Another Fine Selection

3rd + 4th December

6 p.m. Tove Salmgren “I pretend that you speak”
6 p.m. + 7 p.m. Manon Santkin “Unexplained Dances “
8 p.m. Alma Söderberg & Hendrik Willekens “Idioter”
9 p.m. Stina Nyberg “Splendour”

5th + 6th December

6 p.m. Tove Salmgren “I pretend that you speak”
7 p.m. Juli Reinartz “Atlantic”
8 p.m. Ludvig Daae “Fun, Laughs, Good Time”
9.30 p.m. Erna Ómarsdóttir & Valdimar Jóhannsson “LAZYBLOOD”

6th December
10.30 p.m. ÖFA: DECADE DECADENCE DANCE PARTY

Salmgren is a dancer, currently student at the Masters education New Performative Practices in DOCH and has a very long list of works she has been a part of. This is the first one she has signed as her own piece. MDT has worked out a deal with Salmgren. She will work in residencies and show the result every now and then. I pretend that yo u speak was presented as a showing. Audience gets to play an important part in a fictional debate. Salmgren moderates. All involved agreed. It’s a piece. (A great one.)

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In ”I pretend that you speak”, a dialogue between Tove Salmgren and a ”man” are taking place. The spectators are invited to play the role of a witness of this dialogue between Tove and this “body of power”. The distribution of power are playing a central role in the dialogue, and the question is how inherent privileges of the situation can be used to equalize the situation?

Tove Salmgren works in a landscape of performance, dance and choreography, as an initiator and collaborator in different artistic contexts and formats. Her interest lays in performance as an event for meeting, where preconditions of that meeting, as well as the meeting itself, is set up to be experienced collectively. The materiality of her practice concern formal and informal use of language, with a strong relation to a feministic discourse concerning power structures and relations as well as questions of domination within the tradition of dance.

(Concept and performance: Tove Salmgren. Special thanks to Jonas Williamsson, Moa Franzén, Malin Elgán, Miriam von Schantz, Pavle Heidler, Stina Nyberg, Anna Efraimsson and the crew of MDT. Previously shown at Glasgow International Festival 2014.)

Santkin from Brussels is a performer and maker with an impressive résumé. Unexplained Dances is a project that deals with the critical eye, critical discourse and how to involve that into the dance. It is a part of her master studies in Stockholm New Performative Practices. Santkin presented one version of this ongoing project in DOCH and this will be herfirst official showing of the work. (First Time Ever.)

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Encounters without politeness but with care.

In Unexplained Dances, Manon Santkin performs, with and for the audience, one of the many exercises compiled in the Atlas of Incomprehension. For this special edition, she will engage in an ad-hoc dialogue, simultaneously embodied and spoken, about how to care for a dance which persists without explanation.

Manon Santkin (1982) is a free-lance artist based in Brussels. Within the field of the Performing Arts, she operates as an dancer, choreographer, advisor, rehearsal director, after-talk moderator and writer. She graduated from P.a.r.t.s. in 2004 and has been collaborating with choreographers Mette Ingvartsen, Salva Sanchis, Xavier Leroy, Sidney Leoni, Eleanor Bauer, Cecilia Lisa Eliceche and Leslie Mannès. She also develops projects with sound artist Peter Lenaerts and with designer Nicolas Couturier. Manon regularly takes part in the processes of other artists as a mentor, advisor or dramaturge and sees her role as an interpreter morphing into that of a facilitator of collaborative processes. Since 2013, Manon develops new works in the frame of the Master program in New Performative Practices, at the Stockholm University of the Arts. Her research, entitled « Since all choreographers are dead… », focuses on ecology of practices, collaborative networks and complex narratives.

(Concept: Manon Santkin. Performance: Manon Santkin & guests. Costume: Jennifer Defays. Book cover: Nicolas Couturier. Production: Kunst/Werk vzw. Residencies and support: Les Laboratoires d’Aubervilliers (FR), PianoFabriek (BE), Weld (SE). This production is a part of the project [DNA] Departures and Arrivals, co-financed by the Creative Europe program of the European Commission. Thanks to Griet Verstraelen, Leslie Mannès, Nicolas Couturier, Zoë Polluch, Cecilia Lisa Eliceche, Chrysa Parkinson, Sidney Leoni and Salva Sanchis.)

Stina Nyberg has since she graduated from the Choreography Master in DOCH a few years back presented two pieces in MDT, plus one at the Opera and one created with the Cullberg Ballet. And that’s not all. She has also worked with the amazing pop duo The Knife and the collectives Samlingen and the Future (So true). We wanted badly to show this piece. SPLENDOUR is based on THE WAY SOUNDS ATTACK that started it all. A techno album. Sounds that move.

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“In order to be strategic we have to know the game. We start to move and the music begins to play. When the wave hits you, each of you in your own account, it bounces back and at this very moment produces a new sound. We engage in a collective activity with personal intentions. No one in this room is responsible for anyone else, yet we can’t do it alone.”

“Splendour” is a choreography that focuses on the body’s relationship to sound and how illusions of different causalities are created through actions and reactions. Through dodging creativity it steers away from improvisation that promotes individual choices and self-expression. The performance rather aims for working with emotions and reactions that occurs at the instance the sound hits you, in order to express the illusion of bodies creating sound.

The techno suggests a dance where no one depends on anyone else to do it, but that insists on doing it together. Thus, the piece is carried by the imagination and conviction of both performers and audience.

Stina Nyberg works with dance and choreography and graduated from the MA in choreography at DOCH in 2012. She is working in several collaborations as well as alone, trying to always relate her different projects and work roles within her choreographic work. With a critical and loving approach she thinks about the possibilities of different logics, rearranging our ways of behaving in and shaping the world.

(Choreography: Stina Nyberg. Performance: Luís Miguel Félix, Nadja Hjorton, Sidney Leoni, Maryam Nikandish, Stina Nyberg, Zoë Poluch, Rebecka Stillman. Light design: Chrisander Brun. Music: Dave Clarke “Archive One”. Produced with support by MDT, DOCH, The Swedish Arts Grants Committee, City of Stockholm. This presentation is part of the project [DNA] Departures and Arrivals, which is co-financed by the Creative Europe program of the European Commission.)

We show everything Söderberg does. She is a choreographer and dancer, trained in Spain and Holland, who uses her body, including her voice to shake your brain. This time she attempts to unlock the mind and make herself, and perhaps also you, into idiots. Hendrik Willekens, her partner in crime, is an artist that paints and draws with everything, also sounds. (Fucked up, in a good, awsome way.)

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In “Idioter“ Alma Söderberg and Hendrik Willekens work together. They create a concert performance where the music supports Alma’s way to intensely play with rhythm and Hendrik’s geometric landscape drawings.

First of all there will be music. “Idioter“ is a noisy electronic concert with a strong rhythmical drive. It flirts with concrete music and concrete poetry. Drawing and voice are treated as sound.

Secondly “Idioter“ consists of Hendrik’s drawings. He draws geometrical landscapes disappearing in a single vanishing point. He draws this drawing over and over again, thus expanding the landscape to a theme; again and again you find yourself drawn into the same nothingness.

Thirdly “Idioter“ consists of Alma’s work with voice and movement. She plays with syllables, intonations, cadenzas, gestures; a dream language, a game of intensity and rhythm. The focus is on flow.The flow will be cut, there will be breaks, the flow will continue. You get sucked into the rhythm.

Finally, let’s discuss “Idioter”, the title of this work. The title was cut out of a newspaper, and chosen out of an esthetical appreciation of the word; the two I’s, the similarity between the D and the O, the similarity between the T and the I, the tail of the Swedish inclination of idiot in plural; ER. The word appeared in a review of Slavoj Zizek’s book Less than Nothing and was part of the sentence “allt vi vet är att vi är idioter” (all we know is that we are idiots).

“For this project we took on idiocy as a discipline. Paradoxically the discipline involves abandoning a perspective, staying close to the empty vanishing point, embracing that place of mystery that we do not understand and cannot see.”

Alma Söderberg: “Rhythm drives me, constantly, to do things, to make works, pieces, songs, to engage with talking, singing, rapping, dancing, playing instruments. It is not a choice, rhythm works on me; I have no power over that. I started tap dancing in my room listening to Fred Astaire when I was seven, started learning raps by NAS, A Tribe Called Quest and De La Soul by heart at the age of 13 and went to Sevilla to dance flamenco when I was sixteen. As I started studying choreography in Amsterdam I had a crisis. The study was more closely connected with theatre than with dance, with representation rather than experience. I was lost in representation. Where was the Music, the Groove? I had two years of confusion until I made a solo called Entertainment. In it I sang, danced, talked and used rhythm as my main tool to connect the three. I sang a Gershwin song: Let’s face the music and dance. After that solo I found my way into my own work. I made Cosas, A talk, Travail (three works where the rhythm is the glue) and started playing music with John the Houseband. I let the music work on whatever it is I do. Not resisting the power it has over me. Now I use drum machines, voice and body to indulge in it, without holding back I dedicate myself to keeping a Flow, the Groove is what drives me.”

Hendrik Willekens: “Sitting in my room drawing, I do since I was small. I looked out of the window – through which I could only see the grey-scale of the sky and a few branches – and I drew. I always kept doing it. When I as an adolescent I filled sketchbooks that I then lended my friends only to admire. When I wanted to become an actor, I drew less and started to write more, until I didn’t want to become an actor anymore and didn’t want to write anymore. Then I was lost for a few years. Three years ago I discovered the pleasure of drawing again. I made my primordial drawing that I still interact with. It’s a geometrical landscape of 2 or 3 meters broad and about 1 meter high. Afterwards I made a new drawing, and then a new one, and then a new one, etc.. The relation between drawing and performing gave me new input. I decided to go into public space, and I also had some kind of idea about the integrity of art/ of an artist. I made 20 drawings by holding two pens as fixed as possible onto a piece of paper for as long as I could. I had my eyes closed. Graphically these drawings curiously resembled the landscapes that I kept on making. Some unequivocally were landscapes as well. And my landscapes became more barren themselves. I work with pens, pencils, markers. Have no knowledge about colour. I find colour difficult. I often work on A4 paper that I glue together as the drawing grows. The practice finds me, I don’t have to put myself to it. It is not unusual that I draw before breakfast and coffee. I find the table on my way to the kitchen, sit down, start. It just happens that way.”

(By and with Alma Söderberg and Hendrik Willekens. In collaboration with Igor Dobricic.
Idioter is produced by Het Veem Theater Amsterdam in coproduction with Kunstenfestivaldesarts Brussels, Göteborgs Dans & Teater Festival and Baltoscandal Festival as part of the NXTSTP network, with support of the culture programme of the European Union. The production is furthermore coproduced by SPRING Performing Arts Festival and workspacebrussels. Additional support was received from the Swedish Arts Council (Kulturrådet), Kultur i Väst (Region Västra Götaland, Sweden) and The Swedish Arts Grants Committee (Konstnärsnämnden). Thanks to Pianofabriek, Q-O2, Nordic Watercolour Museum and Vitlycke – Centre for Performing Arts, La Raffinerie, Charleroi Danses, Angela Peris Alcantud, Jasper Hopman, Jeroen de Boer and Fabrice Moinet. This presentation is part of the project [DNA] Departures and Arrivals, which is co-financed by the Creative Europe program of the European Commission. IDIOTER premiered in Kunstenfestivaldesarts, Brussels 2014.)

Juli Reinartz fell for Black Atlantic, a liberating jazz movement from the 1950–60s. Anti-racist free jazz gone mad. Reinartz is a choreographer from Germany, educated in Stockholm and Berlin. Atlantic is solo performance focusing on the lead singer. It is part of a series of works, including WE ARE NOT IN THIS TOGETHER YET and REALLY GOOD MUSIC, working on the physical kinesthetics of the live concert. (And that’s far cooler than it sounds.)

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“Atlantic” performs the never played concert of the Sun Ra album Atlantis. For Sun Ra, the body is full of interstellar potential, a device of the future, and music is an audible science fiction. “Atlantic” speculates on the role of the lead singer in this fictional concert, on the spirit, the physicality and the mobilization of the crowd. It performs the talks between the songs and the physical relationship between audience and singer as a way to touch upon future crowds and identities. The performance investigates two key interests: the empowering potential of a concert and the performative power of language. Who or what do we become in a concert of the Black Atlantic???

Juli Reinartz studied in the Master of Choreography at the University for Dance and Circus in Stockholm and works since then as an independent choreographer in Sweden and Germany. She has been involved in projects with Verena Billinger / Sebastian Schulz, Ingri Fiksdal, Tea Tupajic, Angela Schubot, Jared Gradinger, Trajal Harrel as well as the artist collective kom.post. In the term 2012/13, she has been researching within a one year residency at the Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm (KKH) on the social capacities of music and its potential of concert formats for the theater space. Her works, including the pieces “We are not in this together yet”, “Atlantic” and “Really Good Music” have been presented in MDT, Kiasma (FI), Black Box (NO), Reykjavik Dance Festival (IS), Tanztage (DE), Anti-Festival (FI), Nordic House Torshavn (DK) and MUU Gallery (FI). Currently she is preparing a piece in collaboration with Nora Schlocker for Deutsches Theater Berlin.??

(Choreography/Performance: Juli Reinartz. Lights: Björn Kuajara. Coaching: Alice Chauchat, Sonja Pregrad. Musical support: Billy Bultheel. Produced by: The Festival, Anti-Festival, WASP, 4culture, jardin d’europe, Konstnärsnämnden/Iaspis, MDT. With many thanks to: Benjamin Schälike)

Dancer and choreographer Ludvig Daae makes some of the cutest performances on the planet. Neon colored fashion, dance moves and pop music in a mix. All with a razor sharp edge. Daae is educated in the Royal Swedish Ballet School in Stockholm and P.A.R.T.S. in Brussels, comes from Norway and has most of his life here in Stockholm; if we exclude the extensive touring he does with his works.

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“Fun, Laughs, Good Time” wants to give focus to the situation that the audience, the light, the sound, the costumes, the performers and the set create together. “Fun, Laughs, Good Time” is the hostess, guiding and facilitating the situation. “Fun, Laughs, Good Time” takes the chance to use this time we have together in the theatre to create something that does not exist outside of it, offering something separate, different, possibly better, warmer and more glamorous than the outside world. Together we create the situation, and the situation becomes our diva.

Ludvig Daae is a Norwegian choreographer and dancer, with dance studies from P.A.R.T.S. in Belgium and The Royal Swedish Ballet School in Stockholm. He lives in Stockholm and during a working residency at MDT in Stockholm 2013 he developed “Fun, Laughs, Good Time”. His production “MM” has toured extensively, both internationally and in Sweden 2011-2014.

(Initiated by Ludvig Daae. Created and performed by Marcus Baldemar, Tove Berglund, Chrisander Brun, Ludvig Daae, Robin Jonsson and Rebecka Stillman. Light design and scenography: Chrisander Brun. Costume design: Tove Berglund. Sound design: Robin Jonsson. Technique & production: MDT. Co-producer: MDT, Speilart Festival. Supported by the Arts Council Norway, Fund for Sound and Picture, The Swedish Arts Grants Committee, Workspace Brussels. This presentation is a part of the project [DNA] Departures and Arrivals, which is co-financed by the Creative Europe program of the European Commission. FUN, LAUGHS, GOOD TIME premiered in MDT 2013.)

We know we used the words “crazy” and “mad” often enough, and now we have to invent new words to describe this loving couple from Iceland. Ómarsdóttir & Jóhannsson are perhaps the hardest workers in the business, the CV is so long we won’t bother, but we need to mention that Ómarsdóttir is choreographer, dancer and appointed director of the Icelandic Dance Company and she just finished choreographing Björk’s new art video. Never ever has anybody head-banged even nearly as well as these two. (Did we say they are Icelandic?)

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Lazyblood is a duet with Valdimar Jóhannsson and Erna Ómarsdóttir were the concert format is explored. The music is electronic juxtaposing hard metal influences, storytelling and 80´s horror movie soundtracks, where the space between two songs is as important as the songs themselves and the theatrical and physical input is extreme. Lazyblood has been performing in both theater, dance and music festivals around Europe such as Kunstenfestival des Arts in Brussels, Les anticodes in Brest, Pneu festival at Scene Salzburg and Kyoto experiment in Japan as well as the music festival Iceland Airwaves in Reykjavík amongst others.

– “We promise you that every single audience member will go home with a smile on their face and warmth in their hearts. Possibly a life saving experience.”

Erna Ómarsdóttir gratuated from PARTS (Performing Arts Research and Training studios) in Brussels in 1998. After graduation she worked several years with some internationally acclaimed directors and choreographers such as Jan Fabre, Sidi Larbi Cherkoui and Ballet c de la B. The last years she has been creating and performing her own work internationally as well as in Iceland such as “IBM 1401 (a users manual)”, 2002, and “The Mysteries of love”, 2006, created in collaboration with the composer, Jóhann Jóhannsson. ?She has been creating and directing for the Iceland dance company: “We are all Marlene Dietrich FOR”, 2005, in collaboration with Janes Janza (Emil Hrvatin) and “Transaquania (out of the Blue)” 2009 and “Tranaquania-into thin air”, 2010 in collaboration with Damien Jalet and Gabríela Fridriksdóttir. In 2009 she created “Black Marrow” for the Melbourne based dance company Chunky Move at Melbourne International Artsfestival in collaboration with Damien Jalet. Together with musician Valdimar Jóhannsson, she founded their dance company Shalala in 2008. Their latest works are “We Saw Monsters” 2011, “Teach us to outgrow our madness” 2009, “To the bone” 2013 and the concert performance “Lazyblood”. Their work is to be seen frequently in different dance and theater festival and theaters all over Europe. Erna Ómarsdóttir was also one of the founders and members of the collectives Ekka from Reykjavik, Poni from Brussels and SKYR LEE BOB. She created and performed in “H, an incident” in the direction of Kris Verdonck and Two dogs company, 2013. She has choreographed for the National theater of Reykjavik a couple of times. During the years she has been collaborating with many great artist such as Gabríela Fridriksdottir, Björk, Ólöf Arnalds, Ben Frost, Reykjavík!, Margrét Sara Guðjónsdóttir etc. She has 5 times recieved “Griman” the Icelandic theater prize for dance and been nominated several times for best dance or promising choreography at the international dance magazine, Ballet Tanz. In 2007 she was selected the honorary artist at the Grandes Traversees festival in Bordeaux, in France.

Valdimar Jóhannsson is a musician and a composer who recently started his dancing carrier. In 2008, he founded the Shalala dance company together with Erna Ómarsdottir in Reykjavík. He took part in the Shalala creations “Teach us to outgrow our madness”, “We saw monsters”, “To The Bone”, amongst others which have been touring internationally the last years. Valdimar Jóhannsson has also been composing music for the Icelandic dance company, Two dogs company and Kris Verdonck in Brussels amongst other things. He plays with and composes for the Icelandic punk rock band Reykjavik!.

(Concept, music, text: Shalala /Erna Ómarsdóttir & Valdimar Jóhannsson. Sound: Lieven Dousselaere. Production: Esther Welger-Barboza. LAZYBLOOD premiered in 2011.)

ÖFA is celebrating ten years as a collective, and this is their birthday party!

Wow! Imagine: it’s been ten years since they had their first meeting in Skärmarbrink in Stockholm. Eight years since the first production, ”Var god tag plats!” premiered at Reginateatern in Uppsala.

A critic in UNT saw the premiere and wrote: “The feminist plot is mainly about verbalizing and yelling ‘cunt’, which has become a slightly watered down provocation.”

ÖFA was here to stay.

Everything they’ve done sine then will reach its climax tonight. This is where the next decade with ÖFA starts – and they want to share it with you! They will offer you a trip down memory lane, crammed with favorite dances, favorite costumes, favorite songs, favorite performances, favorite people (YOU!), and a big pile of props.

Feel free to dress up as one of the favorites: “Siegfried & Roy” (free interpretation)

The party starts at 10.30 pm, after the last show (of the year!). BE ON TIME! We can only accommodate a limited amount of guests. 100 SEK at the door; admission free if you have a festival pass to the Another Fine Selection festival. Cash only! Throughout the evening you can appease your hunger at a food truck especially set up for you.

HIP, HIP HOORAY!

ANOTHER FINE SELECTION is supported by Kulturrådet, Kulturförvaltningen Stockholms Stad, Kulturförvaltningen Stockholms Läns Landsting, Konstnärsnämndens internationella dansprogram, [DNA] Departures and Arrivals network which is co-financed by the Creative Europe program of the European Commission and Hotel Skeppsholmen.