Autumn season 2024 at MDT

Our Autumn programme at MDT Moderna Dansteatern – collaborations, four festivals, a focus on youth, we explore dance history and we are thrilled to say we’ll be keeping our “Pay What You Can” ticket system !

Despite the cultural, political and economically fragile situation our contemporary dance field currently faces, MDT have gathered forces and come together. If there is anything this season could be characterised by, it is collaboration. This Autumn 2024 season sees us sharing practical resources, as well as thinking together with neighbours, friends and partners to foster collective creativity.

Our Autumn 2024 season is a rich and packed programme. We have no less than four festivals: the queer dance and performance festival "My Wild Flag", the practice and workshop festival Within Practice run by Säfsten Produktion and the Spanish experimental music festival "She Makes Noise" in collaboration with Fylkingen. In addition, we are participating in the new art festival September Sessions within which, alongside Public Art Agency Sweden, we will be presenting work by Brazilian artists Elisabete Finger and Manuela Eichner.

We are also proud to be part of the Stockholm-wide exhibition Vaginal Davis, a multi-venue exploration of Miss Davis’ expansive practice in collaboration with Moderna Museet. Miss Davis has hosted many movie nights in her time and throughout her career and we are delighted that she will be hosting one such movie night at MDT! The  evening will begin with Miss Davis introducing the films All that Jazz and Hair.

Every year, we commit to giving one work a longer performance run in the MDT Studio and this year we are collaborating with the duo OR/ELLER as they make the work  “DOLLY”, a show for audiences aged between 10 and 99 years old. We also continue to explore the exchange with our newly established MDT youth council. 

We are also proudly presenting three world premieres this season in addition to OR/ELLER´s “DOLLY”; dancer/choreographer Lisa Janbell and musician/composer Dijle Neva Yigitbas fuse their energies into the new work “DEVOTED”; and Philip Berlin comes to MDT with his work “La Vue”. We will also host the Swedish premiere of “SQUEEZE”, a work by Tyra Wigg that combines massage practices and choreography. The platform Futurebrownspace ends the season by inviting us on a journey with “The AfroStar Galactica”.

Another recurring theme at MDT this autumn is dance history. Helena Franzén has created a work “Here- Us- Now'' consisting of various excerpts from her own dance history, which began at MDT back in 1996. Choreographer Tiran Willemse invokes his diverse dance history through a kaleidoscope of the 19th century ballet classic Giselle, Kuduro from Angola and the Nigerian genre Alanta. And Philip Berlin examines virtuosity, linking it to waste and the American legend Merce Cunningham.

In 2023, we launched a new ticket system that we named "Pay what you can". It does what it says on the tin – you pay what you can afford. There is a built-in idea of ​​solidarity, because if you pay SEK 250 or more, you enable others to pay less and still be able to experience our performances. We have witnessed other theatres implement similar  models that had been very successful, but I was unsure if it would work here at MDT. However, seen in the rear-view mirror, it turns out that we were able to collect almost as much ticket revenue as the year before (which was our most profitable year ever) even with this solidarity system, and so we are thrilled to be able to keep "Pay what you can" into 2024 and, we hope, beyond. In our surveys with audience, we received good feedback on "Pay what you can". Many of you wrote that you were able to come back to MDT more often and that you were able to take risks and experience art that you may not have done otherwise. This is fantastic. The best thing about the new solidarity ticket system is how much more diversity there is in our audiences since launching, something we are very committed to. 

So, as we maintain the system, we will also continue to monitor and develop it as part of continuing to strive for new creative ways to fund ourselves, support artists and welcome audiences.

See you in the Autumn! Check out the programme here.

Anna Efraimsson

Theater director

MDT Modern Dansteatern