A white deck chair, a large fan, a bonsai, combs of mother-of-pearl, a decapitated head carved out of wood, long hat pins to pierce its eyes and tongue and for adorning the hair, a red dressing gown, a white silk nightdress. Through the justification of the biblical story of Judith, the performance explores the theme of violence and vulnerability, plunging into an ocean of luminous and murderous eroticism.
Two young progressive people live together in the early 1960s. Their lives revolve around political activities, anti-nuclear actions, love, travel, music, drugs and poetry. And other issues of importance. That they believe in. But in spite of all these motions and movements they drift apart. And their story ends badly. One of the two, Eik Skaløe, the first beat poet singer in Danish, committed suicide in India 1968. The other, Iben Nagel Rasmussen, an Odin Teatret actress since 1966, reflects on her life today and, through the characters of her shows, compares it with visions and the events of that time.
Every performance tells a story. The characters belonging to the world of fiction become credible reality for the spectator thanks to the actor's technique. In Traces in the Snow the technique itself becomes the protagonist. The actor carries on a dialogue with the secrets, which precede and follow the building of a character and the creation of a performance – and its process, she exposes these secrets. The tension, which characterises every drama, is also present in this performance/work demonstration, due to the confrontation between the actor’s two forms of behaviour: daily and scenic.
