Picture a vacuum

Picture a vacuum was part of the evening Sleepless Beauty at the Main House at the Oslo Opera House spring 2017.Four choreographers, each with their unique signature style, have created new works to music ranging from Tchaikovsky to Rolf Wallin. Ingun Bjørnsgaard, Melissa Hough, Hege Haagenrud and Ina Christel Johannessen all have their followers within their respective arenas, and will now meet to battle it out at the Main House of the Oslo Opera House. 

Everything is fine really, silly me
Poor kids shot dead, poor kids locked up
Poor kids saying, “This is the future that you left us?”
Stopped up lunch meat, processed, punch from an unclean fatcat
Tasty, tasty poison
Carcinogenic, diabetic, asthmatic, epileptic, post-traumatic, bipolar and disaffected
Atomised, thinking we’re engaged when we’re pacified
Staring at the screen so we don’t have to see the planet die
What we gonna do to wake up?
We sleep so deep, it don’t matter how they shake us

Kate Tempest, Let them eat chaos

"Picture a Vacuum by Hege Haagenrud has been set to Kate Tempest’s poem Let Them Eat Chaos and, in spite of some initial misgivings about movement to the spoken word, within seconds I was blown away with the distinctive choreographic voice that emerged. The verse has its own rhythm and, while there is sound/music of sorts it is those meaningful words that resonate so profoundly and give the dancers such excellent tools for expression.
“Picture a vacuum | An endless and unmoving blackness | Peace, or the absence at least, of terror” takes us on this journey.
This all-too-brief work makes an incredible impact – it is as if living through the limbo-like state one experiences before proper sleep overcomes you. Haagenrud has created a small miracle, with the quirkiest of choreographic language, all jerks and discomfort, echoing the clipped and sometimes mellifluous tones of Tempest’s vocals. It’s almost surreal – so intimate and inviting, in a ghostly, no man’s land way, and with mesmerising performances by Georgie Rose, Grete Sofie Borud Nybakken, Hugo Marmelada and the young Edith Haagenrud-Sande."
                                                                                                                                                                           Dance Europe

«Picture a Vacuum is the picture you return to several times before leaving the arts exhibition. It's too strange and too fascinating to forget. Picture a Vacuum lasts long enough for the audience to be curious, but short enough for the audience not to feel they've seen enough. Haagenrud has previously visited the opera with the performance «Use My Body While It´s Still Young", and judged by the audience's loud applause for Picture a Vacuum, we will probably see more from her in the years to come. «                                                                                                                                               Iven Opsahl, Minerva