The Answer is Land

Vástádus Eana—The Answer is Land” opens outdoors, where the audience has gathered around a grassy area. Seven women in black skirts, ankle boots, red capes, and bonnets approach toting megaphones above their heads. They march purposefully within the enclosure, then stop and lower the megaphones to the ground. One issues a mournful call and the others respond. Together they stretch their arms in an arc overhead, take a quick twirl. They sing, one hand holding the megaphone cap to the mouth, while balancing the bullhorn on a shoulder. Finishing in silence, they stand still for quite a long moment, then head to the Doris Duke Theater stage door, leading a procession of audience members.

Performance

Elle Sofe Company: “Vástádus Eana – The Answer is Land”

Place

Livestreamed from the Doris Duke Theater, Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, Becket, MA, July 27, 2025

Words

Karen Hildebrand

Elle Sofe Company in “Vástádus Eana – The Answer is Land.” Photograph by Grace Copeland

Norwegian choreographer Elle Sofe Sara and seven singer/dancer collaborators draw upon traditions of the indigenous Sami people of Scandinavia in costumes and polyphonic vocal work, and a score composed of eight poems written in the Sami language. This season, Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival livestreamed selected productions, a terrific opportunity that I enjoyed for this performance. And, yet, I can’t help but envy the audience who experienced the powerful “The Answer is Land” in person. There is nothing quite like a live performance.

The strident walking continues indoors as the performers move about an installation of fiber art designed by Elin Melberg that hangs centerstage. All the singers can move, but soon, three dancers step into focus, forming an engaging kind of chorus line. They move side to side with syncopation, a little hip swing engaging the arms. The entire group then takes it up, thrusting one arm to the front, then to the back. Their line becomes serpentine and they weave in silence with a stomp after every third step. The foot work begins to resemble tap dance, or clogging. The singing is called yoiking, a harmonic vocal tradition. Emotional and expressive, it’s strikingly variable: a yipping of coyotes, a haunting intonation, a whisper. In one section, they all kneel and sing in the round—one voice carrying the melody, while others introduce barking sounds and sips of air.

Elle Sofe Company in “Vástádus Eana – The Answer is Land.” Photograph by Jamie Kraus

The fiber art dominates the stage with red-tinted woven and matted masses suggestive of entrails that dangle like sausages. Soon I begin to see it as the bloody mass of childbirth—the afterbirth. Though I bring no knowledge of Sami language, tradition, or culture to my viewing, I can easily connect to universal concerns of land use and migration raised in this work—concerns that are aligned with the values of women as nurturers and healers, driven by the fierce mother warrior heart. The performers face the audience in stillness, then suddenly contract their torsos in a series of freeze-frame moments. This is a community of women, supportive, competitive, untamed, and daring. The sound of their feet is a covert conversation. I imagine them marching in protest, gathering to defend their numbers, lending a hand when needed, pitching in with chores, dancing to celebrate. Whether the energy is mystic or healing or fierce, they are a force to be reckoned with.

Elle Sofe Company in “Vástádus Eana – The Answer is Land.” Photograph by Jamie Kraus

The three dancers add drama and variation to the underlying processional current, echoing the harmonic workings of the yoiking. Joining hands, the trio forms a human knot that pulls and tugs at its bounds. Are the women struggling against each other, or are they trying to ease one’s suffering? When they let go to run in a wide circle, they are animals, or maybe wild children. One woman continues to run, panting and gasping for breath until she staggers to all fours. She skids and falls on her back repeatedly as if she’s possessed and speaking in tongues. The other ensemble members manage to calm her, and we hear a sniffling as all seven begin to breathe together. They gradually tilt to the right and as a group fall into a sweeping run, clinging first to one side of the stage, then the other, as if aboard a lurching ship.

At the end, the four singers sit together on the floor while the three dancers perform opposite, one bent over backward, two walking on their hands with derrieres piked. One kicks up a leg and lets it dangle midair. The others grab it and drag her away. The three hold hands for ballast as they contort in angular backbends. One forms a table top and the other two use her back as a bench. The final procession is an exit, up the stairs into the audience, as if to continue the original journey that led us into the theater, now out the front door. Still singing, the sound trails off, megaphones standing mute under the fabric sculpture.

Karen Hildebrand

Karen Hildebrand is former editorial director for Dance Magazine and served as editor in chief for Dance Teacher for a decade. An advocate for dance education, she was honored with the Dance Teacher Award in 2020. She follows in the tradition of dance writers who are also poets (Edwin Denby, Jack Anderson), with poetry published in many literary journals and in her book, Crossing Pleasure Avenue (Indolent Books). She holds an MFA from the Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. Originally from Colorado, she lives in Brooklyn.

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