HEADHUNTING is a live installation combining dance, performance and architecture. It investigates the human quest for perfection and the standardisation of the body and spirit to which it leads. The ever-changing world and our fear of destabilisation challenge our ability to adapt and change, and in professional life, an increasing pressure to find the “ultimate candidate” for vacancies in the workforce and boardroom has led to the growth of the recruitment industry and the “headhunter”. Given that the essence of humanity is to be flawed, how are we to survive the headhunter’s appraisal? Are the methods of the recruitment industry a benefit or a humiliation to the individual: in reality, an erasure of personality and identity?

For HEADHUNTING, Company B. Valiente invited architects Gerstlauer and Molne to create a physical installation in the exhibition space at DogA – The Norwegian Centre for Design and Architecture. The architects’ response was to install the “room-space”, an architectural project from 1996 which never took place, within the exhibition area. The original project was intended as an architecture answering the spiritual needs of our society: a place for meditation and regaining composure. The live installation HEADHUNTING invited its audiences to inhabit this space alongside the dancers, in an investigation of physical as well as mental architectures and energies.

CHOREOGRAPHY & CONCEPT: Gunhild Bjørnsgaard

DRAMATURGY: Marcelino Valiente

PERFORMERS: Marcel Bassachs-Birosta, Kari Hoaas, Marianne Haugli

SCENOGRAPHY: Rolv Gerstlauer & Molne

PERFORMED at: DOGA 

SUPPORTED by: Dansens Hus Oslo, Arts Council Norway