RABBIT/DUCK festival 2023
co-existence within one harmony.

Despite my ambition to see every contemporary dance and performance over the past four years in Gothenburg, I still haven’t
seen it all. At all! It takes time to get to know a city, it takes time to connect the dots between one artist to another. One theatre to
another. One needs to learn to navigate the city among the more established places like Operan, Folkteatern, Stora Teatern,
Stadsteatern and stay vigilant to the paths in between that leads you to Trixter, Skogen, Atalante, Cinnober, 3eVåningen, Röda
sten, Scen 46, Adas theatre and many more.
It took me a while to understand why the curation in most smaller stages is so wobbly. Not in a negative sense of this word, but
more in a physical experience of it. It is not always easy to understand the direction of each scene. One evening an opera, another
-a performance, this week full on dancing, next dry end theatre, a book presentation, an organ trio. All representative of
performing arts but no more definition than that. On one hand I experience it as confusing, on another hand it allows one as an
audience to constantly stay curious about the programmation of different theatres and play one’s own personal curator. After all,
as someone mentioned, the city has a strong history of DIY culture. Today I go to Storan, tomorrow I go to Skogen , next week to
Trixter, then Folkteatern etc.
Contemporary dance and performance is not easy to curate in a city with a history of Volvo, shipbuilding and a strong football
culture. But there are times, especially when the wind starts to blow and non-stop wall of rain takes over the scenery of
Gothenburg, one wishes to see more in a shorter time span and yet get the feeling of a spectrum of co-existence of performing arts
genre within one harmony. Does it even make sense?
14th of october 2023, a Saturday morning, I asked myself whether there would be an audience coming to the first edition of the
RABBIT/DUCK festival organised by NoDeadline, aka Toby Kassell and Ingeborg Zackarieassen. The wind and the rain were
ruthless. The city had even closed off one of its main bridges for sometime. I myself was one of the artists presented on the first day
of the festival. Even though it feels somewhat unfair to write a review about a festival of which I was a part of, after having visited
the second day of the festival in the role of the audience I consider myself objective enough to write such a review. Mainly because
my objective is not to criticise or have an opinion about the work presented but rather have a reflection on what the combination
of invited artists did to me as an audience and what this kind of event can do to the contemporary dance and performance scene in
the city itself.
The entrance to Scene46 is nothing more than a blue sliding garageport. RABBIT/DUCK poster is attached with a see-through tape
together with an A4 paper with the times and names of the artists performing on the particular night. Simple and direct. As I sit in
the back of the stage observing the audience enter I see people talking, discussing, laughing. It is full. It is so full people start to
squeeze and look for extra chairs. I’m excited, I haven’t felt this in Gothenburg so far. The second day, when I myself was seated in
the audience, I looked around and saw a mixture of colleagues from different generations in the contemporary dance and
performance field in Gothenburg. A rare sight. I saw dancers from the Gothenburg Opera company, I saw some actors from
Folkteatern, I saw Gun Lund, I saw Vera from Spinn. I saw students from HSM and Balettakademien. I saw Moa and Benedikte. I
have a feeling I have never seen so many professionals gathered in one place at the same time.
I saw faces I have never seen, I saw poets, I saw musicians, I saw filmmakers. It’s lively, it’s mixed, it’s relaxed. The work presented is
mainly raw material performed with care which unites the artists despite the difference in genres. Some longer, some shorter. You
might be bored now, but you will have time to reflect, to chat before the next presentation. Someone might enlighten you about
something you just saw as the conversation and mingling is unavoidable in such a space. You can chat to the artist who just
performed. Am I really in Gothenburg?Is it really a rainy Sunday night and this place is full of people in conversation?
Did Rabbit/Duck crack the code of curation and thus managed to gather so many people from different layers of the performing art
field in Gothenburg in one place! It seems so. At least for these two days. Several people to whom I spoke to mentioned that the
timespan of two days is short enough to commit to and long enough to discover a variety of artists, most of whom the audience is
now curious to follow. The combination of regional, national and international artists is a great balance when it comes to talking
about a spectrum of co-existence within one harmony. Whether it is movement, sound, words, beats, video or fabrics isnt of main
importance. The main importance is that they meet in one and the same place. That audience enters conversations and artists get
to truly exchange.
A second edition is always harder, but I definitely look forward to this event next year and encourage artists to say yes if a proposal
to participate arrives. I have no doubt that NoDeadline will be able to give a creative and social boost to the performing arts scene
of Gothenburg next year as well.

Liza Penkova