winter guests is an international touring company performing works by Alan Lucien Øyen. They uniquely create a range of pure theatre works, dance works and hybrid pieces – all layered with a cinematic overtone enriched by stunning singular scenography. The works are based on real life experiences, sourcing material from interactions with strangers, personal anecdotes, and pop culture references – always incorporating the performers and the rehearsal process in the shaping of the final narrative.
Besides winter guests, Alan directs and creates work for theatre and dance companies worldwide, including Paris Opera, Gothenburg Opera’s Dance Company, Opera Flanders, Det Norske Teatret and The Norwegian National Opera and Ballet where he is currently House Choreographer. In 2018, Alan was one of the first two guest choreographers commissioned to create a full-length piece for the renowned Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch.
AVAILABLE WORKS 2021-2023
The American Moth
The American Moth is a hybrid, multi-medial performance combining dance, theatre in multiple languages and cinematic live video.
The American Moth is a poetic exploration of the sympathies and resentments at play in inter-generational relationships – what’s loved and what’s lost, experience, memory, time. But leaping between hearts from old to young and back again, love is never alone, fear leaps alongside it. Undeniably influenced by the ongoing global pandemic – The American Moth reveals a series of personal stories in a stripped-down, confessional format. Amid the lies and labours of an increasingly confused world, an ancient demon grows stronger. A shared anxiety, while causing us to huddle together, threatens to tear us apart.
Story, story, die
Through contemporary words and movements, Story, story, die looks at the interdependency between lies and love: The things we do to be liked. It explores how we are constantly re-arranging everyday life into stories in an attempt to craft a desirable narrative – how we “lie” about ourselves and stage reality for each other – as we meet in life or through social media. Relentlessly seeking approval – a fast and fading “conditional” love, dependent on success and happiness.
Simulacrum weaves together the true histories of two extraordinary dancers – to create a semi-fictionalized narrative that runs through what is essentially a dream play. Seventy-six-year-old Shōji Kojima, a Japanese Flamenco dancer, and Argentinian born Daniel Proietto, trained in Kabuki, create an encounter of intercultural complexity and frustrated desire. As part of Simulacrum, winter guests is proud to premier a specially commissioned piece by Fujima Kanjuro.
America 3: SuperAmateur
For the final installment in their America Trilogy, the most political of their works yet, winter guests returns to the idea of American reality as cinematic fiction. Making a large-scale installation, a set as wide as the United States – winter guests presents the blown up theatricality of the current American discourse onto a huge “silver screen” – a gigantic wooden stage…
America 2: Psychopatriot
America’s got a story. And it’s sticking to it. But where’s it written down? Where is the ‘Great American Novel’ for today? winter guests puzzles together a new narrative from the subjective truths of ‘real Americans’ – living in America – and the company’s own delusions, and misconceptions, coming from the outside. Written during the epic 2016 U.S. elections, Psychopatriot explores how we consciously and subconsciously manipulate fact and fiction. And how easily fear can cause one to slip in to the other.
America 1: Visions of Love
Why does the whole world seem to be preoccupied with America and American culture? It seems an image or movie exists in everybody’s mind about what “America” is. winter guests decided to grab ahold of their assumptions; their love, loathing and prejudice, and travel to the USA to collect stories and situations for a play. The first in the America trilogy, Visions of Love is based on original text and transcripts of recorded conversations collected while traveling throughout the United States.
