Ibsen’s Peer Gynt helps his mother Aase into eternity with a tall tale. During the wild telling of the story he conjures, she dies. Birgit Cullberg’s pas de deux Mother Aase depicts mother Aase’s death as the schism between a son and his mother.
Per and mother Aase pick up on one another’s movements as though they were intricately connected. In her illness, Åse’s movements appear like those of a dying animal. Both mother and son are strong and their bond is solid, like cords that unite, but also strangle.They rock each other to sleep. Per rocks his mother Aase to death. He mourns, forever losing a piece of himself. Then, the air around him clears it is once again easy to breathe. In grief there is also great relief.
Perhaps it is not a death but a birth Birgit Cullberg wishes to depict. Perhaps it is allegory about the necessity to cut the umbilical cord during the first major crisis of life – the becoming of the adult self.