In X-Dream, Per Jonsson was interested to recapture the power of dance. Due to Jonsson’s Swedish nature and penchant for the poetic, his work has never quite been able to be classified as abstract in the purest sense. This is how Jonsson describes his and artist Johan Scott’s process with the piece X-Dream, at an early stage in the work’s creation:
“X-Dream is an irrational dance with underlying coded layers, of systems resulting in ecstatic winds, ulterior time and precarious states evidenced through the power and musicality of the work. The basis for the piece was first a dance without music, such that the dance could stand on its own two feet. But I quickly felt that that silence, once created, becomes more charged if it is then surrounded by music. The only music worthy of this fate was Bach,
his organ works specifically. In X-Dream, as in Den Leende Hunden, dance is paramount. It has been a relief in X-Dream to not start from a mood, a red thread, a fable, a set, piece of music or the like. NO! In X-Dream I have started from DANCE, its power / joy via my body based on solitary work exploring and deepening DANCE in silence.Dance is not music, theater, etc. Dance has its own language, its own subtle status. If my body is physically tuned, sensitive, and able to hear, dance can flow more spontaneously from it. You feel joy at work. From this basic seed the choreographic form can appear.
This dance can be suffocated if there is too much atmosphere or mystery superimposed on a space. The dance does not need to be supported in its dancing. Dance is itself a mystery, a rite of passage, etc. Dancing is so simple that it is difficult.
When you work with movements with tenacity and diligence, and can thus discern so many rich nuances, rhythms, timings, atmospheres, etc. through this rigorous work, you can then anticipate something big that endures. “