»When the performers guide the audience’s breath like Zen masters, when they keep insisting on steps and gestures, there expanding them toward a comical quality, when wind moves golden threads dangling from the ceiling as the sole stage dressing - then understatement is directing, then strings are devotedly caressed rather than strummed (…). In the end, it’s all about the everyday balancing act between our greedy lust for beauty and refusal, between void and significance, between egoism and empathy.«

(Andrea Kachelrieß, Stuttgarter Nachrichten)

For more than twenty years, Finnish company Oblivia has been creating productions that handle the humankind’s existential topics while employing minimal means – be that in pointed observations of our perpetual desire for entertainment or in ambiguous thoughts on postmodern society. In the process, the two founding members, performer and dancer Annika Tudeer and conservatory-trained pianist Timo Fredriksson, regularly augment the Oblivia team to include additional performers bringing different priorities: So, in »Pleasure«, sound performer Juha Valkepää enters the stage for the first time as a part of Oblivia.

As in the previous trilogy instalments, songs, live sound, body-made or object-produced sounds and movement have been interwoven most precisely, inducing and driving each other. In this sensitively tared equilibrium of live music and vocalisation, texts, and movement in »Pleasure«, discussing our eternal hunt for the turbo-capitalist promise of a »better, faster, stronger«, in the grand scheme as well as in the smallest detail, Oblivia’s light touch manages to once again put one of the grandest themes of our existence onto a stage.