Philip Berlin

La vue

Philip Berlin La Vue

Photo: Philip Berlin

Th 5.12.2024, 20:00-21:00, MDT

Fr 6.12.2024, 20:00-21:00, MDT

“La vue" revolves around virtuosity and dance as an unproductive, intense, and seemingly wasteful form of activity. The work delves into the necessity of waste and explores the inherent intelligence of dance, starting from an insatiable desire for dance-technical complexity. Virtuosity needs a witness; the virtuoso's activity requires an audience to come into existence. Virtuosity moves beyond usefulness and is an end in itself, an activity that can neither be objectified nor commodified. The virtuoso activity serves as a kind of catalyst for truly intense spiritual waste.

With roots in Merce Cunningham's choreographic method through the DanceForms software, the method is applied and forms the basis for the material, but it is used entirely analogously. The dance is deliberately created to exist in disorientation, sensory overload, and anti-harmony, with constant movements in glitch.

The piece's composition is driven by persistent violin and electronic music, performed with a deliberate delay to evoke the impression of a double symphony orchestra.

Window to choreographic process

"La vue", like many other dance projects these days, has encountered a lack of funding due to prevailing cultural politics. MDT Moderna Dansteatern has given Philip Berlin a co-production budget which has given him and the team the opportunity to start the process. However, reduced resources do not reduce the importance of showing in front of an audience, and we therefore invite everyone to take part in the work and meet the choreographer and dancer Philip Berlin and his collaborators during two evenings in December.


We keep our 'Pay What You Can' ticket system which has ticket prices between 75 sek and 500 sek. By paying a ticket, you support MDT and, by extension, also the dance artists with whom we collaborate.


Philip Berlin

Philip Berlin was born in 1991 and grew up in Asköviken-Tidö outside Västerås. He now lives in Stockholm and works in the field of dance and choreography in Sweden and internationally. Berlin has previously presented choreographic works at venues such as Théâtre de la Ville, the Museum of Performing Arts, Dansens Hus, and Moderna Museet and MDT – Moderna Dansteatern, in collaboration with Louise Dahl.

Berlin has worked with ccap/Cristina Caprioli, Björn Säfsten, Frédéric Gies, Anja Arnquist, Norrdans, Mats Ek, Mårten Spångberg, and Cullberg/Riksteatern, among others. Berlin has also worked for CCN Ballet de Lorraine in France, dancing in works by Merce Cunningham, Mathilde Monnier, William Forsythe, Tero Saarinen, Faustin Linyekula, and Maria La Ribot. Additionally, Berlin has collaborated with Gisèle Vienne (FR), touring internationally with the performance Crowd.

From 2014 to 2019, he initiated the project SUNDAY RUN UP with Ulrika Berg, Cristina Caprioli, and Anna Grip – a platform that brought together artists working in literature, choreography, music, and visual art. This project was founded on a desire to create space for artistic practices and social processes. Due to his interest in these processes, he has also participated in numerous symposia on contemporary political theory and artistic practice, such as at NYU Tisch School of the Arts.

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Dance/choreography

Costume/set design

Daniel Åkerström-Steen

Music/sound design

Siri Jennefelt

Photo

Johannes Hjort/Philip Berlin

Co-production

MDT Moderna Dansteatern

Collaborators during the process

Jim De Block, and Rebekka Gudmundsdottir (intern from Iceland University of the Arts).

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