Introduction to the Spring Season 2024 at MDT Moderna Dansteatern

Welcome to the Spring Season 2024 at MDT Moderna Dansteatern!

How things ended last year…

As 2023 came to a close, the Swedish independent dance scene was in a state of shock. The Swedish Arts Council project grants had just been announced, and of the 43 million sek applied for across the dance and circus scene, only 3 million had been granted. As a result many dance artists and colleagues are left grappling with a devastating decrease in support. To bring attention to such substantial cuts in cultural funding and the effects these are having and will continue to have on the independent scene, MDT launched a holiday campaign asking for your support and attention. We want to take this opportunity to give HUGE THANKS TO EVERYONE who contributed — those who spread the word and/or made a donation. ALL the donations, big and small, were so important to us, again — thank you. We were also very grateful to be able to reach through the media with our message and begin what we hope will be a wider and ongoing conversation about cultural funding in Sweden, with the close future focussed on gathering and joining forces with our colleagues working with political advocacy, and fundraising in all possible forms.

How things are beginning this year…

Spaces of dance and arts as meeting places, venues within which we can gather together and be with one another is a powerful and important thing in these shaky political times in Sweden and across the world. In this context, we strongly believe that presenting experimental and problem posing dance and choreography has never felt as important.

Therefore, it is with great pride that I present the MDT Spring Season of 2024!

The season opens with Canadian artist Dana Michel. Michel’s esteemed durational performance  “MIKE”  about labor and work culture will play out in Moderna Museet within the “Seven Rooms and a Garden: Rashid Johnson and the Moderna Museet’s Collection” exhibition. Next up, Robin Haghi and Anika Kawaji present their first choreographic work together. In “Things That Can Survive in Space” Haghi and Kawaji send choreographic messages to possible audiences in outer space. Yared Tilahun Cederlund brings the first part of the project PULS, where he choreographs and composes a soundtrack track working with pulse and beat, supported and developed with a stellar cast of dancers from the street dance and freestyle scene. Marikiscrycrycry, based in the UK, returns to MDT to perform their solo “GONER", a new and challenging take on horror for the stage, a work deeply engaged and embroiled with the political, the social, and the horrors of both. Oda Brekke and her team unfold “dead dead document”- a publication and a durational choreography that sits across and between the two MDT Studios.

After injury prevented the work from coming to the stage last year, Shirley Harthey Ubilla & Cajsa Godée finally premiere their long awaited “Lez Dance” at MDT, taking everything you thought you knew and making it so lesbian you won’t know what to do with yourself. Following on, MAKOR MIXA XXL DELUXE is a mini-festival organised by MA Choreography students at Stockholm University of the Arts (SKH). Expect a delightfully mixed bag of responses to what-in-the-world-is-choreography. Lydia Östberg Diakité, Meleat Fredriksson and Adam Seid Tahir form the collective “EMBRACE”, and present a work together of the same name. Last but not least, Ellen Söderhult dances the solo Ghost Dances / Spökdanser, a collection of dances that leak into and across one another.

We are happy to say that we will keep the ticketing system launched last year: our “Pay What You Can” scheme. Tickets range from 75 sek to 500 sek, relying on the majority of our audiences paying 250 sek and helping us to ensure our programme is accessible to as many as possible, regardless of income. Last year was a trial period for the scheme, and we learnt a lot in the process. Please know that we can only keep this scheme going if we get enough revenue. Last year, we brought in almost as much revenue in ticket sales as we managed in 2022 (our most prosperous year ever) so thank you! Together, in solidarity with each other, we can and do make things better.

With that all that is left for me to say is WELCOME dear audience — we look forward to seeing you in the theatre throughout 2024 and, when called for, coming together to make our voices heard in the streets too. 

Anna Efraimsson 

Theatre Director 

MDT Moderna Dansteatern