Award-winning, New York-based Butoh artist, choreographer, and educator Vangeline has joined the creative team of a major new theatrical production at Copenhagen’s prestigious Husets Teater. Serving as the project’s Butoh Coach, Vangeline brings her internationally recognized expertise in the “dance of darkness” to If Death Has Taken Something From You, Give It Back (Har døden taget noget fra dig så giv det tilbage).

Har døden taget noget fra dig så giv det tilbage (If Death Has Taken Something From You, Give It Back) is the first stage adaptation of Danish writer Naja Marie Aidt’s iconic book of the same title – a work that explores the universal pain of losing a child. The performance will play at Husets Teater in Copenhagen, Denmark this November. Tickets are available at https://teaterbilletter.dk/forestillinger/har-doeden-taget-noget-fra-dig-saa-giv-det-tilbage-146646.

If Death Has Taken Something From You, Give It Back is a choreographic work created by and featuring Royal Danish Ballet dancer and choreographer Oliver Marcus Starpov as the son, and actress Christine Albeck Børge as the mother. Together, they create an intense duet in which movement and text intertwine.

“Naja Marie Aidt’s book deeply affected me the first time I read it, and I have long wanted to explore it on stage. Death, mortality, the supernatural and dance are all states in which we as human beings are at our most emotionally affected and without explanation – both as spectators and participants. This is why I feel such a clear connection between them.”
— Oliver Marcus Starpov

In If Death Has Taken Something From You, Give It Back, dance and theatre meet in an equal interplay that both unites and challenges the two art forms. Through choreography, the physicality of grief takes shape on stage – from the intimate and immediate to the more fragmented and unresolved.

The performance offers an honest yet non-exploitative portrait of grief and the pain that follows. At its core, however, it is also a love story – about the bond between a mother and her child.

To physically manifest the shattering, reality-warping weight of grief detailed in Aidt’s text, the production incorporates the primal methodology of Butoh. Vangeline’s coaching shapes the raw, intense physical vocabulary required to portray the thin line between life, death, and devastating sorrow.

CREATIVE TEAM
Performers: Oliver Marcus Starpov, Christine Albeck Børge
Direction: Amanda Linnea Ginman, in collaboration with Oliver Marcus Starpov
Text: Excerpts from Naja Marie Aidt’s book Har døden taget noget fra dig så giv det tilbage, published by Gyldendal
Text adaptation: Amanda Linnea Ginman, Matilde Böcher
Choreographer: Oliver Marcus Starpov
Set Designer: Oliver Marcus Starpov
Composer & Sound Designer: Matilde Böcher
Lighting Designer: Christian Vest Berntsen
Butoh Choreographic Consultant: Vangeline
Production Manager: Josephine Egebæk Hansen