Icelandic lullaby jumping-off point for debut dance work

Don’t sleep on the latest work from Winnipeg dance artist Alex Elliott, even if it is based on a haunting Icelandic lullaby.

Let’s not stay awake through dark nights is a translation into movement of Sofðu unga ástin mín, a folkloric song of horrific sacrifice that traces back to the true story of Halla, who, while on the lam with a sheep thief named Eyvindur, is said to have serenaded her three-year-old daughter, Tota, before pushing her over the edge of a waterfall.

Not exactly soothing, but during a one-month residency in Rejkjavik in 2023, Elliott, who has Icelandic heritage, was emotionally affected enough to use the lullaby as a basis for the first full-length piece of contemporary choreography in her 25-year career.

Her research led her to Fjalla-Eyvindur, a popular theatrical adaptation by Jóhann Sigurjónsson that brought the lullaby to European audiences in 1911.

Eager to use the human voice and the Icelandic language as source material, Elliott began a two-year process of project development, which included an exploratory performance during the 2023 Winnipeg Fringe Theatre Festival.

The executive director of Young Lungs Dance Exchange and the founder of the performance series Art Holm, Elliott saw in the story the potential for a movement-based exploration of human vulnerability, courage and the difficult choices made under otherworldly pressure.

Last year, Elliott brought together a group of dancers to devise, and later record for posterity, the stormy selection during a four-week residency at Théâtre Cercle Molière. In May, a group of five dancers huddled around a laptop at the Rachel Browne Theatre, trying to remember how to climb the mountain.

“I keep thinking that I’m you and you’re me,” said Neilla Hawley, a feeling echoed by Justine Erickson.

That’s not a mistake: in Elliott’s precise, tension-based choreography, the human bodies on stage blend into each other. At times, Elliott, Hawley, Erickson, Emma Beech and Andres Jimenez Mejia wind themselves into knots, pressing on one another in order to remain fixed in place.

Dressed in identical tunics by Brenda McLean, it’s easy to forget who’s who.

Then, like shifting glaciers sped up by timelapse, they break apart, leaping over one another before fighting against the elements to reconvene in some form of spiritual afterlife.

The sound design, a concoction by Elliott, Adrian Berry and Dasha Plett, conveys restlessness and defies comfort. As they move through the piece, the dancers often seem propelled by gale-force winds, spread across the map of the stage like scattered seeds.

Elliott’s piece, which was dramaturged by Ali Robson, will run at Théâtre Cercle Molière from today to Sunday, with each performance including a companion piece by Indigenous-Icelandic artist Victoria Perrie developed in response to Let’s not stay awake.

Tickets are $25 or pay-what-you-can at alexandraelliottdance.com.

ben.waldman@freepress.mb.ca