Merkurius/Mercury
Gunilla Heilborn (Sweden)
- Saturday Oct 14 / 20:00, Ponec – dance venue
Heilborn and her colleague view every new project as an opportunity to delve joyfully into research and learn something new. In this project, they explored Mercury, a distant planet orbiting closely around the Sun. One day on Mercury lasts 176 Earth days. It’s uninhabitable, yet some people are considering moving to Mercury for some inexplicable reason. Astrologers say Mercury influences communication, intelligence, and social skills. The astrological perspective made them think about humanity’s efforts to predict the future. They recalled the dank caves where ancient soothsayers, wreathed in intoxicating fumes, revealed their messages to the world in hexameters; they thought about the 17th-century scholars who tried to express probability and predict the chances of success using mathematics; and then of today’s risk management consultants.
The production attempts to decipher the relationship between the past and the future, the micro- and the macrocosm, and time and space. It’s a difficult task, but Mercury is not only a planet but, according to ancient mythology, a messenger of the gods and, therefore, an expert in communication.
“Kristiina Viiala’s excellent on-stage portrayal of the awkwardness and fragility of the seekers. It is hard to imagine a perfect expression of anxiety and compulsive fears relating to the past and present, characterized by the same degree of empathy as humor.” Västerbottens-Kuriren (SE)
Gunilla Heilborn after studying with the American dance reformer Anna Halprin at San Francisco’s Tamalpa Institute (1991-1992) and graduating with a degree in choreography from Stockholm Dance University (1995-1998), Gunilla Heilborn began to create performances and films that were extremely well-received by both adult and child audiences. Her unique ability to fuse text and movement with video and images, always spiced with humor and unflinching irony, has earned her an unquestionable reputation as one of Sweden’s most exciting performance and film artists.
Heilborn makes the films with her colleague Mårten Nilsson and often works with the same dancers as in the stage version of the performance. The Lodge was nominated for Best Choreography at Dance Screen Brighton in 2005 and for the prestigious Swedish Guldbagge Award for Best Swedish Short Film in 2005. Rewind was nominated for the Guldbagge Award for Best Swedish Short Film in 2003. What You Do, a collaboration with Mårten Nilsson and Kim Hiorthøy, won the 2007 Guldbagge Award for Best Short Film. And her most recent film, This is Alaska, created for a stage performance of the same name, is now screening at short film festivals worldwide.
Duration: 45 min.
English with Czech subtitles
Concept and Management: Gunilla Heilborn
Performance: Kristiina Viiala
Text and Choreography: Gunilla Heilborn & Kristiina Viiala
Stage and costume design: Katarina Wiklund
Light: Minna Tiikkainen
Music and sound: Foad Arbabi
Production: Johnson & Bergsmark
Photographs: Elin Berge
Co-production: Norrlandsoperan, MDT Stockholm, Regionteatern Blekinge Kronoberg, fabrik Potsdam, Life Long Burning – Projekt Towards a sustainable Eco-System for Contemporary Dance in Europe (2018-2022) With the support of the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union
With the support of the Swedish Arts Council and the City of Stockholm
Special thanks to T-Werk
Special thanks from festival: Viktor Černický
