Fabbrica Europa hosts choreographer and performer Harald Beharie in residency at PARC with his new creation Sweet Spot, in collaboration with Karoline Bakken Lund, which will debut in 2026.
Sweet Spot is a tempting and seductive “Hellmouth” filled with corruption, joy, and erotic allure. A hypnotic landscape which serves as a gathering place for five figures who play, sing, and collectivity syncopate around each other. In an abundance of positive sexuality and eroticism, they examine the boundaries between apathy and empathy, pleasure and exploitation. Filled with folklore, social dances, collective rhythms, garish stagings, mass death, and vitality, Sweet Spot surges forward and devours the spectator and everything it meets.
Sweet Spot draws inspiration from the allegorical poem ‘The Whale’ where the
whale lures fish with a sweet smell, only to capture them. The tale serves as a catalyst for exploration of how seductive and sweet appearances and intimacies can conceal underlying murky dangers, leading one into a hellmouth where anything can happen.
Harald Beharie is a Norwegian-Jamaican performer and choreographer based in Oslo. His choreographic practices are collaborative voyages, navigating through realms of ambiguity and phantasm, punctuated by themes of construction and deconstruction, hope and uncertainty, disinterest and emotional intensity. In a quest to dissect established corporeal and bodily narratives their work celebrate a spectrum of embodiment – ranging from the pathetic to the ecstatic, the collapsing to the exuberant, the faltering to the tenacious while fostering a deliberate naiveté and queer playfulness. Haralds focus is being with local people, local ideas, and developing ideas with and within the community. His work has been presented in museums, galleries, festivals and contexts including Impulstanz (Wien) Santarcangelo Festival, Gessnerallee (Zurich), Les Urbaines (Lausanne), SPRING festival(Utrecht), Donau Festival (Krems), MDT (Stockholm), Zodiak (Helsinki), Salmon Festival (Barcelona), Black Box Teater (Oslo) Stavanger Kunstmuseum, Oktoberdans BIT-teatergarasjen (Bergen), Vitlycke, Dansens Hus, Oslo, Munch Museum, Oslo, Vigeland Museum, Oslo, Galleri Entrée, Bergen, Tou Scene, Stavanger, Ravnedans, Kunstnerforbundet, Oslo, Øyafestivalen, Oslo and Trondheim Kunstmuseum.
His work Batty Bwoy was presented at the latest edition of the Fabbrica Europa festival.
choreography: Harald Beharie
scenography & costume: Karoline Bakken Lund
performers: Loan Ha, Carlisle Sienes, Harald Beharie
distribution: Damien Valette
co-producers: Dansens Hus (NO), Rosendal Teater (NO), RAS (NO), Arsenic (CH), SPRING (NL)
supported by Norwegian Art Council
