Choreographer and dancer Mia Habib is interested in the cave as a newly actualized refuge, community space, and place for magical rituals. The starting point of Psychedelic Cave has been spending both day and night in caves, as well as visiting cave paintings found in caves in Norway, France, and Spain. Taking the process onto the stage, Mia brings performers Natanya Kjølås, Nina Wollny, Anja Müller, and Laura Spottag Fog, lighting designer Ingeborg Olerud, and electroacoustic composer and researcher Giulia Vismara. For Stamsund Theater Festival, they will present a work-in-progress of the piece Psychedelic Cave, which will have its premiere at the CODA – Oslo International Dance Festival at Dansens Hus, Oslo, on October 16, 2025.
Psychedelic cave will become a dance piece for a dark space with the audience scattered around in the darkness of the staged cave. The piece insists on bringing the cave of bodies into a deep trance through a durational insistence of high intensity and demon-like flesh and sound. Inside of this cave taboos cease to exist; it is a ritual becoming a portal to the inner demon – promising transition – looking into the dark of the dark until it becomes light and ceases new beginnings.
This is an all female piece. A loud and silent protest. Five women in the dark. They morph. Demons. Animals. Shapes of the past. They mourn. They move energy and they carry what is here. Maybe they are seen. Sometimes. The thousands of thousands of years old Venus of Willendorf postures come to tell us something along with the anthropomorphic motifs painted by the early humans. Her body reminds us of our secrets and magic. The womb. Life. What cannot be seen but what keeps the rivers of time flowing.
“Their red is rough at its edges, fading back into the rock that made it, blurred by water and condensation, and all of these circumstances – the blur, the low light, my exhaustion, my blinks – are what give the figures their life, make them shift shapes on this volatile canvas in which shadow and water and rock and fatigue are all artists together, and for once the old noton of ghosts seem new and true in this space. These figures are ghosts all dancing together, and I am a ghost too, and there is a conviviality to them, to us, to the thousands of years for which they have been dancing here together.”
(excerpt from the book “Underland- a deep time journey” by the British nature writer Robert Macfarlane from his journeys to Refsvikhula to see its dancing figures)
Would you like to visit Refsvikhula, also known as Kollhellaren, and see the 4000-year-old cave carvings? You can join Mia Habib Productions on the research expedition May 27th. They have room for 5 extra persons in the boat from Reine. This is truly a rare opportunity! For more information, costs and registration, please contact Frida Skinner on frida@miahabibproductions.com
Choreography and performer: Mia Habib, In collaboration with performers: Anja Müller, Laura Spottag Fog, Natanya Kjølås, Nina Wollny, Darkness designer: Ingeborg Olerud, Composer: Giulia Vismara, Project archeologist: Hein Bjerck, Production: Ida Frømyr Borgen, Frida Skinner, Produced by: Mia Habib Productions, Co-producers: Dansens Hus, CODA – Oslo International Dance Festival, RAS – Regional Arena for Samtidsdans, Rosendal Teater, Norrlandsoperan, In residency: Agder Teaterlaboratorium, DansiT, Stamsund Theatre Festival, L’arboreto – Teatro Dimora di Mondaino | Emilia-Romagna Residency Centre, Rosendal Teater, Samvirket | PreForm, Supported by: Arts Council Norway, PAHN/UD, Premiere: 16th October 2025 at Dansens Hus Oslo / CODA – Oslo International Dance Festival
Choreography and performer: Mia Habib, In collaboration with performers: Anja Müller, Laura Spottag Fog, Natanya Kjølås, Nina Wollny, Darkness designer: Ingeborg Olerud, Composer: Giulia Vismara, Project archeologist: Hein Bjerck, Production: Ida Frømyr Borgen, Frida Skinner, Produced by: Mia Habib Productions, Photo: Ingrid Sommerseth Co-producers: Dansens Hus, CODA Oslo International Dance Festival, RAS – Regional Arena for Samtidsdans, Rosendal Teater, Norrlandsoperan, In residency: Arendal Teaterlab, DansiT, Stamsund Theatre Festival, L’arboreto – Teatro Dimora di Mondaino | Emilia-Romagna Residency Centre, Rosendal Teater, Teaterfestivalen i Fjaler | Samvirket, Supported by: Arts Council Norway, PAHN/UD, Premiere: 16th October 2025 at Dansens Hus Oslo / CODA – Oslo Contemporary Dance Festival