IPAF presents: Afterlife by Louis Schou-Hansen

Afterlife is a messed-up playground. It is a site for speculative futurities and derailed interpretations of a renaissance that never really happened. While diving into hauntologies of Western dance history, questioning whether the Sun King actually ever died, the performance moves through a series of twisted dances from the late Italian Renaissance and early French Baroque. Only to disperse into weird referential landscapes containing subtle traces of Britney’s banger dance from Hit Me Baby One More Time, Andrzej Zulawski’s subway scene from Possession and distorted yoga-gone-wrong inspired materials.

Carried out by three performers, Afterlife tries to unfold muted histories of subaltern bodies. Bodies that, through Western colonial and anti-queer epistemic regimes, were deemed disposable and unfit to partake in any further historical development.

Notes for audience
The performance includes loud sounds. Earplugs are provided at the entrance door for those who wish to use them.

Language: Non-verbal

Access: Dansekapellet is wheelchair accessible. Accessible toilets are located on site. Kuppelsalen is accessible via stairlift.

Working group & credits
CHOREOGRAPHY & DIRECTION Louis Schou-Hansen / COSTUMES AND SCULPTURAL WORK Karoline Bakken Lund / CO-MAKING PERFORMERS Amie Mbye, Elise Nohr Nystad, Georgiana Dobre / MUSIC Peachlyfe, Petra Skibsted / ARTISTIC ADVISOR Sebastian De Line / RECONSTRUCTION OF RENAISSANCE DANCE Elizabeth Svarstad / HAIR Anna Lübeck / PHOTOS Chai Saeidi / CO. PRODUCTION Black Box Teater Oslo, Mimosa Studio & Palmera Bergen SUPPORTED BY: Arts Council Norway, FFUK, Oslo Municipality, Fond For Lyd og Bilde

About the artists:

Louis Schou-Hansen (it/they) is a dancer and choreographer whose work is situated at the intersection of dance and visual arts. Its practice encompasses various formats such as performances, making dances, performing, writing, and sometimes curating. Louis’ work dives into speculative fiction as a tool to investigate, dissect, and denaturalize how bodies have been molded through violent Western fairytales, utilizing queer and trans-feminist epistemologies. Louis has studied dance at the Oslo National Academy of the Arts and the Royal Danish Ballet School, as well as fine arts at The Dutch Art Institute.

In 2023, Louis was shortlisted for the Sandefjord Kunstforenings Art Prize with Harald Beharie, and was in 2020 nominated for the Norwegian Critics Association Prize for the piece Shine Utopians.

In 2016, it started collaborating with Norwegian choreographer Ingri Fiksdal, working as a performer in several of her works. Louis has also performed in the works of Runa Borch Skolseg, Pedro Gomez Egana, Edhem Jesenkovic, Goro Tronsmo, Andrew Amorim, Janne Camilla Lyster, & Ingun Bjørnsgaard, to name some. Between 2020-2022 it co-founded and curated the discursive, platform Brakkesnakk together with Ines Belli.

Louis has presented works at Copenhagen Contemporary, the Munch Museum Oslo, Untitled Tbilisi, Black Box Teater Oslo, Suprainfinit Bucharest, Dansens Hus Oslo, My Wild Flag Stockholm, The Norwegian National Museum, and RAS Sandnes, among others. Since 2019 it has been active as a guest teacher at various academies and venues such as CONDTIONS STUDIO PROGRAMME London, Palais De Tokyo Paris, Oslo National Academy of the Arts, ICA – Institute of Contemporary Arts London, The Place London, and BRUT Vienna.

http://www.louisschouhansen.net/ 

Afterlife is presented in close collaboration with Dansehallerne.

Dansehallerne is a national center for dance and choreography in Copenhagen.
Co-producing and presenting a diverse spectrum of national and international performances, facilitating professional training and industry events. Dansehallerne has a strong focus on cultivating an efficient and sustainable ecosystem for dance and choreography in Denmark nurtured by, and in dynamic valued exchange with, the organization’s local and global associations. 

Afterlife is part of IPAF: an international festival for contemporary performance presenting artists from different cultural contexts, whose work engages identity politics, sexual expressions, and body representations, facilitated by Warehouse9.

The festival is supported by the Danish Arts Foundation, the City of Copenhagen and Bispebjerg Lokaludvalg.