HORSE is an experimental performance-concert where live electronic music, contemporary circus, and performance art merge. The second work in a series on destructive human thoughts and actions, it turns its gaze toward addiction and obsession, following The Shedding (2024), which explored the sexualization of the female body. Rooted in autobiographical experience, it is transformed into fiction.

The horse is both a symbol of freedom and an animal humans have tamed and put to work for thousands of years. Stronger than us, yet subject to our systems, it becomes an image of the domesticated human, pacified by capitalism’s promises of freedom, comfort, and stimulation. Two female creatures awaken in a sci-fi landscape, slowly emerging from a numbed state. They transform, believing they can become stronger, harder, better, but lose themselves along the way. Moving between freedom and submission, human and animal, organic and mechanical, the work is an investigation of escapism: the longing to become something else.

Sound and body are inseparable. The performers’ physical states shape the soundscape in real time, while rhythms and frequencies push the body toward deformation. Through loops, noise, mantra-like vocals, and repetition, a shared trance space emerges between stage and audience. Using trapeze, contortion, sound, and light, the work favors discomfort over virtuosic display. It is political without being didactic, and meaning arises through sensation.

HORSE is created by circus artist and director Elise Bjerkelund Reine and composer/musician Fernanda Alemán, with Kajsa Bohlin (text), Åsa Gjerstad (costumes), Kitt Johnson (outside eye) and Catalina Ansaldi (sound and audiovisueal design). It is developed in co-production and residencies with DYNAMO Workspace, BIRCA, Udviklingsplatformen, AFUK Scene, Sardegna Teatro (via Island Connect), and Fabra i Coats in Barcelona, and premieres in spring 2027.