Cullbergbaletten presents festival for contemporary dance in Stockholm
– We want to do something new for contemporary dance in Stockholm and connect different actors. In an uncertain world defined by globalism, climate change, neo-liberalism, rapid changes of values and technological advancement, we aim to create an oasis for the senses, to offer a place for reflection and conversation. LABO Stockholm wants to offer a place for reflection, dance, sharing and community. Dance should challenge the known and embrace the unknown, says Jane Hopper, Project Manager of LABO and Artistic Co-ordinator at Cullbergbaletten.
LABO Stockholm with amongst others: Ian Kaler and Jam Rostron aka Planningtorock, Dana Michel, Samira Elagoz, Marie Topp, Kenneth Bruun, Olivia Riviere, Dana Casperson, Benjamin Vandewalle, Linda Blomqvist, Eleanor Bauer, Robin Jonsson and Ludvig Daae.
The full program and tickets will be available in the beginning of March. Tickets are sold at the individual venues.
PERFORMANCES
Dana Michel: Mercurial George
In the wake of the acclaimed Yellow Towel, Mercurial George traces and transforms the banal, provoking a certain malaise. Sifting through the heaps of dusty clues leftover in the wake of initializing a cultural excavation, Dana Michel offers a destabilizing solo. The body vacillates as it struggles for balance and a toehold. Stretching out time with minimalist and deconstructed movement, Michel becomes the archeologist of her own persona. Cullbergbaletten has included MDT:s act in the festival.
Venue: MDT, Slupskjulsvägen 30, Skeppsholmen, Stockholm
When: 11-12 April at 8:00 pm
Tickets: www.mdtsthlm.se
Ian Kaler and Jam Rostron aka Planningtorock: o.T./Raw Practice
Ian Kaler with music performed by Jam Rostron aka Planningtorock. In a structured and improvised jam-session with live-performed music, Kaler and Rostron explore how music, dance and movement form, alter and play with temporal unions, bonds and alliances. How are we moved as a community and where are we heading towards as individuals and together?
Venue: Scenkonstmuseet, Sibyllegatan 2
When: 14 April at 8.00 pm
Tickets: www.scenkonstmuseet.se
Linda Blomqvist: Circle LUX 9
Circle LUX 9 makes the body into a raw material that can achieve different qualities, capacities and influence. The piece strives to shift the subject and neutralize the social body as we know it, dissolve cultural and social qualities at the same time as it playful merges and uses different expressions without the ambition to belong to a certain identity. Circle LUX 9 is an eternal transformation of the body and the space and relation that are created in between, passes through different spaces, brings on intimacy and fantasy. Circle LUX 9 is an intensification of the presence that leaves traces and predicts the future in an ongoing loop. It’s a show about the body, in time and space. Circle LUX 9 suggest the term ”magic circle” as a place where temporary worlds within the normal world can exist.
Venue: Danscentrum Stockholm, Jungfrugatan 7B
When: 14 April at 6:30 pm
Tickets: www.danscentrumstockholm.se
Dana Casperson in collaboration with The Michael Douglas Collective: The Exchange
Dana Casperson in collaboration with The Michael Douglas Collective invites you to step into a choreographic public dialogue that doesn’t depend on physical skill, has no audience and functions only through your actions. It offers a physical framework from which to reflect and exchange on individual and global violence mechanisms. Participants are invited to consider what they believe about the use of violence, where they learned those beliefs, and how those beliefs focus their attention and actions in conflict.
venue: Scenkonstmuseet, Sibyllegatan 2
When: 17 April at 7:00 pm
Tickets: www.scenkonstmuseet.se
Samira Elagoz: Cock, cock, who’s there?
Samira Elagoz performance is an unsettling, touching and private documentary-performance of a young woman’s research into intimacy and violence. Through online platforms, like Chatroulette and Tinder and close encounters Samira Elgolaz takes the audience on her journey of regaining power, reinventing autonomous expression of sexuality and attempts to relate to men.
Venue: Scenkonstmuseet, Sibyllegatan 2
When: 18-19 April at 7:30 pm
Tickets: www.scenkonstmuseet.se
Premiere! Marie Topp: Liaisons
Liaisons is a choreographic work addressing our sense of sight. In piece the potential and the state of the blurred vision is explored. Marie Topp’s Liaisons is the first performance in a new series of works that are critically reflecting on how our different senses are affected by cultural and political structures. Focusing on the sense of seeing, the power of the gaze and how the way we see affects the way we understand the world. A gaze that is not sharply focused cannot objectify. The work is initiated by choreographer Marie Topp in close collaboration with Julia Giertz (sound), Mårten K. Axelsson (light), Kenneth Bruun (dance), Olivia Riviere (dance) and Igor Dobricic (dramaturgy). Cullbergbaletten has included MDT:s act in the festival.
Venue: MDT, Slupskjulsvägen 30
When: 20 April at 8pm, 21 April at 6:00pm
Tickets: www.mdtsthlm.se
Benjamin Vandewalle: Walking the Line – a choreographed walk through the streets of Stockholm
Benjamin Vandewalle’s creation offers new perspectives and experiences, both within the theatre room as in the streets of the city. Vandewalle accompanies you into the city. He takes the lead in a series of purposeful actions: some are banal, while others are completely unconventional. You leave as a group of individuals and gradually transform into one collective body. Walking the Line is a walking performance that will give you a new perspective on the city around you through a sequence of tableaux vivants.
Venue: Gathering outside Scenkonstmuseet, Sibyllegatan 2
When: 21 April, at three scheduled times during the day. Exact hours while be announced shortly.
Tickets: www.scenkonstmuseet.se
Linda Blomqvist: The Sound – An interactive installation
In Linda Blomqvist’s performance The Sound the audience is invited on a journey. The sounding dance shifts between the sounding and the visual world. It treats sounds as a force and a material to build invisible landscapes to inhabit, to take care of and drive within yourself. Think of sounds as a different type of consciousness that we can learn from if we spend time with it and listen.
Venue: Danscentrum Stockholm, Jungfrugatan 7B
When: 21 April at 8:30 pm
Tickets: www.danscentrumstockholm.se
WORK IN PROGRESS
Robin Jonsson: The Most Human
The choreographer Robin Jonsson presents a work in progress of the new performance The Most Human. Ludvig Daae is a Norwegian human dancer who grew up in Nesbyen and Maria is a humanoid robot dancer who grew up with IDA at Linköping’s University. Guided by the choreographer Robin Jonsson and the robot developer Fredrik Löfgren they are presented equally but with their own unique predispositions in a dance piece that explores what is human, presence and authenticity. The piece reflects on the radical change of society, in particular with service occupations, the industrial world and in health care, where robots takes over the work from humans but also work together with them. In the Most Human a robot replaces a human dancer and works together with another human. The robot is a humanoid, intelligent and autonomous which affects the pieces process and result.
Venue: Scenkonstmuseet, Sibyllegatan 2
When: 19 april at 6:30 pm
Tickets: www.scenkonstmuseet.se
Louise Dahl and Philip Berlin
Venue: MDT, Slupskjulsvägen 30
When: 20 april at 7:00 pm
No tickets required.
TALKS
Eleanor Bauer: Proto Talks
Eleanor Bauer proposes a replacement for the conventional after-talk. Instead of trying to explain what we just saw with the already known, rehearsed, and press-released talk, Bauer talks to the artist whose work we’ve just seen about what remains yet unanswered, and perhaps yet to come. Proto Talks depart from what the artist doesn’t know for sure, making public discourse and shared imagination out of nascent ideas that are usually reserved for notebooks, dreams, or conversation with cohorts. Talking about things that aren’t yet fully understood, haven’t yet been realized, or don’t yet have a fully articulated justification, Proto Talks are an exercise in negative capability, in speculative theatre, in thinking together, in sharing the creative and imaginative space of uncertainty where artistic process fumbles around in the dark searching for form. Sometimes we don’t entirely understand things even when they’re finished and performed, so talking about the show we’ve just seen is not off-limits, but Getting all the answers is not the point of Proto talks. After-talks, publicity texts, program notes, and reviews can talk about what we think we know, but Proto Talks S are an opportunity to talk about what we know we don’t know.
With: Dana Michel, Samira Elagoz
Venue: Dana Michel (MDT), Samira Elagoz (Scenkonstmuseet)
When: Adjacent to the performance. No tickets necessary.
Open workshop for the public:
Rachel Fuller: Dharma meets Art, Meditation workshops at Moderna Museet
Doorways to Freedom is a guided meditation focusing on the different concepts of Time, Space and Sensitivity. After an hour of meditation, the participants are requested to take their own reflections to the artworks in the museum’s collection. The meditation is based on basic Buddhist teachings about the nature of the senses.
Venue: Moderna Museet, Exercisplan 4, Skeppsholmen
When: 19-21 April at 11:15 am, open for the public, maximum capacity: 25.
More information at www.modernamuseet.se
Other workshops arranged for professionals:
Theo Clinkard: Shifting perspectives to consider private and public spaces
Dana Casperson: Choreographic decision-making in the creation of participatory events
Eroca Nicols: Aggressive Snuggling: From the Politics of Touch to the Poetics of Touch
Rachel Fuller: Dharma meets Art – a Pop-up Retreat at Moderna Museet, Doorways to FreedomEssential Buddhist teachings on the nature of mind, for the modern world.
About Life Long Burning
Life Long Burning (LLB) is a project supported by the Culture Programme of the European Union and dedicated to the sustainable support of the European contemporary dance and performance field and the enlargement of its audience. It is implemented throughout a five-year period: July 1, 2013 – June 30, 2018 by a wide-spread and highly professional network of dance associations, companies and production houses: 4Culture (RO), CCN Montpellier (FR), Cullbergbaletten (SE), danceWEB (AT), Het Veem Theater (NL), Lokomotiva (MK), Station (RS), Tala Dance Center (HR), Uferstudios (DE), Ultima Vez (BE), Workshop Foundation (HU) and workspacebrussels (BE). Through its various activities, LLB strengthens transnational cooperations, fosters the mobility of artists and their works, contributes to career development, cultural diversity and intercultural dialogue and promotes knowledge transfer, audience outreach and the public display of dance. It comprises of 10 activities: Prix Jardin d’Europe (European dance prize for emerging choreography), Dance Radar Europe (virtual PR platform), Dance Works! (co-production of dance productions), Critical Practice (training program for emerging dance writers), danceWEB Scholarships (training program for emerging dancers), Wild Cards (support of artistic development through residencies and workshops), Performance Situation Room (research and knowledge-sharing modules), teachback (research on dance education), Dance fiction (open source documentation/publications on project activities) and SuSy-Support System (education and development of young dance administrators).
About Cullbergbaletten
Cullbergbaletten is the leading repertoire company for contemporary dance in Sweden. The company is an important contributor to the international presentation of dance and choreography with tours all over the world. Cullbergbaletten works with a range of international choreographers and artists. The company currently has 16 dancers from nearly as many countries, and guest dancers are continuously invited to various projects. Since its inception the individual quality of each dancer has been Cullbergbaletten’s defining characteristic. By collaborating with choreographers and directors who are rooted in the contemporary field, Cullbergbaletten contributes strongly to the development of performing arts and dance as an art form. Cullbergbaletten’s activities encompass different projects and productions including workshops, conferences, seminars, and lectures. The directors are Gabriel Smeets and Stina Dahlström. Cullbergbaletten was founded in 1967 by Birgit Cullberg under the auspices of Riksteatern, the Swedish National Touring Theatre.
LABO Stockholm is curated and produced by Cullbergbaletten and arranged within the EU-financed culture network Life Long Burning. In collaboration with Scenkonstmuseet, Danscentrum Stockholm, MDT och Moderna Museet.