Immensely visual performance art

Kirsten Dehlholm (b. 1945), director and visual artist.  Founder of Billedstofteatret (1977-85), which has had a landmark impact on the development of Danish performance art. Originally educated as a textile artist.  Founded Hotel Pro Forma in 1985.

Artistic profile
Dehlholm creates visionary fusions of theatre, opera, visual art, installation art, and concerts. For over 30 years, her site-specific productions have given new life to a whole range of architectural pearls – from crude factory halls to historic buildings and museums.
It is always the space that is the starting point for the performances, which are forged through a close collaboration between artists from different disciplines, including architecture, visual art, music, film, literature, dance, science and digital media.

Dehlholm sees herself more as a visual artist than a theatre person.  The performances are products of her vibrant, visual imagination and her unique visual lens, aesthetics and sense of space.  This has made Dehlholm the uncontested frontrunner in Danish performance art.
Dehlholm possesses a unique ability to link her selected subject with visual aesthetics and musical composition. The music spans everything from classical to new electronic music – often, in an innovative union. Hotel Pro Forma has also worked a number of times with large choruses – for example, in Operation : Orfeo, which was an international hit.

Both in Denmark and internationally, Hotel Pro Forma creates productions for special spaces.  When the productions go on tour, they are re-interpreted and adapted for new places.  A few times, Hotel Pro Forma has

also invaded more traditional theatre space – though always in ways that challenge the customary use of the space. 

Current productions

Sandbarnet™ / The Sand Child™
(2007)
The sand child is the recurring figure in Hotel Pro Forma’s new performance. A child of sand is no fixed creation, but one formed by its surroundings.
In the book The Sand Child, by the writer Tahar Ben Jelloun, the same lifestory appears in many disguises. A child is born as a girl, but in accordance with the father’s will, she is brought up as a boy among seven sisters until she chooses and seeks an uncertain destiny as an adult. After this, the actions and personality of the main character change via different narrative voices that provide different versions of the same life. The main character is a sand child.

Algebra of Place 
(2006)
11 scenes from an imaginary Arabian hotel. From the reception gift shop and through the private parlours, a female DJ guides the guests from lobby to lounge, filling the hotel with Middle-Eastern rhythms. A kaleidoscopic view of the Middle East in ferment.
Language: Arabic, Persian, English, Finnish
Site-specific space, museum space or theatre space

I Only Appear To Be Dead
(2005)
The title refers to the handwritten note placed on Hans Christian Andersen’s bedside table at night, due to his fear of being buried alive. The piece shows another side of the internationally-celebrated writer of fairytales. Here, darkness, doubt and fatalism prevail. The music –  composed for a mixed a capella choir of fourteen voices, the Danish National Choir –  transforms the diary entries into a sound-image modulated by polyphonic tones.
Languages: Danish, German and Italian
Large hall or site-specific space

Theremin
(2004)
A tale of the Russian physicist and inventor Leon Theremin (1896-1993), a pioneer in the physical sciences and the first electronic music apparatus in the early Soviet Union: A highly aesthetic journey through the musical, historical, and political landscape of the 20th century.
Language versions: Danish or English
Black box theatre or site-specific space

Site Seeing Zoom
(2001)
Collaboration with the digital art collective Crosscross (FR).  An exploration of a memory landscape. It reflects the interplay of man and computer and rejoices at the diversity of the world. The audience walks around the cross-structure of screens.
Language: English
Black box theatre, museum space or site-specific space

Operation : Orfeo
(1993)
A masterpiece of a visual opera, which toured the world for several years after its premiere.  Is now back in the repertoire: A re-conceptualisation of the opera genre. The myth of Orpheus' journey to the underworld is not retold in a direct way. Scenic language of light and movement hints at the mythic narrative without ever illustrating it. The music is composed by John Cage, Danish Bo Holten and 18th-century opera composer Christoph Willibald Gluck.
Language: Danish and English
Proscenium theatre

Review extracts

“Hotel Pro Forma is the only theatre group in existence in this country that successfully combines the two genres of live art and experimental theatre with works which require active spectatorship, thought and legwork.”
Copenhagen Post (DK), 1 Algebra of Place

”Her (Kirsten Dehlholm’s, ed.) many-layered images trigger off associations and are condensed time and time again into moments of great power… The co-production with the DR National Choir and Hotel Pro Forma is one of the best evenings in Schauspiel Köln in a long time.”
Frankfurter Rundschau (DE), I Only Appear To Be Dead

”A stylish web which explored the meaning of human discovery, as well as the ambiguous relationship between art and science.”
The Straits Times (SG), Theremin

”This gut-wrenchingly beautiful work, a meditation on the Orpheus legend, offers us an experience, rather than a moral or a message. By the end, you felt the work had been literally engraved on your body.”
Sydney Morning Herald (Sydney/AU), Operation : Orfeo

”In all its cool purity, it is one of the most passionate encounters between music and space I can remember.”
Politiken (DK), Operation: Orfeo

International tours

2007
Oct.: La Filature, Mulheouse Cedex/France (Operation : Orfeo)
Sep.: Latvian National Opera, Riga/Latvia (Operation : Orfeo)
June: International Arts Festival of Castilla Leon (Salamanca/Spain) (Theremin)
May: IKOS Festival (Brescia/IT) (Theremin)

2006
Spielzeiteuropa/Berliner Festspiele (Berlin/DE) (Jeg er kun skindød)
Kaleidoskop/K2, (Copenhagen/DK) (Theremin)
Belgrade International Theatre Festival - BITEF (Belgrade/SB-MO), (Jeg er kun skindød)
Schaubühne Lindenfels, euro-scene Leipzig Festival, (Germany/DE), (Theremin)

2005
Crossroads 2005 (Warsaw/PL)
La Biennale di Venezia (Venice/IT)
Christiansborg Ridehus (Copenhagen/DK)
Singapore Arts Festival (SG/SGP)
Schauspiel Köln (Cologne/DE)