Finally, we get to gather and experience Dance and Choreography!
Care, the theater as a meeting place, and hospitality are words and concepts that are central to my work. In a world of a pandemic, political unrest and important democratic renegotiations such as Black Lives Matter new light is being shed on these concepts and they become, if possible, even more important guiding principles for the theater.
When I started, the program for the autumn was partly finished by former theater director Danjel Andersson and has since been further developed by me. MDT has not held back in terms of program events and collaborations with both international and Sweden-based artists and organizations, even though the theater this autumn will have significantly fewer audience seats due to the pandemic situation.
In the first week of September, MDT opens the season with the legendary festival My Wild Flag, which has an extensive international and experimental program including Paula Chaves Bonilla, Thais Di Marco, Rani Nair, QUARTO, Natália Rebelo, Ofelia Jarl Ortega, Suutoo, PRICE and SERAFINE1369 (Jamila Johnson-Small). My Wild Flag is curated by choreographers Karina Sarkissova and Pontus Pettersson. Collaborations with other curators will be recurring during my artistic direction, and in December we also welcome the curators Ulrika Flink and Rado Ištok who put together a program with dance, performance, and conversation for two evenings with Paul Maheke, Nkisi, Ariel Efraim Ashbel and Natália Rebelo and more.
This autumn, there will also be no less than three world premieres at MDT with Ofelia Jarl Ortega’s Hegemony, BamBam Frost’s YES, and Norwegian Ida Wigdel with Dandizettes.
Belgian choreographer Sarah Vanhee will give a performative lecture. And the long-awaited second-run of MILF by choreographer Nadja Hjorton and visual artist Éva Mag which was supposed to have taken place this spring will show this fall now instead. Linda Blomqvist presents her latest solo Selma which premiered at Dansens hus, and in connection, there will be a release for a new publication that Anne Vigeland curated and edited – Letters to Process – which takes the work Selma as its conceptual starting point.
The EU project Long Life Burning, of which MDT is a partner, offers an open experimental format called the “Performance Situation Room”, and this fall we will present two different projects within this framework: The art group Ful will initiate their project Baba Karam – participatory performances in the form of dance parties based on the Iranian dance form Baba Karam and Robin Jonsson experiments with robots, affect, and empathy, as he tries The Emotional Turing Test.
The season also provides space for discourse and research in dance and choreography. It will include the practical symposium Within Practice which is curated by Björn Säfsten and carried out in collaboration with Säfsten Production, Stockholm University of the Arts/Department of Dance and Dansalliansen with artists Kristin Ryg Helgebostad, Jennifer Lacey, Michikazu Matsue, Rani Nair, Will Rawls, Björn Säfsten and Insister Space. Eleanor Bauer shares her artistic research in the 80% seminar choreo | graphy within practice. The independent course The Circulating Book Project at Stockholm University of the Arts, run by artists Litó Walkey, Asaf Aharonson, and Gretchen Blegen, makes a public presentation.
All this at the same time as dance artists work daily in MDT’s three studios, and as we plan for future ambitious curatorial and organizational projects for the theater.
As part of the valuable residency network Nordic Residence Exchange Program, the Denmark-based duo Two Women Machine show will have a residency at the theater. The network is a collaboration between BIT Teatergarasjen, Bora Bora, Reykjavik Dance Festival, Zodiak, and MDT.
These are exceptional times and the staff at MDT will do our utmost to try to create a safe situation for audiences and artists alike. We ask for your understanding that things may change at short notice.
A very warm welcome to MDT this autumn, I look forward to seeing you!
Anna Efraimsson
Theater Director
MDT