Beyond Rage
The rage within me. The rage caused by others. The rage that devours all that was precious. The rage that burns. The rage that cleans. The rage that creates.
As rage is often experienced as a strong and often uncontrollable violent emotion of anger, it can also be an intense desire or passion. Beyond Rage focusses on questions and ideas around the notion of what comes after the storm of rage has subsided. What is the landscape after the rage, the fury of destruction has gone. When we need to pick up the broken pieces to re-assemble our lives. We live in a time in which rage, hate, violence, destruction, seems without boundaries.
I feel strongly the need for reflection, the space to ask ourselves what is beyond the rage that consumes us. This project is an attempt to articulate some of these reflections.
I started to work on this project during a three-months residency in the summer of 2022 at Konstnärsnämden in Stockholm. I decided to work on the theme of rage after the full-scale invasion of Russia started on the 24th of February 2022. I was at that moment in Murmansk/Russia to direct the project ‘Factory of Lost and Found Dreams’ and was consumed by rage when I read that morning about the start of the invasion.
During this residency my interest shifted however from working on rage itself, to focus on what comes after the rage is gone, reflections on the aftermath. Taking a deep breath and ask ourselves: ‘Where do we want to go from here?’.
The starting point for this new solo remains the dancing body, to work with movement in a musically, sensorial, poetic and dramaturgical way. I am interested to develop dance material that is articulated, evocative and imaginative. In Beyond Rage I work with video projection on the white dance floor underneath my feet. I am literally dancing on the landscape that is projected. I have the audience sitting in a circle around the performance space, which creates an intensive energy, like a pressure cooker. To some extend it makes the audience complicit to what is unfolding in front of their eyes on stage. Complicit as we all are in what is happening in the world around us, far and close.
Beyond Rage was first performed at Dansens Hus Stockholm in 2025.
“Beyond rage” is a solo that in different contrasting movements emits both meditative stillness and strong sadness, chiseled musicality and soft strength, vulnerable fragility and great beauty. (Anna Ångström, Svenska Dagbladet)
Choreography and dance: Benno Voorham
Dramaturgy: Steve Batts
Video: Benno Voorham
Light design: David Prokopic, Alba Rask
Music: Barry Guy, Henryk Górecki, Avet Terterian, John Zorn, Charles Ives and Arvo Pärt
Photo: Nadja Voorham
Beyond Rage is produced by LAVA-Dansproduktion in collaboration with Dansens Hus Stockholm and Echo Echo Dance Theatre Company in Derry, Northern-Ireland.
With support from Stockholms stad
Thanks to: Anna Grip, Sybrig Dokter, Mira Sheina-Batts och Milvus Artistic Research Center.
