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Sydney Dance Company is bringing a taste of Nordic humour to Australian stages in its next double bill, writes Dance Australia European correspondent Malcolm Rock.
Alexander Ekman wonders whether Nordic drollery is compatible with Aussie humour. The 28-year-old Swede has a vested interest: his dance for an ensemble, Cacti, is acclaimed for its wry choreographic themes and will receive its Australian premiere by Sydney Dance Company in March.
“I’ve definitely been shaped by the dry Scandinavian humour that comes from living a large part of your life in the dark,” muses Ekman. “Warmer countries produce a more laidback sense of humour. I’m curious how Cacti will be received Down Under.”
Born in Stockholm, Ekman attributes his artistic style to the long-lasting twilight that descends upon the city at the peak of winter. “I find long periods of darkness very creative. You need a project to push you through the cold months.”
Indeed winter inspiration has thrust Ekman towards stints with many of northern Europe’s leading dance companies including Royal Swedish Ballet, Norwegian National Ballet, Cullberg Ballet, Iceland Dance Company and Netherlands Dance Theatre, where he is associate choreographer. Ekman maintains that NDT is also where he spent his “best days” as a dancer: “We were a group of roughly the same age coming from all over the world. We were desperate to make friends and connect. It was a beautiful time; we danced like crazy!”
Ekman retired from performing in 2006, aged only 22, to focus fulltime on choreography. Success during an NDT2 choreographic workshop resulted in numerous commissions and an invitation to join New York’s Juilliard School as a guest teacher. (His flash-mob for students in a Manhattan subway station is an entertaining watch on YouTube: see here) These days Ekman is much sought-after across the Continent and comparisons with compatriot Mats Ek are inevitable. Ekman gleefully collaborated with Ek on a film project in 2009, but is unconvinced by the comparison: “My work is very theatrical, like Mats’s, but that is probably where our similarities end. I’m more of a showman whereas he deals intimately with stories and situations.”
Although blood-bound to his homeland, Ekman’s gifts have been more passionately recognised and nurtured in the Netherlands, where Cacti was nominated for a Swan, the country’s most prestigious dance award. His forthcoming work is a collaboration with Holland Sinfonia, one of many Dutch performing arts organisations hit by near-paralysing funding cuts implemented by the former government. Ekman expresses relief at having remained so far unaffected by the new austerity measures imposed upon European culture: he is optimistic.
“Holland has been hardest hit when it comes to cuts to culture, but then it was always ahead of other countries and I think it will remain so. There must be 15 to 20 dance companies in the Netherlands, and that will decrease. But in Sweden we had maybe five companies to start with, so in relative terms there are still many possibilities.”
As if foreseeing the bitter fallout between the Dutch cultural sector and its government (and the resulting negative press that turned the public against working artists), Cacti is concerned with the meaning of art, in particular its perception by its critics.
“I made Cacti during a period when I was questioning the meaning of art; when I was reacting strongly to critical opinions about dance in newspapers and elsewhere. The cactus, when it appears onstage, becomes an interpretive object. The dancer brings it on and goes: ‘ta-dah, what do you think of that?’ I want people to feel that way about the work I create.”
- MALCOLM ROCK
Cacti will be presented by Sydney Dance Company as part of "De Novo", at the Sydney Theatre from March 1 to 23.
This article appears in the Feb/Mar edition of Dance Australia - OUT NOW! Subscribe here.
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Above: Cacti by Alexander Ekman.