Gunilla Heilborn’s own universe

Gunilla Heilborn is one of Sweden’s most active choreographers with a long career and a number of acclaimed performances, films and TV productions behind her. In 2024, she was awarded the Swedish Theatre Critics’ Dance Prize for her performance Dante. Gunilla’s performances are in a universe of their own. As a kind of personal archaeological excavation where a mixture of text and movement, philosophical subtleties and a peculiar sense of humour are the cornerstones.

A grand and messy choreographic investigation

In Works and Days , experiences from a trip to ancient Greece are mixed with fragments of a fifteen-year-old performance. With humour and seriousness, Gunilla Heilborn makes an attempt to find out how all the detached episodes she has collected are connected and whether it is really possible to understand the world better by reading both the Iliad and the Odyssey.

Works and Days consists of two parts. In one, we are met by grand tableaux with names such as “A place that is terrible in winter, hard in summer, never pleasant” and “The Rose-fingered dawn“. Through fog, haze and music, two dancers move; let’s call them Scoty-eyed Sophie and Many-worded Ludvig. With fleeting ease, they stroll across the stage and ask questions to themselves and to the audience. Do you get seasick easily? Would you describe me as a typical Renaissance person? That I have many strings to my bow? Do you know what it feels like to drift around in a ship frozen in the ice?

In the second part, Heilborn herself navigates through previous works in search of a beginning. Based on the stories of the ancient poets, a recent trip to Greece and her previous production This is not a love story from 2011, she tries to see if it is possible to link one event to another or if it is perhaps the lack of logic that characterizes everything we do. She draws up lists of ships that have sailed across the seas and of what has been done or should have been done. The essence of the work is its chaotic structure, but a number of things recur in the two parts; the travel and what we remember of what we have been through. As well as the question of whether it is possible to know what should be done on which days and why.

The space, light and music play a major role in the performance and are performed by Heilborn’s long-time collaborators Katarina Wiklund, Minna Tiikkainen, Mårten Nilsson and Kim Hiorthøy.

Norrlandsoperan has previously staged several works by Gunilla Heilborn, including Åtjärn stories (2006), The Five-Year Plan (2009), This is not a love story (2014), The Knowledge (2016), The Book (2018) and Mercury (2022). Several of these have been produced in collaboration with Norrlandsoperan.