Springback Academy 2018
Review
Dans, for Satan
Hilde Ingeborg Sandvold
Gold leggings, fake leopard skin top: she strides in with a rolling gait and jutted chin, eyeballing us.
Donning a dainty gold grown she swerves with a coy come-on, skidding it to the floor, dry breast-stroking to the rhythm of a staccato, simulated orgasm, switch-backing to stomping folk dance, flamenco flutters and cabaret high kicks.
What’s bitten the woman? The list of sexually transmitted diseases read out before she arrived is one clue. Another: the creed ‘Dick is God’, she teasingly paints in large black letters at the back of the stage.
After ruefully downing three glasses of milk and grasping a floppy sausage she rotates and we read: ‘But Pussy has the Power’ on her bare torso. The recipient of a full-facial ejaculation, she’s a wrecked but erect Statue of Liberty.
Victim or powerhouse, she joyously jumbles up the two.
At the end, she’s dressed as a man, measuring something with his hands: his penis, the time that’s left for men’s social hegemony? Who knows? This piece is full of pranks and wicked wisdom.
Dicks. Pussies. Sexualised and binarian bodies are presented in this solo by Hilde Ingeborg Sandvold. The Norwegian choreographer, dressed in animal print and a little princess crown, dances with explicit sexual references and writes on a wall ‘Dick is God’. She performs with natural humour, engaging the audience with surreal images as she sprinkles milk out of her mouth, holding a sausage in one hand. Next, she takes off her shirt and on her body is written ‘but pussy has the power’ (completing the sentence by the Danish sexologist Carl-Mar Møller). In the second part, the piece changes completely. She begins to explore the possibility of building her own identity. But the lights are turned off. So she has to take a spotlight to insist and create a new space, where she can smuggle in this new movement, this new identity. Combining male and female.
Gonorrhoea, chlamydia, syphilis. Not the usual words to start off a dance act. But Hilde Ingeborg Sandvold is not giving us an ordinary performance either. Dressed in leopard print and a little golden crown, she announces movement phrases by clapping her hands above her head. Sexually loaded positions are invigorated with moaning and screaming. Electrical impulses shift inside her body: swaying, crushing, sighing, smiling, releasing. With swinging hips and bold gazes directed at the audience she paints on the white backdrop: ‘Dick is GoD’. Three pints of milk down, she gargles. When her bare back is revealed, it shows half of a clause: ‘BUT THE PUSSY’. She is taking a stand like the statue of liberty, but instead of a torch she raises a sausage. Mic drop. With the words ‘HAS THE POWER’ on her chest, indeed, this defiant performer has the balls to slap, but without wiping the smile off our faces.