Scenrecension: Alexander Ekman defends the epic game and the dream

Play is a condition in which the inner reality may prevail over the external. We play to learn about ourselves and the outside world, and at the same time, forget about it for a moment. To process the pain and understand what it is to be human. The deck is strongly linked to knowledge and creativity, and also requires the design, rules and roles, creating cooperation. Just as in the performing arts.

Just as Alexander Ekman engaged. Just play is an explicit keywords for this Swedish choreographer, grew up in the ballet and is now a free artist with the world as a workplace. And as he is playing. He can fill the stage with 8,000 litres of water as in ”A swan lake” at the Oslooperan 2014, with the swirling of hay as in the ”midsummer night's dream” at the royal theater in April 2015, or with a sea of 40,000 green balls that are in the ”Play” at the Paris opera in 2017. Above all, he can fill it with a very large ensemble cast and get everyone to play together, harmoniously and insubordinate.

he has 38 sharpened dancers of the Royal Ballet, who together build multiple worlds and portrays the inner realities on the Royal Opera stage. In commuting between the bustling crowd scenes, graceful duets and individual offshoots prisoners ”Eskapist” a theme that also appeared in such as ”midsummer night's dream”. It is possible to step out of the context and set next to the collective? Just be a tag in its interior? In the ”Eskapist” go Ekman completely into the game and the dream. It looks as if he, in the same way that David Lynch seems to be able to do on the film, has taken screenshots of their own dreams and recreated them on stage.

To help in it, he has two playmates. The permanent co-creator Mikael Karlsson, the Swedish New York-based composer who moves effortlessly between contemporary music, collaborations with artists such as Lykke Li and Anna von Hausswolff and the music for the computer game ”Battlefield: Bad company”, open the secret doors with the elusive ljudmattor, muskelstarka beats, nightmarish knarranden and fine-tuned cello.

Henrik Vibskov, also cross-border as regards the fields of labor, and who worked with Ekman in, for example, ”the Cow” at the Semperoper in Dresden in 2016, supports the commute between the collective and the individual. Black and white striped, forming the strong graphic effect in the masscenerna and broken by the surreal surprises that green träskmonster or a tyngdlagsföraktande dress of red sammetskorvar.

A part is familiar from the earlier works of Alexander Ekman-universe. He has his tools and his hallmark, a powerful tone that is neither afraid of entertainment or intellectual pretensions. He uses his cinematic skill to the strange unnoticeable device, through movement, light and set design – with a dynamic stage floor made that are raised and lowered in parts.

the dreamy expression in the title role as Eskapisten, who think it is so nice with the ”time between times”, moments when the inner reality takes over. In an efficiency and mätbarhetsfixerad present is ”Eskapist” a fun, grandiose and beautiful defense of the to stand beside and think for yourself, of the game, the imagination and the dream.

Interview: Alexander Ekman ready for the next act in life.