Caroline Skjørshammer // samtaler med
samtaler med (conversations with) is an autobiographical dance performance and therapeutic examination of body, memory, identity(s), queer awakening, inner narratives and outer disturbances. About being away, awake, aligned, misaligned, present and absent. About protecting and peeling off.
Through movement, sound, lights and objects the audience is invited into a personal space where Caroline tries to visit and stage this. An internal conversation with the known, unknown, old and new. A bodily conversation with, and processing of, everything that was not given space in conventional conversational therapy.
between away awake away awake
the heart of a giraffe weighs 11 kilos
a carrot teeth on the dashboard of an old van
I decide undecide decide undecide
a geographic choreographic sapphic moving cure
Background
Through the years Caroline has been to many different types of therapists and healing practitioners. Some good ones, some average ones, and some unfortunate ones. She also grew up with two psychologists as parents, and has in addition to dance studied psychology and family therapy. This has made her curious about what good therapy and help really looks like, and why many therapists are more concerned with words and language than they are with the body. The one we experience, digest and heal through, the one we experience the world in.
Photographer: Vegard Breie
The beginnings of "conversations with" started in 2017, while she was in therapy and simultaneously studying family therapy, as an attempt at creating an alternative healing practice for herself through dancing, singing, writing, babbling, drawing, self-massage, meditation and witnessing. During this process she also came out as gay. “conversations with" as a performative work is the extension and continuation of this practice. The performance is the therapist.
World premiere at Ål Kulturhus on March 28th 2025.
About the Artist
Caroline (she/her) is a Norwegian-American dance artist who shifts between performing, creating and sharing dance in different projects and contexts. She has worked in projects by artists like Utvik/Barfod, Spektra, ICB produksjoner, Lise Nordal, Moshtaghi/de naive, Carole Douillard and Marina Abramovic. As a teaching artist she has been affiliated with PRODA, Høyskolen Kristiania, Bårdar, Schous and Tekstlab, and in 2023 she was the ambassador for Dansens Dager. She is the founder of the arena Dans5 and co-host of The Dance Office. She has a double bachelors in dance and psychology from Point Park University (USA), a masters in cultural- and societal pscyhology from the University of Oslo, and a continued education in systemic family therapy from VID. She tries to put all this into her practice, projects and meetings with movement and people.
Credits:
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Friday 13. June 2025 Kl. 19:00Few tickets
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Saturday 14. June 2025 Kl. 19:00
