Master of the Obstruction Technique

Palle Granhøj (born 1959). Self-taught choreographer and dancer.  Founder and artistic director of Granhøj Dans since 1990. As a professional dancer, Palle Granhøj has worked with Nancy Spanier from Performance Inventions, among others.

Artistic Profile
Obstruktionsteknikken [The Obstruction Technique] is Palle Granhøj’s primary artistic method.  The technique works this way: one dancer restricts the choreographed movements and sounds of another dancer in order to create a new and alternative expression.  Through his hard, consistent work, Granhøj has created a very personal working method and aesthetics for which he has won international recognition.
A significant feature of the company’s productions is the staging of the dancer’s personality.  The performances show men and women as they are – alive!  The dancers sing, move and tell stories.  The audience can recognize a glint, a snatch of a song, tics, and other idiosyncrasies from everyday life. Granhøj Dans is dance at a first-class level with a twist that makes the performances popular and accessible.
Granhøj Dans performs the works of choreographer Palle Granhøj and visual designer Per Victor. Over the past 15 years, the company has mounted 20 performances, created dance videos and site-specific works, and toured more than 30 countries.

Current Productions

Aline Alene / Aline Alone
(2006)
The music is Cuban and the dancer is Cuban. She talks and sings about Cuba, as well. But the story is not about Cuba. It’s about the dancer, the artist, and the woman Aline Sanchez Rodriguez. Palle Granhøj explains, “A long time ago, I wrote down: ‘This piece should be narrative. It should tell a story.’ Well, it didn’t end up being narrative, but it’s probably the closest I, as a choreographer, will ever get to being a storyteller. Aline Alene IS a story. The piece is Aline’s story.”

Obstrucsong
(2005)
Palle Granhøj stages flirting, eroticism, battles and longing in an abstract and organic landscape, consisting of a giant wool quadrant encircled by flexible lamps. Palle Granhøj explains, “Sometimes, when you hear music, a single chord can be enough to put you in a certain mood.
This is my attempt to let a simple, physical dance and song ritual give the audience the feeling that they miss something they didn’t know they were missing: Obstrucsong explores whether it is possible to do the same thing with dance that a simple chord in a tune on the radio can do to your emotions...”

Review Extracts

”In its favour are the powerful and voluptuous dance language, the omnipresent humour, the congenial design of the stage and lighting and the admittedly arbitrary, yet largely meaningless, yet strangely enticing multi-voice singing from the remarkably tuneful dance troupe. So if this is conceptual art – more of it, I say.”
Berner Zeitung (CH), Obstrucsong

”The idea is seductive, the concept interesting, even vertiginous – in art as elsewhere, the paths which liberty takes, creativity within strict limitations – and the whole delivered with humour, precision and lightness.”
La Libre Belgique (BE), Obstrucsong

International Tours

2007
June: 
Ostrava Puppet Theatre (Ostrava/CZ)
Barka Theatre (Brno/CZ)
Ponec Theatre (Prague/CZ)
Open Look Summer Festival (Skt. Petersburg/RU)

August:
Theaterlabor Tor 6 (Bielefeld/DE)
Les Brigittines Festival (Brussels/BR)

2005
Tanec Praha (Prague/CZ) 
Berner Tanztage (Bern/CH)
Kuopio Dance Festival (Kuopio/FI)
Les Brigittines (Brussels/BE)

2004
Les Hivernales (Avignon/FR)
Festival Tanz Tranzit (Kaliningrad/RU)
International Baltic Ballet Festival (Riga/LV)
New Baltic Dance ’04 (Vilnius/LT)
Festival NCL/EUROPE (Newcastle/GB)
Grand Theatre (Groningen/NL)
Tanec Praha Festival (Prague/CZ)
Festival Cour des Capucine (Luxemburg/LU)
Full Moon Festival (Pyhäjärvi/FI)
Biennale de la Danse de Lyon (Lyon/FR)
Mâcon Scene Nationale (Mâcon/FR)
Internationale Tanzmesse NRW (Düsseldorf/DE)
Pusterviks Teatern (Gothenburg/SE)
Suzanne Dellal Centre for Dance and Theatre (Tel Aviv/IL)