After her previous, refreshing explorations of the structures of language and meaning-making through dance, I was eagerly anticipating Norwegian dancer and choreographer Ingrid Berger Myhre’s latest performance, Spelling Spectacle (2023).
The premise is simple: clad in a riot of colourful, sports-chic trainers, leggings and t-shirts, Berger Myhre, Ida Wigdel and Nicola Gunn launch into a mischievous game of observation, imitation and subtle distortions. Standing in a line, the dancer at the back moves to the front and mimics the pose of the previous frontwoman. The movements are straightforward and mime-like – a bend to one side, an arm stretched out, or balancing on one leg. Once, they even bite their own hands (like everything else, repeated several times as the sequence unfurls one frame at a time). There is something irrefutably comical in the way they struggle to sync with each other, each carefully choreographed movement progressing as if by chance, the dancers compelled to keep on moving yet always adding their own little twist to the poses. When they reach the wall, rather than halting, they are propelled by inertia to slam against it or crash out through the door at the side of the stage.
Beyond the simple rules of the game, the narrative thread remains tantalisingly elusive as the dancers stumble from one association to the next. Suddenly, the atmosphere transforms, and the once-muted space is now unmistakably a nightclub: the shimmering, pulsing rhythms and the sparkling reflections of a disco ball fill the air. The three performers become bartenders, performing a choreographed service ritual that repeats movements from before. Now, gestures like picking up a glass or stirring a cocktail gain context; one dancer opens the door for the others, then steps aside to position herself at the front, clearing the way. But again, behind every door, there is another, and another – each one a new threshold to cross, each one a re-imagining of the same rules.
In this simple game that unites the past and the future, our search for meaning is relativized in an endless flux of possibilities. In the final scene, the promise of a magical ‘resolution’ reveals an empty, self-ironic ‘ta-da’. We are left, inevitably, with a sense of being cheated. Much like life itself, we are played for fools in a game signifying nothing.
