Dear audience, artists and friends; in Stockholm, Sweden and worldwide

Dear audience, artists and friends; in Stockholm, Sweden and worldwide

The year of 2020 is coming to an end. As one of many places dedicated to gathering, physical intimacy and togetherness we have been mourning not being able to fill our theater with people, live performances and conversation to the extent that we had hoped for. The performances that did happen stay with us as precious pearls of memories.

MDT closed in March, and during the spring we cancelled performances. In summer, we carefully re-opened with some corona adapted performances for smaller audiences; where we also discovered our fantastic outdoors stage of grass. We were able to continue the activation of our live programe from September until November when we unfortunately had to cancel the rest of the season.

Our studio residencies have carried on with caution, making it possible for artists to continue to work and use our spaces throughout the year. Most of the performances that were cancelled have been given new dates, a large part of them we hope to show in spring 2021.

The paradox is that even if the theatre has been filled with so many less people than usual, we have worked harder than ever, and this is something that I hear from a lot of colleagues and artists too. The exhaustion, stress and sadness of this year has affected the world and our sector deeply, and we hope to enter 2021 with a renewed commitment to contemporary dance, supporting our peers, colleagues and audiences, both old and new.

We want to thank all the fantastic artists, collaborators and funders for this year, without you it wouldn’t have been possible. As Theater Director, I would also like to thank the amazing staff at MDT, for supporting me, the artists and each other through this year.

We are entering new beginnings and we don’t know what the spring will hold. We do, however, know that we are more humbled, especially in not taking our treasured art form of dance and choreography for granted. We are gearing up for 2021 and the fight ahead to support dance artists and live performances in all the ways we can, and as part of this work advocating for dance and choreography that is accessible, brave and relevant to our changing world.

Take care and rest well.
See you in 2021!

Anna Efraimsson
Theater director of MDT