I got an invitation from Festa di Teatro EcoLogica at Stromboli, Italy to work for three days with the Italian dancer and actress Lavinia Savignoni. The theme was “Ode to Karen”, which meant associations, inspirationens and celebrations to the film character Karen, played by Ingrid Bergman, in the Roberto Rossellini movie Stromboli.
As main associations we used three details from the movie:
The knitting
In the refugee camp Farsa, where the story begins, one of the first lines heard is: “can I borrow your sweater?”. I combined that phrase with a story that I heard when I was a child. It said that imprisoned women during the second world war revealed what country they came from if you gave them something to knit. Because you knit different in different countries.
The new home
About curious and frightened feelings in discovering a new place to live, new languages to listen to and to speak.
Faith, God, Future
While trying to get out from the hard situation, Karen climbs the volcano, cries and turns to destiny, to God, to faith. We worked to develop an idea to combine movements over the lava blocks with a solo voice singing the alto aria Agnus Dei from the masse in B minor by Bach.
After the successful tryout in Stromboli in July, we will continue the investigation of ways to tell the stories of refugee women using words, music, dance and theatre.
Artikel om Vetenskapssalonger ur DIK
Vetenskapssalonger under våren 2014 framförs med kulturstöd från Stockholms stad, Kulturförvaltningen.
E-post: N
Telefon: 0733-74 84 13