Volt in Stockholm, apart from it being so stimulatingly strange, is that it is the product of genuine craftsmanship. Choreographer Björn Elisson has moulded the movements deeply into the muscular structure of the dancers’ bodies with the result that the choreography has the precision quality of an engraving. Through this a certain tension, like that of an electrical charge, is created, accumulated and transmitted to the audience at the Moderna Dansteatern.

Slightly off-centre, on the left side of the stage, a construction of beams (a wrecked space ship?) rests, surrounded by pure white sand. It is clearly taboo territory and the woman, Anja Birnbaum, dressed in a leather suit that gives her movements the solid quality of authority, never ascends it. Three males join her, whose lack of sophistication is signalled by their half-naked state and their awe and submission to the strange woman. Perhaps she is the sole survivor of a disaster and has rounded up three male natives to help her? In any case, this primal society with its keen physicality of movement emits a high-voltage force.