The Moment They Show Themselves

Instant composition with human-sized puppets and live music

Sew Flunk Fury Wit presents a unique improvisational performance where human-sized, hyper-naturalistic puppets meet two of Denmark's most prominent improvisational musicians: Randi Pontoppidan (voice and live electronics) and Thomas Agergaard (saxophone and flutes). In a musical practice based on instant composition a unique performative space emerges where the puppets step in and out of the living and the dead - in an intimate interaction between puppeteer, puppet and musicians.

Created through years of development of SFFW's neopuppetry practice, the puppets appear as poetic, human-like creatures, which with great presence challenges the boundary between object and animate. In improvised sequences, soundscapes and figures are interwoven in a choreography of breath and aestheticised movements in interaction with surprising musical impulses.

Pontoppidan, Agergaard and Svend E. Kristensen build on the sonic and performative exploration of the voice, the body and the untranslatable in their previous works. Together they create an expressive sonic and poetic universe where responsiveness and intuitive timing are at the centre.

The audience is invited into a timeless space - a journey into the world of music, voice and puppets where ritual, sensual poetry, avant-garde and modern performance intertwine in a hypnotic, visual experience.

Randi Pontoppidan is an internationally recognised and sought-after composer, vocalist and performer. Pontoppidan works with free improvisation, jazz, performance art, electroacoustic compositions and new music. She is known for her experimental blend of vocal work and live electronic processing of the voice. Schooled in both jazz and classical singing, she blends the styles into a whole new world in her compositions, which cannot be categorised into genres, but are entirely her own. Pontoppidan has been compared to icons such as Diamanda Galás and Maja S. K. Ratkje. Pontoppidan's growing use of live electronics has given her repertoire a range that makes the possibilities seem limitless. Audiences are drawn into her electro-acoustic sound universes. 2022 nominated for DMA Jazz Vocal Album of the Year for Life in Life. 2021 nominated for DMA Jazz Album of the Year for Inner Lift and 2020 nominated for a Steppeulv, the critics' award for vocalist of the year. Pontoppidan has collaborated with artists such as Greg Cohen, Jöelle Léandre, Marilyn Mazur, poet Morten Søndergaard, Jamaaladeen Tacuma and more. She is a member of the vocal ensemble IKI, most recently in Hotel Proforma's Flammewerfer, the musician collective Damkapellet and Paul Hillier's ensemble Theatre of Voices. Pontoppidan is at home on the big stages and has performed at the Royal Albert Hall, Carnegie Hall and Banco Nacionál de Colombia in Bogotá.
www.randipontoppidan.com


Svend E. Kristensen is the artistic director of the performing arts company Sew Flunk Fury Wit (SFFW). With roots in the experimental electronic music scene of the 1980s and further training in dance, performance and media studies, he has insisted on a distinctive practice of developing hyper-naturalistic human-sized puppets, fusing sound, body and new composition into powerful visual and sensual music-dramatic universes. In the early 2000s, he had an artistic residency with Japanese puppet and mask master Hoichi Okamoto and has visited puppet theatre communities in Southeast Asia for a number of years.

Kristensen established the ritual puppet theatre The Medium and the Mask before founding SFFW in 2013, where, together with other actors, he has created a number of significant works - including the large-scale site-specific performance The Foxcave (2021), Ritual travelling companions (2023) and the award-winning and internationally touring puppet opera dystopia DUST / DUST (2016-). The performances have played at the Royal Danish Theatre and at festivals in Europe, Asia, North Africa and South America.

His work draws on ritual, myth and the border zones between the living and the artificial, with the puppet as a central, disturbing and poetic scenic being - often in close interaction with a distinctive musical sound universe.

Thomas Agergaard
Thomas Agergaard is a composer and saxophonist internationally recognised as a central figure in the Nordic avant-garde - characterised by refined sonic aesthetics and radical, emotionally charged sequences. He has received a three-year working grant from the Danish Arts Foundation and has throughout his career sought out interdisciplinary collaborations across art, science, performing arts and film.

Agergaard has played and collaborated with Miroslav Vitouš, Greg Cohen, Randi Pontoppidan, Axel Dörner, Ray Charles, Joakim Kühn and Tobias van der Pals, among others, and has composed works for a wide range of soloists and ensembles. In recent years, his early releases from the mid-90s have achieved millions of streams and have found a new international audience.

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