To be a human, an animal or a machine – and not really knowing the difference.

Is it the little rat that runs in a maze at the top of the stage that controls the three dancers, the singer and most of all that happens in ”Hybrid, Creatures and Labyrinths”?

At least in part. Through digital technology, the rat’s movements through the maze control a projected hybrid, which in turn creates virtual movements that interact with the dancers. Complicated? Indeed. Much like the question: What is life?

That question has preoccupied Åsa Unander-Scharin ever since her somewhat marvelous choreography for an industrial robot seven years ago, ”The Lamentations of Orpheus”. Man or machine? A hybrid, Åsa Unander-Scharin replies persistently, as she continues her search in the borderline between human movement and cruel digital technology. The dancers Charlotta Ruth, Johanna Klint and Jan Vesala are as predetermined fixed in their mazes as the rat. Their movement directions are controlled by painted mazes on the stage floor. The singer and composer Carl Unander-Scharin, who is also on stage, also has no freedom.

”Hybrid, väsen och labyrinter” is more than sufficiently experimental and technologically advanced. But first of all, when you forget the technology and look beyond the characters on stage one senses the greater and truly experimental. Åsa Unander-Scharin sets up a thought-provoking movement machinery where nobody knows who or what actually controls.

(Örjan Abrahamsson, Dagens Nyheter, 2005)