Adam Seid Tahir
Dawn
Photo: José Figueroa
Th 15.5.2025, 20:00-21:00, MDT
Fr 16.5.2025, 20:00-21:00, MDT
Sa 17.5.2025, 18:00-19:00, MDT
Su 18.5.2025, 15:00-16:00, MDT
This is a story of the working beings of Nordic mythology—the creatures, not the gods.
The story goes:
The horse Skinfaxi pulls the chariot of Dagr (day) across the sky, its radiant mane lighting up the world below. The horse Hrímfaxi, with its frost-covered mane, draws the chariot of Nótt (night) and the dew that settles on the earth during the night is said to be the froth from its bite.
Bound in an eternal cycle, Skinfaxi and Hrímfaxi represent the rhythmic passage of day and night—sun and moon chasing one another across the sky. In their ongoing journey, they behold each other’s worlds with wonder. At the threshold between their realms—dawn and dusk—lies twilight: a fleeting moment of transition, where the two meet and an exchange occurs. This is the beginning of a new cycle and space of awakening.
Dawn is the first in a series of works reinterpreting the runes of the Elder Futhark—the oldest known runic alphabet in Northern Europe – although its origin is disputed, both in terms of mythical stories and geographical source. Through a queer Afro-Nordic lens, Dawn offers new associations and possibilities, reclaiming the magical and transformative potential found in both light and shadow, and the vital moment between them.
With practices of engraving, etching and dragging, the room transforms into a shifting landscape in a never-ending cyclical dawn. The piece continues the tradition of mythmaking and magical storytelling, while also making a political and poetic gesture: inserting a Black, queer body into Norse mythology.
In Dawn, parts of the piece will be performed in darkness. We invite you to sit or stand where you like in the space, and to move around carefully.
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Adam Seid Tahir
Adam Seid Tahir (they/them) is a choreographer and creative technologist. Their two roles involve crafting performative work and designing/developing websites. These practices also merge and expand into writing texts, making video installations, 3D animation, crafting sensor-based instruments and building the new MDT website which launched in 2023. Seid Tahir uses speculative imagination as a tool of resistance and centres their work around creating loud and immersive black queer fiction. They are interested in mythological figures, daydreaming and crafting affective machines. These interests often intersect through water, where they take the shape of sirens, waterfalls and submerged transatlantic communication cables. In their latest works Seid Tahir keeps returning to the practice of braiding hair. Both its traditional meaning with its ancestral social traditions and through the expanded idea of braiding as a method for working together. In the latter notion Adam has recently collaborated with Amina Seid Tahir and the collective EMBRACE (Lydia Östberg Diakité, Meleat Fredriksson and Adam Seid Tahir).
They have presented their work in contexts including: Kunstenfestivaldesarts 2023 (BE), New Sh*t @ Dansehallerne 2022 (DK), Emergentia 2022 (CH), Batard 2022 (BE), My Wild Flag 2021 (SE) and Dubrovnik Summer Festival 2020 (HR). They have worked with other artists including: Bambam Frost, Pontus Pettersson, Frederic Gies, Theo Clinkard, Samlingen, Meleat Fredriksson, Lydia Östberg Diakité, Amina Seid Tahir, Paloma Madrid, Eleanor Bauer, Zoë Poluch and Michael Keegan-Dolan. They have studied courses and programmes including: Decolonial strategies within art and activism @ Uniarts (SE), Aesthetics @ LTU (SE), Programming for Artists @ Konstfack (SE), Ballet Junior de Geneve (CH) and Royal Swedish Ballet School (SE).
Choreography & Performance
Sound Design
Lighting Design
Costume Design
Isabelle Edi
Manufacturing, hoofs
Hanna Kisch, Nina Johansson.
Costume assistant
Hanna-Thea Björö
Dramaturgy
Technical coordination
Producers
Co-produced by
Centrale Fies, Dansens Hus, MDT, Sophiensæle, Tou Scene, Slingan Tre Scener (Atalante, Dansstationen, MDT)
Supported by
Swedish Arts Council, The Swedish Arts Grants Committee, The City of Stockholm, Nordic Culture Point, Helge Ax:son Johnsons stiftelse
Thanks to
Samuel Draper and Amina Seid Tahir
Co-production part of
Life Long Burning – Futures lost and found project (2023-2026) supported by the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union.
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