Horse in Flames

Horses in Flames is an interdisciplinary performance and duet by Michael Aspli and choreographer Shelmith Øseth moving between dance, text, and music. It functions as both a protest and an exploration of power, freedom, and dependence.

Horses in Flames* is rooted in a raw, confrontational text that exposes how power feeds on human suffering. It challenges systems that demand beauty, meaning, and morality while relying on failure, despair, and catastrophe to sustain themselves. 
The work explores the violence of being reduced to a function, where human beings are valued not for their existence but for what their pain produces. It questions justice, exposing the gap between ideals and lived reality, and reflects on the fragile boundary between life and death—suggesting that the loss of agency, dignity, and hope may already be a form of death.
The work examines shifting power dynamics—between authority and vulnerability, control and survival, oppressor and oppressed. Rather than offering fixed answers, it asks: who holds power, and who depends on it? What happens when vulnerabilities are exploited and basic needs are ignored? And where does responsibility lie within these structures?

workinprogress showings at  5-7 June  at Dansenshus 2026
Premieres 2027
Daniel Proietto (co-choreographer) and Vibeke Flesland Havre (dramaturg).