A big part of the work for us is to have a good time
(You can find this text in Swedish here.) The questions I have asked in this project have often led to conversations about the loneliness of travelling. When I met the choreographers Halla Ólafsdóttir and Amanda Apetrea, it was the companionship of travelling that came up instead: how working communities create temporal and spatial frameworks for relationships, and how personal desire shapes and is shaped by these communities.
The first time I met Halla and Amanda was around 2010. They impressed me and still do, with their creative autonomy and their collectivities influenced by feminism.
Halla Ólafsdóttir and Amanda Apetrea
Amanda: 2013 was a groovy travel year. We were at the spring meeting of PAF (Performing Arts Forum). It’s always both up and down at PAF. But we had confit de canard and smoked pot and went to the store and bought huge amounts of food and ice cream. Then we went on to Barcelona with a group made for work and friendship that we called The Future. It was this luscious dream encounter where we read interesting texts, talked, smoked even more pot, cooked even more food, munched cookies. And later that summer, we were in Vienna, where Halla and I played our show and won a prize. Maybe it wasn’t a dream for you, though, Halla, you had a burnout. Halla: I had a burnout after. It was because I was doing, like, twenty projects at the time. That summer was insane. John Moström and I had a residency in Berlin. There was a heat wave and we made Giselle, which involved meeting a large group of people and being with them for two consecutive weeks. It took a lot more energy than I had imagined. And there was no air conditioning, neither in Vienna, nor in Berlin. Amanda: Right. There was a thunderstorm and we were lying naked with the windows wide open in Vienna, trying to not let our skin touch anything. Halla: After that, I toured with The Knife. I wouldn’t have wanted to say no to any of that. But when I took time off in the autumn, I hit the wall. I think I managed to avoid the big crash. I was full of sorrow for four months. I never want to go there again. Since then, I have learned to leave spaces in my calendar. It’s completely unreasonable for me to go from one place to the next without a break in between. Amanda: I know a bit about that stress, your shoulders rise as soon as the phone buzzes. When I started studying choreography under Mårten Spångberg and realised how much we would be travelling, I panicked. I was in a so-called closed relationship. I couldn’t see how that could work alongside. At that time, travelling was such fun and super-annoying at the same time, because everything happened at once. We had to do a solo while on tour. We had to always be available and always socialise and always cook food and serve it. For one and a half year, we were never in Stockholm for more than two weeks at a time. My relationship ended as a direct consequence of my education. I don’t regret anything, but it came at a price. Halla: I also experienced that, in several closed relationships with men. Very few can stand being with someone who has my lifestyle. When I was younger, it was also important for me to demonstrate that I didn’t depend on anyone, that I was prepared to sacrifice everything to be a dancer, move anywhere if that was what it took. It was a huge insight when I realised that I didn’t have to audition for jobs I didn’t want; that I could work with myself and my friends.
Amanda: I don’t quite recognise that thing of putting dance before everything else. I tend to invest that energy in making my relationships work instead. You probably need more time to work out how to live if you don’t want to do the heteronormative family thing.
Halla: When I spend longer periods of time in Iceland, I sometimes feel like an UFO. There aren’t that many women who are single and don’t want kids. Whether you’re straight or gay, it’s important there to have family and children and a partner and a flat. People get pregnant three months after meeting. I feel, not just in Iceland but here as well, that I should be respectable now that I’ve turned forty. That it’s shameful to want to party, to want to go out dancing, to laugh, to talk. That it’s selfish to put my own interests first.
Amanda: It’s also self-sacrificing to not contribute to over-population. Who wants to bring a child into this shitty world? I do, but that’s just because I want to be imortalised. I have massive death anxiety. But it would still have to be something outside the norm. I’m exploring that in different constellations.
Halla: Back in Iceland, I have a big group of friends that I’ve known since I was fifteen. We go on meeting. But the kind of friendships I have through my job, they stopped having fifteen years ago. I get to lie in bed and chitchat until late at night with amazing people. I get to be really nerdy about dance and choreography, discussing, analysing. I love my life. But there’s room for improvement. I haven’t been in a steady relationship for seven years. It’s mostly been short-term. And I often worry about money. And all my homes are sublets, and I’ve moved at least every other year since I was nineteen. I would like to try living in one and the same place for longer now, just to see what it feels like.
Amanda: I’m glad I have a home, it feels safe and important, but I’m thinking of a person that we met many times on these travels. He’s phased out having a fixed abode; he just travels. It’s interesting to think what relationships you would need, living like that.
Halla: Friendships often develop for practical and logistic reasons. Like a friend I always stay with when I visit the city where she lives. Without that, we wouldn’t have got to know each other as well. There is also something beautiful about becoming part of someone else’s context when you travel; coming along to dinners and things.
Amanda: Me and the choreographer Mica Sigourney created a logistic structure in order to develop our friendship. Our whole relationship is based on Swedish funding. We had an instant crush when we met in Vienna. We started talking about art and life and shared the same perspective. I immediately suggested that I should apply for money for us. In the beginning, it was super difficult to keep up the relationship with Mica. I just wanted to fast-forward and look back to see how it worked out. But now, we have got more into the long-distance relationship thing. You check on the fb-chat what’s up, and then you go deeper into the relationship every time you meet. I no longer have the sense of constantly having to start over. I know what it feels like when he’s sitting in my sofa. But I would like to merge the San Francisco life with life here in Stockholm. San Francisco could contribute with fun queer contexts and parties, and Sweden the money for our relationship. Halla: You and Mica seem to work quite a lot like we do when we work together. A big part of the work for us is to have a good time. You don’t get creative ideas just by trying to use your time efficiently. Amanda: We like to be slow. Slowing down is part of the intimacy I share with Halla. It bleeds into our work as well. It can be hard to dare to tell others that you would prefer only working after lunch. You feel like a fuck-up. But Halla and I have worked really hard to get there, to be proud of what we do.
Halla: I’m better now at saying: “This is not a situation where something happens. Can we change it?” But that also depends on the context, of course, on what you want to resist and why. I’m thinking of when we won that prize at ImPulsTanz in Vienna in 2013. Then we got a residency. If we had already won the prize, why should we be diligent festival-participants and show our faces everywhere? We stayed in bed and talked and read poetry instead. We told them to give our studio time to someone else. And it turned out fine.
Amanda: Residencies are good. Like when we launched our latest process with Samlingen.
Halla: Samlingen is a group of five choreographers who are also friends. Since we’re all doing a thousand other things, it’s hard to meet all of us outside work. The first thing booked in the calendar is what ends up happening. So, working together can be a way of seeing each other.
Amanda: The people in Samlingen live very different lives. That is more or less evident, depending on what we do. When we spent five days together in the archipelago, having different needs in our everyday lives wasn’t a problem. Halla: Then we had time to read aloud to each other before going to sleep. You don’t take that kind of time – to lie down and think in something soft – when you’re in the studio at some institution. The studio is associated with efficiency. Amanda: Things were more equal during the residency than when we worked at Riksteatern later. At Riksteatern, some needed to get home to their families as early as possible, while Halla and I would have preferred to sleep in.
Halla: It takes time to achieve consensus with so many brains involved.
Amanda: We are five super-strong people, so you really have to fight for your ideas. If you go to the bathroom, seven thousand decisions have been made when you get back. Halla: I’ve started saying: “Don’t talk while I’m gone, be quiet!” Amanda: It’s also often insanely intense when we’re on tour with Samlingen. Halla: It’s because we meet a new group every time and make a show with them for a couple of days: it’s not like an ordinary tour where you can do a warm-up and go for a walk in the city. Amanda: You hardly have time to send a text message. There‘s no limit to the amount of work, or the limit is when you close your hotel door. I have no idea how to wind down afterwards. I have a need to be alone, but then I get a lot of fomo. And when I come home, I miss my friends, like we haven’t been together. We just went on some trains together and didn’t even get to sit next to each other.
Halla: I actually prefer playing the same show many times instead of travelling all the way to Brussels or Kortrijk to do only one. And I’d love to play more times in one place, preferably in projects that I’m not in charge of. Then I can take care only of myself and I know exactly what to do on stage. The routines in that kind of tour are good for the body.
Amanda: But being on tour can also be difficult. You eat food that you’re unaccustomed to and your stomach goes weird. You perform on completely different floors, such as in a cold and windy tent. You forget to stretch. On one tour, I had constant bacterial vaginosis. I had to go on antibiotics every other month for more or less a year. I don’t know if it was related to the travelling, but I was constantly thinking about it while travelling. In every new place, it was, like: “Where’s the pharmacy, can I get hold of medication?” And it hurt on stage wearing tight shorts. In the last years, I’ve probably travelled less than earlier. Maybe I’ll visit ten places and be away approximately two months in a year. I think it’s because some shows I worked with were more local; we both rehearsed and played here in Stockholm. Then you don’t get invited anywhere except here. If you travel with a show, you get to travel more. I think you travel more than I do, Halla.
Halla: I’m probably away from Sweden for four or five months a year. People still ask me if I live in Sweden. I moved here in 2000 to do a dance programme at Balettakademin. So, I started going back and forth between Iceland and Sweden. After finishing, I stayed here to have a context around me. It’s not that Stockholm is a dream city, but it’s possible to work and have friends here. I have also worked a lot in Europe. And we did a tour with The Knife in the USA. At night, the tour bus drove through the Arizona desert, which I had always dreamed of seeing. Through the little window by the bed, I could only see darkness. So, I’ve been to the Arizona desert, but I haven’t seen anything. But the tour bus was amazing, because we drove right up to the venue. And we never had to think of what to eat. I’m so used to doing things myself. I’ve started getting jittery before travel because there’s so much to keep in mind: waking up, packing, getting one transport to the central station, then another… I hate the central station. And trains make me nauseous. Planes make me think of death.
Amanda: I like horses. I was a horse girl for a long time. Maybe this is not in the near future, but it feels like a good possibility that we could travel by horse and wagon. We should go slower, shut things down and invest the little energy that exists in servers so we can stay in touch over distances. Preferably with a bit more developed technology than now, to make the virtual sex more real. I get slightly panicky thinking that the people I want to keep in touch with can disappear from my life because of distance. Like Mica. Why did I get a best friend who lives so far away? Can’t everyone just be here? Or around a lake in Ulricehamn? There is a really pretty lake in Ulricehamn.
Halla: But If I can’t fly, I lose half of my jobs and I won’t see my family and friends. I can’t afford to go by boat to Iceland, it costs a thousand euro and is really slow. I don’t want that to happen. Within Europe, I could maybe imagine going by train, if the institutions who book and pay tickets are also okay with it taking three days longer. Or a month longer. The people who programme could stop flying in a show for just two days, and instead start cooperating with other venues in the nearest town, or the same town. If we had genuine cooperation with organisers who were prepared for a group to come and settle for a month, maybe we could start talking for real about how to build an audience. Because that is something we are asked in every application. But how are we supposed to build an audience if we play only one performance in a city where we don’t have a network?
Amanda: It would be nice to slow down, and it’s needed, either way.