Forening for fysisk praksis

In 1918, the composer Arnold Schoenberg established the Society for Private Musical Performances (Verein für musikalische Privataufführungen). The purpose of the society was to rehearse and share contemporary music with a group of dedicated members, without performing the concerts to an audience.After working on In this time, Tale Dolven will continue her improvisational dance practice, this time inviting a group of dancers. Following Schoenberg’s model, the practice allows for in-depth research as well as freedom to move unobserved. Forening for fysisk praksis investigates movement qualities and musicality. The members all keep a written log of their practice, making the written material a tangible documentation and reflection.This project reconsiders what production can be.The practice is open to all professional dancers. Until one week before each practice starts, one can sign up using the following address: [email protected]

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Menneskeåndens revoltering

Menneskeåndens revoltering is a manifesto, a call to arms, a confession, and a rant inspired by the fiery letters exchanged between Henrik Ibsen and Georg Brandes where they discussed the political, artistic, and spiritual revolutions heralding modernism and global strife alike. Now, faced with the conflict between virtual and actual, we stand again at a crossroads of eras. The human spirit must revolt against the yoke of an artificial world and stand firm with itself at the precipice of change.Menneskeåndens revoltering was made in discussion with Pavol Liška and supported by Dramatikkens hus through Ibsen Scope.

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CYBERIA

As the generation to have their youths bisected by the advent of the internet, millennials have a unique take on life before and after the dot-com boom of the late ’90s and early ’00s. Nostalgia fuels a trip down memory lane to what once was an online place full of connection and promise. The monetized and weaponized internet of now could lead to societal collapse, but the same has been said about the printed word, radio and TV broadcasts, and any form of new media.CYBERIA uses the form of pop-opera to explore these themes using verbatim conversations and music composed by Robert Johanson. It is a lighthearted look into the dark corners of the internet from French hip-hop forums to puppy boys to Poisson Steve remixes. It is in development with a proposed premiere in 2027/28.

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a perfect person

Two performers run in place for what seems to be too long while discussing how far we need to go to be a balanced, engaged, healthy, correct (perfect) person in an all-too-connected world where we cannot help but engage in comparative reflection. The text for the work was collaged from hours and hours of recorded conversations where the playwright, Gabel Eiben, had earnest discussions about image, addiction, parenting, social movements, and inevitably, death. It fails to have any concrete answers on any of this stuff, but it tries. It tries really hard with mostly funny and maybe some small poignant results. This theater piece is demanding on the performers as they physically tire themselves while keeping up with the language and calisthenic stage tasks while interacting with a filmed moving background.

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In this time: the Beethoven piano sonatas

The 32 piano sonatas of Beethoven were created within a time span of almost 30 years, between 1795 and 1822. In this durational performance, dancer Tale Dolven and pianist Alain Franco plays, dances and discusses their way through this important collection of work. Approaching the sonatas with a contemporary mindset, they look at the significance of Beethoven’s musical choices and ideas, spanning from classicism to romanticism and far beyond his time. Guiding the audience through the two volumes of the sonatas, the performers invite you to listen, reflect and relax in a shared space and time.

In this time is a rare work where Dolven and Franco, both possessing enormous artistic integrity and knowledge, allows us to come inside of their unique practice with the Beethoven’s piano sonatas. The work opens for deep insight and many nuances into how the relation dance and music can resonate in us, and is in movement—between body and thought, form and content, feelings, fantasy, space and time.—Cecilie Lindeman Steen, “Pianosonater i levende undersøkelser”, Norsk Shakespearetidsskrift, 26 september 2025

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A Christmas Carol

Before the innumerable stage adaptations of A Christmas Carol of the 20th and 21st centuries, Charles Dickens himself would perform readings of his haunting holiday novella. This durational performance begins and ends with A Christmas Carol in both verbatim and misremembered versions. Gabel Eiben invites you to an intimate, meditative, confrontational, and nourishing afternoon and evening in the theater. It is an experimental mix of Dickens’ literary works and the creator’s own meanderings on the subject bringing another year to an end in the beginning of the “holiday season.”

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30something

30something explores the coming-of-age story through the lens of mid-career performers approaching mid-life crises. It combines the narrative of a high school dance with the meta- narrative of four dancers that have worked together for years trying to grasp where their careers will take them past their 30s. The text for the piece is composed from hours of recorded conversations Gabel had with friends and colleagues. It covers everything from performer’s nightmares about ill-fitting costumes to climate change as a super-object. The actors perform an in-ear performance approach to the text with contemporary dance to make a humorous and engaging melodrama.

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Precarryus

Precarryus is a collaboration between Tale Dolven and Igor Shyshko. The project started as a research supported by the Flemish ministry of culture and was developed into a performance during fall 2019. The project has two starting ideas: investigating the movement capacities of patients with the Guillain-Barré syndrome, and incorporating the poetry of Russian absurdist writer Daniil Kharms. The piece is produced by kunst/werk, Antwerp and is supported by the Norwegian Cultural Council, STUK, Leuven and RAS Sandnes.

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Assembly

Assembly is a piece of dance and music that uses the assembly line as a choreographic focus. But instead of producing goods for sale, the dancers are put on the line. Here they are displayed, examined, deconstructed, reconstructed and reassembled, piece-by-piece. What do you look at when you look at a person? Can we separate the details from the whole? Which are the details, specificities, individual qualities that make a person?

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That catastrophe is a fire

“We physicists are always checking to see if there’s something the matter with the theory. That’s the game, because if there is something the matter, that’s interesting! But so far, we have found nothing wrong with the theory of quantum electrodynamics. It is, therefore, I would say, the jewel of physics—our proudest possession.”
—Richard Feynman, QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter

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You’re welcome

We’re looking at the performance space with curiosity, as if it is completely alien to us. We want to share the same curiosity with the audience, let them rediscover the stage and the relation between the performers and themselves. Text from a lecture by Leonard Susskind on quantum mechanics adds another dimension to a physical performance. The piece combines a theatrical approach to a choreographed structure. In a simple scenography, You’re welcome moves through stars and black holes to a Super Mario-like water world, and back to the theatre where we welcome the audience to our show.

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Photo by Kristoffer Søvik.

Tale Dolven & Gabel Eiben are writers and performers in Stavanger, Norway.

Tale Dolven and Gabel Eiben met when they were both performing at the Sommer Festival in Hamburg in 2012. Tale was performing with Rosas and Gabel with Nature Theatre of Oklahoma. The first years they would meet on tour, as they often performed at the same festivals with Nature Theater and Rosas respectively. Fascinated by each other's work, they started making work together in 2014, and created a trilogy of work: You’re welcome, That catastrophe is a fire and Assembly until 2016. Their early work aims to share material and blend the genres of theatre and dance. Since 2016 Tale and Gabel have worked together with Fieldworks/Heine Avdal & Yukiko Shinozaki, and with Nature Theatre of Oklahoma in 2018–2019. Since 2019 DolvenEiben have produced work together, but each focus on dance and theatre respectively. Gabel has focused more on script writing and directing, resulting in pieces like 30something (2019), A Chrstimas Carol (2023), and a perfect person (2026), and Tale has “returned” to physical work with In this time (2024–2025) and Forening for Fysisk Praksis (2026–2027). They are both always involved in each other's work on stage, dramaturgically, or through production.Since 2022 they live and work in and from Stavanger, Norway, where they are the recipient of Stavanger Kommune’s structural funding.Tale and Gabel’s work has been presented in Norway (Black Box Teater, Dramatikkens Hus, Ultima, BIT Teatergarasjen, RAS, Tou Scene, RISK, Rosendal teater og Teaterhuset Avant Garden, Dansens Hus, CODA), France, the Netherlands and the United States. Their first works were made possible with the funding from Fond for Lyd og Bilde/Norway as well as co-productions from BIT Teatergarasjen, Black Box Oslo, RAS and Teaterhuset Avant Garden. From 2016 they have received project funding from the Norwegian Cultural Council, as well as research and production grants from the Flemish government of Belgium. Residencies include Kaaitheater, Vooruit, Campo, Workspace Brussels, Buda Kortrijk, Pact Zollverein, FringeArts Philadelphia, Black Box Oslo, RISK Stavanger, RAS Sandnes, Tou Scene Stavanger, and Dramatikkens hus Oslo.

Tale Dolven

Tale Dolven is a dancer from Stavanger, Norway. Between 2002–2022 she lived and worked in Brussels, where she was affiliated with the Rosas dance company of choreographer Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker. In 2022 she moved to Stavanger with her partner, actor and writer Gabel Eiben, from where they produce and make work.In recent years, Tale has been working on In this time, an extensive work around the 32 Beethoven piano sonatas. The project premiered to great acclaim in 2024, and will tour again in 2027. Her newest project, Forening for fysisk praksis, starting fall 2026, is an open dance-practice, searching to define varying physical qualities following musicality. She produces and performs with her partner, Gabel Eiben, the pop-opera CYBERIA for 2027/28.Between 2005–2017, Tale was dancing with Rosas and Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker. At Rosas, Tale danced the signature piece FASE. Four movements to the music of Steve Reich alongside De Keersmaeker herself between 2009 and 2017. She later conveyed the piece to the next generation of Rosas-dancers. She also performed other legendary pieces such as Rosas Danst Rosas, Quator no. 4/Bartok and Drumming, amounting to over 700 performances with the company, touring worldwide. In 2026 Tale was part of the Rosas Danst Rosas multicast version, bringing together dancers of five generations of RDR-performers. She is one of the performers of the Re:Rosas project, sharing the 2nd movement of Rosas Danst Rosas online.Tale has collaborated in numerous artworks, installations and performances by Norwegian visual artist AK Dolven. The performance version of the video installation A other teenager premiered august 2025 at the National Museum of Norway. Since 2018 Tale has also worked with Field-works/Heine Avdal & Yukiko Shinozaki, in 2025 being part of the Hedda award winning team behind the performance Until. In 2018 Tale took part in the creation of No president. A story ballet of enlightenment in two immoral acts by the New York theatre-troupe Nature Theatre of Oklahoma, which premiered at the Ruhr-triennale 2018, and recently toured to London in 2025.Tale has also worked with TG Stan, Kris Verdonck, Doris Uhlich, Benjamin Vandewalle, Igor Shyshko a.o.For her performance of Exit by Kris Verdonck and Alix Eynaudi, Tale received the Zygmunt Duczynski award for The Most Outstanding Artistic Personality at the Kontrapunkt festival 2014 in Szeczin, Poland. She is the recipient of the Norwegian cultural council artist grant from 2023–2028.Tale studied at PARTS in Brussels and at Statens Balletthøgskole (now KHIO) in Oslo.

Gabel Eiben

Gabel is a performer and theater maker from Codorus, Pennsylvania in the US. He worked for many years in New York City and now works and resides in Stavanger, Norway. He has worked for several years as an actor with Nature Theater of Oklahoma in No President. A story ballet of enlightenment in two immoral acts, Life and Times: Episode 1–4, 6–9, Poetics: a Ballet Brut, and No Dice (2008–2020). He is a writer and performer for Brussels-based dance and performance group Fieldworks. He has also performed with SITI Company in Radio Macbeth (2007–2008) and he danced in the premiere of the Jérôme Bel piece, Gala (2015) among others. His collaboration with dancer and choreographer Tale Dolven have yielded a trilogy of works situated in between dance and theater. They are You’re welcome (2014), That catastrophe is a fire (2015), and Assembly (2016). He has presented his works in Norway, the Netherlands, and France, and his work with Nature Theater of Oklahoma and fieldworks have taken him all over the globe. He taught theater at KASK Drama in Gent and P.A.R.T.S. in Brussels and was a 2015 member of the Creative Exchange Lab through the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art. He shares an Obie Award Special Citation with Nature Theater of Oklahoma for his work in Life and Times: Episodes 1–4.