NEAR

Eleanor Bauer/Jonatan Leandoer Håstad-Yung Lean

Concept: Eleanor Bauer and Jonatan Leandoer Håstad/Yung Lean
Direction: Eleanor Bauer
Choreography: Eleanor Bauer with the dancers Adam Schütt, Camille Prieux, Daniel Sjökvist, Eleanor Campbell, Eliott Marmouset, Gesine Moog, Georges Hann, Giacomo Citton, Katie Jacobson, Mohamed Y. Shika, Suelem de Oliveira da Silva, Sylvie Gehin Karlsson, with contribution by Anand Bolder, Núria Guiu Sagarra, Unn Faleide, Vincent Van der Plas, and the apprentices Heather Birley and Yulia Kalinchenko
Music: Jonatan Leandoer Håstad/Yung Lean in collaboration with Frederik Valentin
Set design: Josefin Hinders
Lighting design: Jonatan Winbo
Costume design: Pontus Pettersson
Rehearsal director: Lisa Drake
Assistant to the set designer: Linnea Birkelund
Graffiti sand box: Jenny Palén and David Danell
Photo: Urban Jörén
Art direction, design: Martin Falck
The set is made by Riksteaterns Teknik och Ateljéer.
Co-production: Cullberg, Luger, Way Out West Festival Gothenburg and Southbank Centre, London
World premiere: Way Out West, Gothenburg, 10th of August 2018

In NEAR, twelve dancers meet in a swamp house, hovering in a no-man’s land between nature and civilization. Together they bring a monstrous dream to life, blending genres of music concert and surrealist story ballet in a cinematic theaterscape. Amplifying the persistent strangeness within and out there, NEAR is full-disclosure and 100% sincere but never familiar, intimate but never comfortable.

Choreographer Eleanor Bauer works for the first time with Jonatan Leandoer Håstad/Yung Lean and Cullberg creating together a dance concert, a common fantasy world. Both artists have a strong relationship to writing at the center of their respective artistic practices, and poetry has become a common ground in the collaboration.

Originally from the US, Bauer is a PhD candidate in Choreography at Stockholm University of the Arts. The music for NEAR is created by Jonatan Leandoer Håstad /Yung Lean in collaboration with ambient music multi-instrumentalist and video artist Frederik Valentin. The dancers in Cullberg co-create a temporary autonomous zone in which they navigate improvisational practices and scores to continually generate spontaneous interpretations of a musically and poetically structured universe. Fragile forms and strong magic drive the collaboration in a touching and honest excavation of what it takes to be awake in the world, in a body, with others.