Side Step 2020 | Berstad/Helgebostad/Brun: Phantasmagoric

In phantasmagoria, an entertainment popular in the 19th century, a magic lantern was used to project images onto smoke screens and translucent surfaces, transporting the audiences to eerie, enchanted states of being. Phantasmagoric, by art collective Berstad/Helgebostad/Brun, is a hypnotic universe, an unreal reflection that draws on surrealist experimentation and pop culture iconography.

Phantasmagoric invites the audience to wander in a dreamlike transitional space, to linger in a stream of images carried by thoughts, to be carried away by emotions and sensations in an embrace of memories, longings and desires. Inthe performance, the space, the objects, the music and the motion come together in a colourful mirage, a swelling and disappearing labyrinth of illusions that invites the spectator to enter and become lost in it.

Choreographers Kristin Helgebostad and Ingeleiv Berstad and visualist/lighting designer Crisander Brun are fascinated by the coexistence of different forms of art in an environment free of hierarchy; in other words the interweaving of choreography, visual elements and performative action. They have collaborated since 2012 in various line-ups.