På tå hev

Tunnel Vision by Cina Espejord 

Cina Espejord has choreographed a number of works for the Norwegian National Ballet. Among them is Ibsen’s Ghosts, created with director Marit Moum Aune, for which she received the Norwegian Critics’ Award in 2015. In 2024, she created A Tale about Swan Lake, a condensed version of the ballet of all ballets. 

In Tunnel Vision, Espejord explores the tunnel as a symbol in a work that moves through themes of community, challenges and the search for new possibilities. In working with the dancers, she has emphasised dynamics, musicality, precision and interaction. 

– We have played with tunnels as a symbol of safety, direction and a framework for the possibilities we are able to see. At the same time, that same tunnel can become too narrow. It can limit us, keep us trapped in a pattern and make it difficult to move forward, says Espejord.

Learned by Heart by Daniel Proietto

Daniel Proietto is a choreographer and has long been associated with Alan Lucien Øyen’s company winter guests as both a creative collaborator and performer. He has created works for the Norwegian National Ballet and several international companies, and is the founder of KNOW NATION, a platform that combines film, movement and artistic reflection. 

In Learned by Heart, Proietto examines how inherited patterns can become embedded in the body long before we are able to recognise them. The work explores how ideas of femininity and masculinity are shaped and passed from one generation to the next through language, behaviour, intimacy, love and care, but also through guilt, fear and shame. 

Created in collaboration with eight young women, the work examines how we learn to present ourselves, how much space to take, what to desire and what to suppress. Central to Proietto’s work is treating the dancers not simply as interpreters, but as active participants in the questions the work raises. They are invited to examine what they have inherited, confront its contradictions, and consider their own agency in what comes next. Can something learned by heart be questioned, transformed – or learned differently? And what might we choose to pass on? 

0 3 : 2 8 by Douwe Dekkers  

Principal dancer with the Norwegian National Ballet, Douwe Dekkers has also established himself as a choreographer in recent years. Earlier this year, his work un:discovered premiered at The Royal Ballet’s Linbury Theatre as part of the choreographic platform International Draft Works, where it was warmly received. Together with fellow principal dancer Samantha Lynch, he has created several works, including for:jake for International Draft Works and Studio B for På tå hev. 

In 0 3 : 2 8, Dekkers turns his attention to the space between sleep and wakefulness in a work for twelve dancers.