Premiere for Some Thing Folk
Cullberg presents a brand-new dance piece by choreographer Ligia Lewis. In the middle of a blue landscape, a group of beings move, eager to belong. Ten dancers in a kind of Hieronymus Bosch in stage art form. Swedish premiere September 11, 2025, at Klarascenen, Kulturhuset Stadsteatern, following its world premiere at Tanz im August in Berlin on August 28.
“With this performance, I hope to convey that the ghosts, spirits, and monsters in our tales are really about us – symbols that allow us to see ourselves and our participation in the present,” says Ligia Lewis.
Some Thing Folk is an entry into a world of its own – perhaps a dystopian past, or a deceptive funhouse mirror of our future. In creating the work, Ligia Lewis has drawn inspiration from, among others, feminist theorist Zakkiyyah Iman Jackson and cultural anthropologist Elizabeth Povinelli.
“My hope with this piece has been to work with the idea of ‘folk’ not as something fixed or exotic, but as something in constant motion: an emerging, shifting collective of inner differences while also aware of the violence of the present,” says Ligia Lewis. “Right now I see a reactionary ‘nativist’ return mixed with a multicultural nostalgia. On the conservative side, we see far-right groups returning to a sanitized national myth, while on the more liberal side there is a cultural return to a kind of nativist fantasy of what it means to be ‘the other’ – without the critical edge.”
Ligia Lewis is from the Dominican Republic, based in Berlin, and works as an artist, choreographer, dancer, and director. She presents her work on stage, in galleries or museums, through film, or in exhibition formats.
Concept, choreography, and artistic direction: Ligia Lewis
Lighting design: Joseph Wegmann
Costume: Sadak
Sound design: George Lewis Jr aka Twin Shadow
Music composition: Anton Kats
Set design: Ligia Lewis, Pia Gyll
Choreographic assistant: Corey Scott Gilbert
Performers: Anand Bolder, Arika Yamada, Girish Kumar Rachappa, Harrison Elliott, Johanna Tengan, Johanna Willig-Rosenstein, Lilian Steiner, Noam Segal, Panos Paraschou, Vincent Van der Plas
Co-producers: Tanz im August / HAU Hebbel am Ufer, PACT Zollverein
In collaboration with: Kulturhuset Stadsteatern