Ingun Bjørnsgaard Prosjekt

From her point of departure as a dancer, Ingun Bjørnsgaard’s strong visual approach to dance swiftly brought her to choreography. Educated at Statens Balletthøgskole, Norway, she moved directly to New York to dance at the Martha Graham School of Contemporary Dance, whose choreographic parameters still echo within the foundations of her work. Bjørnsgaard’s combination of formal precision and everyday pathos has been rewarded with a number of prestigious prizes and she is commissioned to work with prominent companies such as the Norwegian National Ballet, Carte Blanche, CCN - Ballet de Lorraine, Tanztheater Bremen, Komische Oper, Berlin, and GöteborgsOperans Danskompani. Through her own company, she has been able to rigorously follow her artistic vision together with an outstanding ensemble of dancers who sensitively engage in the creation of movement and dramaturgy. A focus on commissioned contemporary music in relation to music from the past, has always been an important part of the artistic process, and Ingun Bjørnsgaard’s restructuring of the present by means of historical elements from the basis of modernism. In her early works, she explored mythical female muses in award-winning performances such as Virgins in Norwegian Landscapes (1992) and Sleeping Beauty (1994). Bjørnsgaard’s exceptional take on the fleeting fragility of modern identity and its social foundations, gradually ventured into the complex relationship between the feminine and masculinity, in both men and women. An elevated intertextual dialogue with other art forms has evolved, with reference to e.g. Alain Resnais and Henrik Ibsen in Book of Songs (2002) and Hedda (2013), Monteverdi in Poppea (2009) and Edvard Munch in Omega and the Deer (2011). Ingun Bjørnsgaard’s company enjoys funding through the Arts Council Norway.