Dance - Performance
Neind Thing 2021 - Inga Huld Hákonardóttir

Neind Is Not Everything; It’s Every Thing

What if the answer to everything was nothing?

Neind is the Icelandic word for nothingness. In Neind Thing (Nothingness Thing) we ask nothing to solve the problems of the world. Nothingness as a practice of elimination, as a dance, as a symbol and a ritual.

Neind Thing is a dance for 5 performers; three dancers, a percussionist and a light designer. All are actively Neind-ing. Together, we nothing.

The performance moves between a presentation of a meticulous dance practice, an intense punk concert and a surreal meta-fictional theatre.

We connect with little nothings. We contemplate nothing’s potential; our right to nothingness as a form of resistance. We seek nothingness as a pathway to freedom; freedom from unwanted distractions, freedom to care, freedom to chose what we pay attention to and how.

We employ Neind as a tactic to stave off the incessant overload present in its opposite, Everything. Neind is the freedom to appear.

Play Is The Mask Of Nothing At All

Neind Thing is roughly divided into two parts. The first is characterised as a space of ambiguous flow, a nothingness full of potential, a space where anything can happen. We tremble and shake; passing through images ever so slowly, almost but never quite meeting. This slow morbid flow of trembling bodies builds in intensity towards a cathartic release of tension. We ferociously exorcise our incessant desire for more and our ceaseless need to reach beyond ourselves to find wholeness.

This riotous purge sets the stage for Neind Thing’s second act; the Meta-Fictional Picnic. Here the? potentials of nothingness are explored and contemplated through collages of diaries, games and funeral like rituals. Here we explore what it is to live without. Must we live a bare life in order to make life on earth more inhabitable?

Absurd gestures such as cutting bananas with scissors and playing baseball with apples and melons become emblematic of the new purpose of nothingness. Irreverent assemblages appropriated as a resistance to familiar forms.

As in act 1, excess accumulates in our space of nothingness; transforming the serene and irreverent picnic into a ferocious rave. We fall into ecstatic loop. We slide back and forth across the stage in the juice of smashed watermelons, bouncing into eternity while waiting for the next song to drop. Rapturously transporting ourselves into a new future.

Resisting The Attention Economy

In her book How To Do Nothing, Jenny Odell characterises our current milieu as rife with a subtle sabotage of our mindfulness. According to Odell this development is a result of the prevailing “attention economy”; an economy which thrives on distractions and robs us of our delicate attentions through a near constant barrage of noise.

Odell found most of her inspiration for resisting noise in her regular visits to a rose garden. In Neind Thing, we collected stories of those who found solace in retreat, in pilgrimages, in treks into wild and remote environments. The diaries of these isolated pilgrims were dissected and reconfigured into a spoken text that weaves its way through Neind Thing like a path away. A step into Neind. A step towards a new nothing.

Ritual de lo Habitual

Our physical research was a quest to access the rich, ambiguous nothingness in our own bodies. We experimented with Trauma Releasing Exercises (TRE) an innovative series of movements designed by psychoanalyst David Berceli as a way for the body to release patterns of stress, tension and trauma.

We attended punk concerts and raves seeking the massive physical transcendence of social ritual. A Neind retreat into the crowd. We exercised Neind by sculpting noise into solace.

Concept and choreography  Inga Huld Hakonardottir Performers and co-creators  Salvor Gullbra Þorarinsdottir, Vedis Kjaratansdottir, Inga Huld Hakonardottir Live drums, sound design and co-creation Ægir Sindri Bjarnason Scenography and co-creation  Guðn Hrund SigurðardottirLights and co-creation  Arnar Ingvarsson Text and lyrics  Inga Huld Hakonardottir, Salvor GullbraÞorarinsdottir and Vedis Kjartansdottir Dramaturgy and artistic advice  Asgerður Gunnarsdottir, Halla Olafsdottir. Partners and co - producers   Tjarnabio, Dansverkstæðið, KWP Pianofabriek, Rannis Government funding Iceland, Atvinnuleikhopar Reykjavk.