In Works and days mixes experiences from a trip to ancient Greece with an examination of a fourteen-year-old performance. With humour and a touch of melancholy, Gunilla Heilborn takes on This is not a Love Story – the one of her shows that has toured the most in the world. She takes a closer look at the backgrounds, references and stories hidden in the show’s fragmentary texts and scenes.

Parallel to this is a journey to Greece and her interest in antiquity, a time she never tires of using as a mirror image for our own time and which led her to a trip to the island kingdom. Works and Days consists of two parts: a lecture performance in which Heilborn herself, like an investigator, with the help of film and image projections, recorded interviews and sporadic memories, draws a map of the material in This is not a Love Story.

The second part consists of magnificent scenic images where texts and choreographic material are performed by dancers Ludvig Daae and Kristiina Viiala. Travelling, what sticks with us from what we see and experience, what we remember from what we have been through, unites the two parts. Space, light and music play a major role in the performance and are created by Heilborn’s long-time collaborators Katarina Wiklund, Minna Tiikkainen and Kim Hiorthøy.

About Gunilla Heilborn

According to Aristotle, all knowledge begins with wonder, the experience of having experienced something that challenges our usual way of looking at the world, that broadens our horizons and makes us question our own thoughts. Gunilla Heilborn’s performances often originate from that very feeling. A sense of wonder at something – be it a phenomenon, a text, an encounter or the name of a planet – leads her into a wayward, meandering quest for knowledge on the subject. She then cleverly allows her wonderment to carry through her work, so that we as an audience are struck by precisely what Aristotle describes when we see the performance.

Gunilla Heilborn’s work has a fragmentary, associative structure and often lacks an obvious internal logic or order. In terms of ideas, this links her loosely to German Romanticism. Another root thread in her work goes to antiquity. But really and primarily, Heilborn is her own genre.

Gunilla has two abilities that define her work and her way of working. On the one hand, she sees the skewed, often hilarious events in history, fiction and the present, and on the other hand, she can portray them in unexpected ways on stage. She also has a talent for being funny.

Photo: Mårten Nilsson