Harald Beharie: Undersang
A performance ritual in the city forest of Helsinki, where mythologies, national romantic ideals, and science fiction meet through Afro and Asian-Nordic diasporic narratives.
Photo: Chai Saeidi
About
Undersang is a performance by Harald Beharie, which takes shape as a performance ritual in the city forest of Helsinki. It is is a tapestry of opulent configurations soaked in a shimmer of queer ecologies and extravagant gestures. Here mythologies, national romantic ideals and science fiction converge, revealing a world of ancient powers.
Weaving Afro and Asian-Nordic diasporic narratives, Undersang plays with the notion of dissonance as a potent and ambiguous feeling of empowerment, sparking questions about cultural fictions and what it means to belong. As a ground for refusal, reclamation of time and looking beyond the idea of ownership, the work seeks fertile ground for healing, for lament and joyous celebration.
Venue & accessibility
The performance takes place in the East Helsinki. Arrival instructions and the meeting place will be communicated separately to ticket holders via email.
The performance is not accessible for wheelchairs.
Harald Beharie
Harald Beharie (he/they) is a Norwegian-Jamaican performer and choreographer based in Oslo, Norway.
Harald’s choreographic practice are collaborative voyages, navigating through realms of ambiguity and phantasm, punctuated by themes of deconstruction, hope and uncertainty, disinterest and emotional intensity.
They hold a special interest for the DIY and the vulnerability of being in the unknown.
Beharie is interested in how the body can function as a motor for dramaturgy—a force in itself that transforms through practice. In his works Batty Bwoy and Undersang—he has engaged with monstrosity as a tool for empowerment. By playing with disgust and transgressive energies, he challenges established bodily narratives about the Black body. He allows ritual to be the transcendent force within his practice, opening up to the unknown—the clumsy, the uncanny, and the awkward in-between spaces where understanding slips, and new possibilities emerge. A vibration is created—one that builds over time, an energy that becomes increasingly unbearable, twisting between the comedic and the unsettling. Harald Beharie’s website.
Credits
Concept & Choreography: Harald Beharie
Artistic Collaborators: Christian Beharie, Karoline Bakken Lund, Veronica Bruce
Performers: Amie Mbye, Loan Ha, Jens Trinidad, Nosizwe Baqwa, Carlisle Lienes, Mariama Slåttøy, Harald Beharie
Sculpture: Karoline Bakken Lund & Veronica Bruce
Music / composition: Christian Beharie
Costumes: Karoline Bakken Lund & Harald Beharie
Producer: Mariana Suikkanen Gomes
Distribution: Damien Valette
Outside Eye / Sparring Partners: Deise Nunes & Hooman Sharifi
Co-producers: Black Box Teater, Dansens Hus, Oslo, Rosendal Teater, BIT Teatergarasjen, RAS, TOU Scene
Supported by: Norwegian art council, FFUK, Fond for lyd og bilde, PAHN- performing art hub Norway
Thanks to: Magne Misje, Torbjørn Kolbeinsen, Charlott Utzig, Pål Græsvik, Erick Kelly, Nicolas Jara Marthinsen, Sven Undheim