Nightlife – a journey into the unconditional state of sleep.

20 January 2005, 21 January 2005, 22 January 2005, 23 January 2005

Performance
Färgfabriken

Concept: Petter Jacobsson, Thomas Caley
Performed by: Thomas Caley, Petter Jacobsson, Jan Vesala, Maria Öhman
Music: Mattias Petersson
Video: Fredrik Wretman, Roberto Norberg Peyre
Costume: Cisse Jacobsson-Hallstedt

In Nightlife the rhythmic and biological structures of a free fall through the active and involuntary state known as sleep are explored.

Nightlife examines sleep, that which we all share and occupies a third of our lives. But yet sleep remains both private and unknown. Nightlife takes us on a journey into the state called sleep. What happens when we sleep has always fascinated man. And with today’s research, we have gained increased knowledge about brain frequencies and sleep cycles – but what actually happens when we detach ourselves from our rational waking world and enter the different stages of sleep?

The performance has been created by Petter Jacobsson, former international, both classical and later modern, dancer and ballet director at the Royal Opera together with Thomas Caley, international dancer from New York. Together they received the Golden Mask for best choreography in the musical Chess. They have also created a number of dance performances for both New York and Stockholm in which they chiseled out and exposed characteristically portrayed figures, sometimes with humorous overtones, as well as choreographies experimenting with spatial conditions.

In Nightlife, the starting point is a video work by the artist Fredrik Wretman. Fredrik Wretman works with sculpture, installations and video works, as a kind of flow which contain meditative and thought-provoking features. Fredrik Wretman is currently working on an exhibition at the Maritime History Museum and in 1997 made the installation Goa Trans at Färgfabriken.

Artist Roberto Norberg Peyre live direct the video works into a flow intercepted in the performance, so that dance and image are put in relation to each other. Roberto most recently made a video performance with the group Simbi and the voodoo priest Theodore “Lolo” Beaubrun at the opening of the World Culture Museum in Gothenburg.

Composer Mattias Pettersson makes electronic music, and has released the records Mimer and Shells.

Maria Öhman has a background as a dancer with several Swedish choreographers and belongs to the group Järna-Brooklyn led by Irene Hultman. Maria is currently touring Europe with Hans van den Broeck’s Almost Dark.

Jan Vesala, a modern dancer, is now broadening his horizons by studying economics at the School of Economics and Dance Science.

Cisse Jacobsson Hallstedt, with extensive experience from the world of theatre, dance and music, created the costumes and lighting for the performance.