HOUSE OF THE DOUBLE AXE
An Imaginary Oratorium
1998
House of the Double Axe originates in a lighting concept centered around the Danish singer and composer Dicte. Accompanied by her four musicians Dicte performs her new songs on stage. An all-female cast of one dancer and seven performers act, interchangeably, as supporters and opponents. The performance is a visual composition for song and recital.
The labyrinth and the Medieval horizontal world scheme are the guiding principle for action and movement. Seven actions track the Medieval views on planets, heavens and hells, the secrets of the numbers, the days of the week, geometry and madness.
Projections form a square of light on the scenic floor. Black & white patterns inter-weave; maps, labyrinths, codes and dizzying curves set the floor of the confining square in motion. A single spot light follows the movements of the singer in the darkness outside.
The singer performs her love songs in Latin as invoking access codes to the world of the dead. The seven women recite fragments from the international vocabulary of pop songs - magic formula as access to the world of the living. Universal truths, never-ending banalities and daily miracles are performed as solo, chorus or canon.
The dancer moves between the seven women and the singer. She is the threshold figure between distance and closeness, outer and inner, life and death.
House of the Double Axe is a pop musical journey of images through a tetragonal mental landscape.
labyrinth (lat. labyrinthus, from 'labrys' (double axe) and thus originally 'house of double axe'): place with a complex of pathways in which it is difficult or impossible to orientate oneself; part of the inner ear.
double scroller a form of light projection created with a Hardware Xenon, a projector designed for large-format slide projection and film scrolling. Two wide films, mounted on rollers, are projected from opposite directions. The films are computer monitored and may be projected at variable speed.