Within Practice 2024

About

With our 2024 program, we invite you to explore a variety of formats, all centered around artistic practices and collaboration within the dance and choreography field. Within Practice aims to showcase and create platforms for sharing and knowledge exchange in the continuously expanding realm of contemporary dance.

Within Practice 2024 is presented in close partnership with MDT, Dansens Hus, Stockholm University of the Arts, Weld and DC Stockholm. This year, our lineup of artists includes Cullberg, Jeanine Durning, Mette Edvardsen, Shirley Harthey Ubilla, Stina Nyberg, and Andrew Tay, who will conduct workshops and practice presentations. The festival presents morning classes during the week by Horacio Macuacua and Rebecka Berchtold and a lecture by Georg Döcker

This year, we will also bring back the ”Open space” format during our practice-sharing evening at Stockholm University of the Arts. On Wednesday, October 2nd, professionals and students will have the opportunity to propose something they want to share, whether it’s a practice, a score, a game, or a conversation. It will be an experimental self-curated event and a speculative mingle.

Join us and immerse yourself in the ”whys” and ”hows” – in the essence of dance-making!

The program features the following formats:

– Practice-sharings in the form of three double-bill evenings at MDT and Dansens Hus

– Workshops at Stockholm University of the Arts and MDT

– Open Source – Open Space: Practice sharing bonanza

– Lecture and conversations

– Open morning classes at Stockholm University of the Arts and Weld

Details for each event, including schedules and registration links, can be found on the website. All events require tickets or pre-registration, with limited capacity for workshops.

We welcome you to explore the program!

The Within Practice Team

Within Practice 2024

Initiator, concept and curation: Björn Säfsten

Curatorial collaborator: Anna Efraimsson, MDT

Curatorial collaborator conversation series: Stockholm University of the Arts

Production: Björn Säfsten, Emma Pavlovic Svensson & Magnus Nordberg/Nordberg Movement in collaboration with the festival partners

Dancehosts Salka Ardal Rosengren, Liz Kinoshita

Presenting partners: MDT, Stockholm University of the Arts, Dansens Hus

Daily training partner: DC Stockholm, Weld

Documentation and postproduction: Ravel and Skånes Dansteater

Podseries production: Skånes Dansteater

Made possible with support from Kulturrådet, Stockholms Stad, International Programme for dance at the Swedish Arts Grants Committee, MDT, Dansens hus Stockholm, Dansalliansen and Cullberg.

If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to contact us: withinpractice@bjorn-safsten.com

Calendar

SEP30

Rebecka Berchtold (SE)Rebecka Berchtold (SE)
Morning class
10.00–11.30, WELD

Horacio Macuaua (ES/MOZ)Horacio Macuaua (ES/MOZ)
Morning class
10.00–11.30, SKH Stage - Studio 16

Cullberg (SE)Cullberg (SE)
Workshop
13.00–16.00, SKH Stage - Studio 16

Mette Edvardsen (NO)Mette Edvardsen (NO)
Workshop
13.00–16.00, SKH - Studio 11

Shirley Harthey Ubilla (SE)Shirley Harthey Ubilla (SE)
Workshop
13.00–16.00, SKH - Studio 9

Stina Nyberg (SE)Stina Nyberg (SE)
Workshop
13.00–16.00, MDT - Stage

OCT01

Rebecka Berchtold (SE)Rebecka Berchtold (SE)
Morning class
10.00–11.30, WELD

Horacio Macuaua (ES/MOZ)Horacio Macuaua (ES/MOZ)
Morning class
10.00–11.30, SKH Stage - Studio 16

Andrew Tay (CA)Andrew Tay (CA)
Workshop
13.00–16.00, MDT - Studio 1

Cullberg (SE)Cullberg (SE)
Workshop
13.00–16.00, SKH Stage - Studio 16

Jeanine Durning (US)Jeanine Durning (US)
Workshop
13.00–16.00, SKH - Studio 10

Mette Edvardsen (NO)Mette Edvardsen (NO)
Workshop
13.00–16.00, SKH - Studio 11

Shirley Harthey Ubilla (SE)Shirley Harthey Ubilla (SE)
Workshop
13.00–16.00, SKH - Studio 9

Stina Nyberg (SE)Stina Nyberg (SE)
Workshop
13.00–16.00, MDT - Stage

OCT02

Rebecka Berchtold (SE)Rebecka Berchtold (SE)
Morning class
10.00–11.30, WELD

Horacio Macuaua (ES/MOZ)Horacio Macuaua (ES/MOZ)
Morning class
10.00–11.30, SKH Stage - Studio 16

Andrew Tay (CA)Andrew Tay (CA)
Workshop
13.00–16.00, MDT - Studio 1

Cullberg (SE)Cullberg (SE)
Workshop
13.00–16.00, SKH Stage - Studio 16

Jeanine Durning (US)Jeanine Durning (US)
Workshop
13.00–16.00, SKH - Studio 10

Mette Edvardsen (NO)Mette Edvardsen (NO)
Workshop
13.00–16.00, SKH - Studio 11

Shirley Harthey Ubilla (SE)Shirley Harthey Ubilla (SE)
Workshop
13.00–16.00, SKH - Studio 9

Stina Nyberg (SE)Stina Nyberg (SE)
Workshop
13.00–16.00, MDT - Stage

Open Source - Open Space Open Source - Open Space
Practice sharing bonanza
18.00–22.00, Stockholm University of the Arts

OCT03

Rebecka Berchtold (SE)Rebecka Berchtold (SE)
Morning class
10.00–11.30, WELD

Horacio Macuaua (ES/MOZ)Horacio Macuaua (ES/MOZ)
Morning class
10.00–11.30, SKH Stage - Studio 16

Andrew Tay (CA)Andrew Tay (CA)
Workshop
13.00–16.00, MDT - Studio 1

Jeanine Durning (US)Jeanine Durning (US)
Workshop
13.00–16.00, SKH - Studio 10

Mette Edvardsen (NO) & Stina Nyberg (SE)Mette Edvardsen (NO) & Stina Nyberg (SE)
Practice presentations
19.00–20.30, MDT

OCT04

Rebecka Berchtold (SE)Rebecka Berchtold (SE)
Morning class
10.00–11.30, WELD

Horacio Macuaua (ES/MOZ)Horacio Macuaua (ES/MOZ)
Morning class
10.00–11.30, SKH Stage - Studio 16

Andrew Tay (CA) & Cullberg (SE)Andrew Tay (CA) & Cullberg (SE)
Practice presentations
19.00–20.30, MDT

OCT05

Lecture: Georg Döcker (AT)Lecture: Georg Döcker (AT)
Conversational series
13.00–13.45, Elverket/Dansens Hus

Tendencies Tendencies
Conversational series
14.00–16.30, Elverket/Dansens Hus

Shirley Harthey Ubilla (SE) & Jeanine Durning (US)Shirley Harthey Ubilla (SE) & Jeanine Durning (US)
Practice presentations
19.00–20.30, Elverket/Dansens Hus

Andrew Tay (CA): Workshop

Andrew Tay, 1977, Toronto Canada. Multi-hyphenate choreographer, performance curator, dancer and DJ, Andrew’s work seeks to trouble dominant perceptions of power informed by his lived experiences as a queer Filipino Canadian. His work Make Banana Cry (co-authored with Stephen Thompson) questions perceptions of “Asian-ness” in Western culture and has been presented at the Festival TransAmériques (Montreal), Kampnagel (Hamburg), Fierce Festival (UK) and continues to tour internationally. His other works Fame Prayer / EATING (created with Katarzyna Szugajew and François Lalumière), The Magic of Assembly (created with Whacking artist Ashley Colours Perez) and Odd-Sensual have received numerous accolades including the Risk and Innovation Award (Summerworks Toronto) and 5 Dora Mavor award nominations.

Andrew is known for reimagining possibilities within historic dance institutions through his work as the inaugural Artistic Curator of the Centre de Creation O Vertigo (CCOV) Montreal and his current role as Artistic Director of Toronto Dance Theatre (TDT) one of Canada’s oldest contemporary dance companies. In 2022 Andrew was named on the list of “50 under 50 shaping tomorrow” by Concordia University. He actively thinks about community, irreverence and resistance in both his performance and curatorial practices.

Workshop:

Andrew’s artistic practice thinks about resisting definition and challenging assumptions inherent in performance and the body. He approaches each new work with a question and moves towards developing a practice or container that participants engage with through their own points of view and lived experiences.

For this workshop, we will explore the idea of creating a psychedelic body. Using strategies from his work “Make Banana Cry” (co-created with Stephen Thompson) along with methods from his previous works. The workshop is curious about “slipping and tripping” between contrasting performance approaches to enter a queer sense of organizing ourselves. How can we play with body codes, find pleasure in confusing the possible interpretations of our physical actions, and work irreverently with our dance training? By applying similar strategies to working with objects, can we collectively hallucinate possibilities for experiencing the material world around us? Andrew hopes the psychedelic body we develop in this workshop can be seen as a way to resist flattening ourselves and open the potential for embodying the fluid spectrum of our contemporary performing identities.

1 october 13:00 – 16:00 Workshop, MDT – Studio 1

2 october 13:00 – 16:00 Workshop, MDT – Studio 1

3 october 13:00 – 16:00 Workshop, MDT – Studio 1

Tickets available here: Nortic

Cullberg (SE): Workshop

Eleanor Campbell

Eleanor Campbell (b. 1985) is originally from Australia. She was drawn to ballet and sports in her youth and began her early dance career working for Australian companies The Queensland Ballet and Dance North. Eleanor traveled to Europe at age 21, landing first in Scotland before studying contemporary dance. After one year at SEAD, Salzburg, she entered the 4-year program at PARTS, Belgium. After graduating, she worked with theatre directors Mokhallad Rasem and Thomas Ryckewaert and choreographers Peter Savel, Georgia Vardarou, and Albert Quesada. In 2015, Eleanor joined Cullberg and performed in the work of Deborah Hay, Jefta Van Dinter, Eleanor Bauer, Ian Kahler, Alma Söderberg, Margrét Sara Guðjónsdóttir and Halla Ólafsdóttir. Throughout her time in Cullberg, Eleanor’s focus has been on improvisation in performance, group processes, and how somatic practices merge with and support choreographic forms.

Mohamed Y. Shika

Mohamed Saleh (b. 1989), Shika ”Mohamed Saleh, known as Shika, is an Egyptian contemporary dancer of Nubian origin. His dance journey blends influences from Nubian folk dances, martial arts, house, and Afro-traditional and contemporary dances studied at Senegal’s Ecole des Sables. Inhabiting various worlds and identities intersect, Shika’s artistic sensibilities thrive in the fusion of these diverse experiences.

Shika’s interest extends beyond dance to different art mediums, such as painting and photography, influenced by the dynamism of his movement. In 2017, Shika was awarded the Pina Bausch fellowship following the work of Nora Chipaumire, where their close collaboration continues to evolve to date. Shika has been dancing with Cullberg since 2018.

Shika’s invitation to the Within Practice festival ignited his interest in exploring, through the lens of his own experience, how dancers’ roles within companies like Cullberg shape and inform the utilization of the various tools and practices they have developed or been exposed to. Specifically, he’s intrigued by the intersection of dance practices and long-term approaches.

Freddy Houndekindo

Freddy Houndekindo (b. 1991), France, is an interdisciplinary artist positioned at the intersection of music, spoken word poetry, dance, film, and performance. His interest in dance originated from street dance, later he studied contemporary dance at the Conservatoire National superior de Musique et de Danse de Lyon (France) and German modern dance at the Folkwang Universität der Künste in Essen (Germany).

Movement Director and Choreographer, Freddy’s expertise and interest in multimedia led him to work in a variety of contexts, such as stage work, film, and fashion. A dancer at Cullberg, he joined the ensemble in the autumn of 2018. Freddy’s recent project proposes to look at performance practices as sites where ethics and theory could potentially self-actualize into practice.

Workshop:

Dancing at Cullberg exposes us to various performance practices as we engage with diverse choreographic proposals, styles and aesthetics. Through Within Practice we reflect on what practices have evolved as we navigate different artistic realms, including our own. How do we regulate ourselves within changing demands? Feed our interests regardless of our tastes? And hold space for the multiple voices in multiple stages of a process?

In this workshop, led by three seasoned voices from Cullberg, we’ll share collaborative performance practices, examining the different moods and phases of the production process from the performer’s perspective. Embracing the uncertainty inherent in this process, we explore strategies, ideas, and observations, with occasional overlaps or contradictions.

Our aim is to gather and sharpen our impressions of the (e)merging physical language and patterns within the room, providing a map of strategies to navigate through the unknown. What feels familiar? What can I imitate or follow? What aspects remain opaque to me? We delve into the concept of collective learning and highlight its unique significance within the dance context.

30 september 13:00 – 16:00 Workshop, Stockholm University of the Arts – Studio 16

1 october 13:00 – 16:00 Workshop, Stockholm University of the Arts – Studio 16

2 october 13:00 – 16:00 Workshop, Stockholm University of the Arts – Studio 16

Tickets available here: Nortic

Jeanine Durning (US): Workshop

Jeanine Durning, 1967, New York, has been investigating the mobilizing force of bodies and grappling with their conditions in time, space, and place for over 25 years through experiments in choreography, performance, practice-based research, teaching, and mentoring. Her performance work has been described by The New Yorker as having both “the potential for philosophical revelation and theatrical disaster.” Jeanine’s ongoing project, nonstopping, has been the foundation for her research since 2010. She’s performed her signature solo inging (based on her nonstop speaking practice) throughout Europe, across the US, and in Canada on and off since 2010. Jeanine has had the privilege to collaborate with many choreographers, including Deborah Hay since 2005, working as performer, consultant, choreographic assistant, and coach. From 2020-2023, Jeanine worked as Rehearsal Director for Stockholm based contemporary dance company Cullberg, transmitting and touring the dance works of Deborah Hay and Swedish choreographer, Alma Söderberg. Jeanine has been invited to share some of her practices all over the world through teaching, mentoring/advising, and creating choreographies. Her most recent choreographic collaborations were with Candoco Dance Company (London), creating Last Shelter (2021), with Norrdans (Härnösand), creating Everlasting – a new love (2023), and with an independent group of American performers, creating The Invitation Situation (2023/24). In 2023, with the support of MANCC and The Mellon Foundation, Durning collaborated with writer/editor Jenn Joy and designer Sherri Wasserman on a book project centered around her practice, nonstopping.

Workshop:

Keep on with the force, don’t stop: Approaches to the practice of nonstopping

“… You know, I was
I was wondering, you know
If you could keep on
Because the force
It’s got a lot of power
And it make me feel like, ah
It make me feel like, ooh …” – Michael Jackson, excerpt from Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough

Since around 2009, I’ve been working with and through a practice I call nonstopping. It started as a creative survival strategy and progressively accumulated into a practice of self-amplification and articulation in relation to conditions of the continuous present. Lately, I find the term itself, nonstopping, problematic. I read recently that the earth is spinning faster and we are headed toward a “negative leap second.” In the midst of exponential speed and automatic over production of material making, I think most people just want to slow down, rest, experience sensation, and notice details. But I feel if time, space, and matter are moving faster than we can track, I want to sharpen some tools to be more aware and present. I keep on keeping on with nonstopping because it understands the dance experiment as being on the way and because it persists in amplifying the mobilizing force of mind and body in the midst of undeniable, uncontrollable change and precarity. I keep at it because it’s an active resistance to other forces (internal and external) that conspire against expression of thought, speech and body.

Practically, in our time together, we’ll start with what we know and then lean into what we don’t know. We’ll start with non-theoretical, simple approaches to nonstop moving and speaking, without constraints of how, what, or why, and then progressively play, and sometimes grapple, with the impossible possibility of attending to multiple tools and strategies in the continuous present. We’ll notice how the complexities of our desires, thoughts, sensations, perceptions are formed and articulated in relation to ongoing shifting conditions and propositions. We’ll stay with not-knowing as a generative tool. We’ll work together in relation, alone together, or just alone, sometimes in pairs, or small groups. We’ll watch, write, discuss, and question. We’ll bring our questions into conscious action and practice. We’ll work with provisional micro-scores to frame and hold attention to our practice. Sometimes, we’ll use everyday objects as necessary obstacles to the unconscious pattern of just wanting to go with the flow. We can’t, we won’t, and we don’t stop getting closer and closer to encountering ourselves, how we think through doing, and how we choreograph the material of our selves.

1 october 13:00 – 16:00 Workshop, Stockholm University of the Arts – Studio 10

2 october 13:00 – 16:00 Workshop, Stockholm University of the Arts – Studio 10

3 october 13:00 – 16:00 Workshop, Stockholm University of the Arts – Studio 10

Tickets available here: Nortic

Mette Edvardsen (NO): Workshop

The work of Mette Edvardsen (b. 1970 is situated within the performing arts field as a choreographer and performer. Although some of her works explore other media or formats, such as video, books, and writing, her interest is always in their relationship to the performing arts as a practice and a situation.

Since 1994, Mette Edvardsen has worked as a dancer and performer for a number of companies and projects, and has been developing her own work since 2002. She presents her works internationally and continues to develop projects with other artists, both as a collaborator and as a performer.

A retrospective of her work was presented at Black Box teater in Oslo in 2015 and the focus program Idiorritmias at MACBA in Barcelona in 2018. Her project, Time has fallen asleep in the afternoon sunshine, has been ongoing since 2010, presented twice at Kunstenfestivaldesarts in Brussels in 2013 & 2017, Sydney Biennale in 2016, Index Foundation in Stockholm in 2019, Oslobiennalen First Edition in 2019-2020, Trust & Confusion at Tai Kwun Arts in Hong Kong in 2021, and Sao Paulo Biennale 2021. She presented works and a performative exhibition, Suppose a Room at Amant in New York in 2022, and developed a project in long-term residency at Les Laboratoires d’Aubervilliers in Paris 2022/2023.

Mette Edvardsen is structurally supported by Norsk Kulturråd (2022-2026). She is finalizing her research as a Ph.D. candidate at the Department of Dance at the Oslo National Academy of the Arts.

Workshop:

In the workshop we will work with description: ekphrasis. The word ekphrasis comes from Greek and is traditionally defined as the literary representation of a work of art. In ancient times it referred to the practice or skill of describing artworks, either real or imagined, through vivid and detailed verbal accounts. A poem about a painting, a sculpture, a shield, a tapestry, that lets us envision in mind what our eyes cannot see. We will use shared sources as well as invented ones. We will look at examples of ekphrasis, and make new ones. We will share works through describing them, and describe while making them. We will use description as a tool for writing, thinking, and making.

30 september 13:00 – 16:00 Workshop, Stockholm University of the Arts – Studio 11

1 october 13:00 – 16:00 Workshop, Stockholm University of the Arts – Studio 11

2 october 13:00 – 16:00 Workshop, Stockholm University of the Arts – Studio 11

Tickets available here: Nortic

Shirley Harthey Ubilla (SE): Workshop

Shirley Harthey Ubilla (b.1986) is a Chilean-Swedish performer and choreographer based in Estocolmo. Their choreographic work focuses on dyke desires, latinidad, warping structures of power, and queer realness. As a nonbinary butch dyke of color, they are highly aware of the fact that bodies matter, and this is something that drives all of their artistic work.

Abjection, exaggeration, erotica, and humor are cornerstones found in their work. Shirley’s interest in exploring the in-between state; when something is on the verge of being transformed into something else, is ongoing. They believe that this space has the potential to make us question what boundaries are and what happens when they are about to dissolve. A common thread in their work has been to seek and develop practices that speak of resistance with emancipatory possibilities. They constantly aim to decolonize gender. Shirley strongly believes that making art is a fragile, fierce, and badass way of figuring out how to live in the world!

Workshop:

The becoming lies in the practice of doing, in repetition, both in refusing and at the same time indulging in a sense of what you would like to be (or perhaps already believe you are). The becoming in my practice is rooted in everything that creates me, in everything that defines who I am. This awareness allows me to extend beyond my physical body and lets me connect to >the past the present and the future< at the same time. The becoming encourages an overlap between the imaginary, the gut feeling and the flesh and blood that makes me become me. In the workshop you will channel the becoming by getting into practices that evokes playfulness, pleasure and desire. The Morphing Game, Bad Ass Practice and Culo Rico will enable you to taste the unknown and explore your chimerical self.

30 september 13:00 – 16:00 Workshop, Stockholm University of the Arts – Studio 9

1 october 13:00 – 16:00 Workshop, Stockholm University of the Arts – Studio 9

2 october 13:00 – 16:00 Workshop, Stockholm University of the Arts – Studio 9

Tickets available here: Nortic

Stina Nyberg (SE): Workshop

Stina Nyberg (b. 1981, Örnsköldsvik, Sweden) engages in the choreography of dances, conversations, meetings, texts, sounds, and shows. She regularly falls in love with new stuff and uses choreography as a means to learn more about these new objects of desire. Some of her recent love affairs have involved doom, details, dogs, electricity, gossip, men, dance history, birds, and mind-reading. She is busy crafting physical practices in relation to the world at large, currently dwelling on the simultaneous molding of, and being molded by, other humans, surroundings, and prevailing ideologies.

Workshop:

The workshop with Stina will be centered around moving and being moved by other bodies. Definitely physically, maybe emotionally. In a close and touch based practice, developed through the artistic process of the creation of the works ”Chest” (2024) and ”Tvåtakt” (2023), we will investigate some possibilities for human sculpting. For the simultaneous acts of molding and being molded, sensing and being sensed, shaping and being shaped. The workshop oscillates between lifting, supporting, obstructing, dragging, joking, balancing, pushing, caring, suggesting and enforcing, looking for joint endeavours in the creation of formations or fantasies.

The workshop is open to anyone up for physical contact with others, able to shower in the mornings, and interested in shaping and being shaped through practising together.

30 september 13:00 – 16:00 Workshop, MDT – Stage

1 october 13:00 – 16:00 Workshop, MDT – Stage

2 october 13:00 – 16:00 Workshop, MDT – Stage

Tickets available here: Nortic

Andrew Tay (CA) & Cullberg (SE): Practice presentations

Picture above: Hanna Johansson/Cullberg Picture under: Richmond Lam

Andrew Tay:

Having not performed any kind of solo work for a few years, this is a fun opportunity to witness me squirm around the idea of confronting a reflection centered around my personal artistic practice. To become tangled in and de-tangle the various facets of what I move in and around as choreographer, as artistic director, as dancer, as curator as DJ etc etc etc etc.

I’ll re-visit past choreographic strategies to better understand where I am now.

It will be conversational – I want to be witnessed dealing with problems – I might need your help…. It may be a hot mess.

As someone who loves to ask others to sit in problems or in a space of discomfort this feels about right.

Cullberg:

The political dimension that brings people together in a repertoire company produces a unique ecosystem for artists/dancers to nurture personal qualities tailored for this professional setting. Invisible practices and invisible forces conditioned the choreographies. The production of knowledge is one of many aspects of the creative process. Each context comes with its own set of needs, unspoken norms, which manifest in aesthetic, experimental, and experiential regime. Curiosity and empathy are fundamental for dancers to develop choreographic practices that are not oriented towards authoring but in supporting (e)merging structures. Embodied practice and embodied knowledge allow dancers to host foreign ideas and concepts without the necessity of immediate understanding.

Oftentimes we ask ourselves: How much does a practice need to be articulated, and codified to be defined? When obstacles arise within any given phase of a production, what are the set of skills that support the ensemble and the artistic integrity of the work?

Our practice presentation proposes to convey the plurality of voices that compose the ensemble today and dance the mechanism that enables dissensus and harmony to coexist.

”A heartfelt thank you to Anna Grip for her support through her invaluable mentoring and coaching during our research process, which significantly enriched our practice. And thank you to Chrysa Parkinson, Cecilia Roos, and Eleanor Bauer for their time and support.”

Eleanor Campbell, Mohamed Y. Shika, Freddy Houndekindo

4 october 19:00 – 20:30 Practice presentations: Andrew Tay & Cullberg, MDT

Tickets available here: nortic

Mette Edvardsen (NO) & Stina Nyberg (SE): Practice presentations

Picture above: ANtero Hein Picture under: Andros Zins-Browne

Mette Edvardsen:

Language and shapeshifting in performance

In this lecture performance I address the role of language in my work and how it offers an access to the imagination. Summoning materials and moments from different pieces, I will speak about imagination in performance by using the idea of shapeshifting.

Stina Nyberg:

In her presentation, Stina will return to the irreconcilability of language and movement and the joy this argument brings. Attempting yet again to merge a practice of writing and a practice of dancing, leaning into the idea of orality as inseparable from the body in movement (as stated by Édouard Glissant), she will probably both sound and move. If it is called language and dancing, it is yet to be known.

3 october 19:00 – 20:30 Practice presentations: Mette Edvardsen & Stina Nyberg, MDT

Tickets available here: Nortic

Shirley Harthey Ubilla (SE) & Jeanine Durning (US): Practice presentations

Picture above: Chris Cameron for MANCC Picture under: Kegen Lorentzon

Jeanine Durning:

Holding a bag (or some other kind of unwieldy object), I walk into a room, not unlike other rooms I’ve been before, and ask into a direction I normally don’t want to face: where am I and where am I going?

Made specifically for Within Practice, I’ll attempt to meet the invitation of intentionally exposing practice while simultaneously being inside the immersion of it, in the shared space of encounter with others, while asking some basic questions like: what are we doing, where are we, where are we going, what happens when we get there, where do we put ourselves in relation to what, whom, where, and when, and for how long. Somewhere between doing the thing and being the thing, between sourcing materials from previous works and grappling with the moment at hand, I’ll negotiate (with attempted detail and precision while also accepting that might not happen) the velocity of moving, speaking, decision-making, disrupting, tracking, perceiving, locating, transitioning, situating, responding, sensing, sense-making, imagining, listening, composing, speculating, and other presence-ing and present-ing strategies.

“And when you speak to me like this,
I try to remember that the wood and cement walls
Of this room are being swept away now,
Molecule by molecule, in a slow and steady wind,
And nothing at all separates our bodies
From the vast emptiness expanding, and I know
We are sitting in our chairs
Discoursing in the middle of the blackness of space.”

– Pattiann Rogers, excerpt from Achieving Perspective

Shirley Harthey Ubilla:

What does it mean to explore resistance in ways that include celebration and healing?

Is it possible to reject a cistem of thought anchored in a Eurocentric framework?

A common thread in my work has been to seek and develop practices that speak of resistance with emancipatory possibilities. The starting point has always been my own lived experiences as a nonbinary butch dyke of color. The need to reject the Eurocentric perspective led me to doings that were physically and mentally exhausting. I have now changed direction to a setting that includes self-care and healing. Within my practice this has let my ancestral tentacles to break free and entangle in relationships I didn’t know of. Their ability to reach through time will shape my presentation.

5 october 19:00 – 20:30 Practice presentations: Shirley Harthey Ubilla & Jeanine Durning, Elverket/Dansens Hus

Tickets available here: Ticketmaster

Rebecka Berchtold (SE): Morning class

Rebecka Berchtold works with dance and choreography and the majority of her training has been within modern/postmodern dance. Her work is rooted in perspectives of practitioners and aims to generate an experiential discourse. Drawing on these interests, she produces 5678, a podcast about dance training(https://soundcloud.com/5678dancetraining), and innanför which is a project exploring dance classes as method, format and choreography.

Rebecka has worked with choreographers such as Cristina Caprioli, Martin Forsberg, or/eller, Stina Nyberg, Ioannis Mandafounis and Ludvig Daae among others. She worked as a dancer with the company Norrdans in Härnösand 2019-2022 and since 2022 she is working freelance with Stockholm as her base. Rebecka is artist in residence at SITE 2022-2024.

Morning classes with Rebecka Berchtold:

Running teaches me to get going and follow momentum. Dancing trains my physical and sensuous participation. I experience my pulse rising, warmth spreading inside my body, my body perception transforming and perceived borders that start moving. My body is contour, volume, weight, bounce, directions, cavities…

During the morning classes we will run in circles. We will get going and transition from running to dancing. The classes will consist of improvisation/open form but we will also train sensitivity to bodily sensations within the framework of a set/predetermined dance. We will consider a set/predetermined dance as an area to move in relation to rather than an original to replicate perfectly.

The classes are free of charge and are intended for professional dancers.

30 september 10:00-11:30 at WELD

1 october 10:00-11:30 at WELD

2 october 10:00-11:30 at WELD

3 october 10:00-11:30 at WELD

4 october 10:00-11:30 at WELD

Pre-register via: WELD

Please bring shoes for indoor use.

The morning classes are part of the project innanför, exploring dance classes as method and format as well as choreography. Previous iterations of innanför have taken place at SITE/specific festival in Farsta, Norrdans in Härnösand, and MARC in Knislinge. During September 30-October 13, innanför will be organized by Rebecka Berchtold in collaboration with Weld. In addition to daily morning classes, Weld will act as a recording studio for the podcast 5678. The period concludes with two public events.

Horacio Macuaua (ES/MOZ): Morning class

The Mozambican dancer and choreographer is the artistic director of the dance company which bears his name. Horacio Macuacua develops projects that aim to go beyond established forms. Flexibility of mind and availability to catch the moment, translate movement instantly into compositions that are complex and elaborated, displaying depth and playfulness, darkness and light. Each composition is a journey to reinvent and transform within the parameters of meaning.

Horacio has carried out his projects: COMUM, Canais, Orobroy, Stop! (1st Prize and Puma Creative Prize at Danse l’Afrique Danse Festival 2010), Smile If You Can!, Fighting room, Convoy, Paradise is not in the sky! and Theka. He has collaborated with choreographers Cristina Moura, Thomas Hauert, George Khumalo, Wim Vandekeybus/Última Vez and David Zambrano, considering him his maestro and mentor. As a teacher he has given classes and workshops in France, Germany, Spain, Belgium, Holland, Cyprus, USA, South Korea, Brazil, South Africa, Mozambique, etc.

Morning class with Horacio Macuacua:

Sparkling Imagination – Improvisation WORKSHOP

The inflexibility of the established paralyzes the movement, dims the ingenuity, casts a shadow over surprise. But life force makes us adaptable, it gives us the opportunity to transform space and to translate energy into matter, matter into its own evolution. The outline of the spontaneous is blurred to disappear, the margins of the predictable are softened and we know the interrogation point that questions the automatic response. The body allows us to transcend.

Horacio proposes a highly physical work that demands attention, interest and intensity rather than a certain technique level, challenging the potentiality of each dancer to push the limits of body imagination and expression further to discover new and surprising possibilities. The workshop evolves with what the group offers, as the ability to create and compose physically, need training and attention as well as technique or style. Through the group process the participants learn from each other through acceptance and transformation, collaboration and observation of their own dance and of the whole group.

Let’s dive into the work, get the engines started and let the imagination flow! Let’s dance!

Horacios class is presented in collaboration with Danscentrum Stockholm with their program “Daily training”.

30 september 10:00-11:30 at Stockholm University of the Arts, Stage – Studio 16

1 october 10:00-11:30 at Stockholm University of the Arts, Stage – Studio 16

2 october 10:00-11:30 at Stockholm University of the Arts, Stage – Studio 16

3 october 10:00-11:30 at Stockholm University of the Arts, Stage – Studio 16

4 october 10:00-11:30 at Stockholm University of the Arts, Stage – Studio 16

Payment on the spot, 50 sek/class or through DC term card.

Lecture: Georg Döcker (AT): Conversational series

Georg researches, teaches, and writes about theatre, dance, and performance. He is currently between finishing his PhD at the University of Roehampton (“What Was ‘Practice’? Performance Practice – Social Practice – Practice-as-Research,” funded by University of Roehampton and AHRC Techne Consortium) and undertaking a post-doc project at Paris Lodron University of Salzburg (“Towards a Genealogy of Feminist Spectacle after Florentina Holzinger,” funded by OeAD’s Ernst Mach Grant).

Lecture:

I plan to talk a bit about the socio-economic antagonism of this particular formation that contemporary dance (and contemporary art more broadly) has come to address by the vibrant notion of “practice.” In dance and performance, it has become customary to highlight the critical and political stakes of “practice” as rejecting a project- and product-driven logic of performance production in favour of an open-ended process.

While this narrative has its genealogical merits, I would like to suggest that “practice” is rather implicated in a different struggle over the temporal and subjective dimensions of contemporary production: as capital and surplus production are predicated upon a fictional logic of infinity (fully unleashed by the seemingly infinite commodity of information) “practice,” in its manifestly processual relationality, finds itself navigating different kinds or regimes of process. It is the “daily” in “daily practice” that seems to hold the key to understanding how “practice” both parallels and ultimately resists capitalist infinity (including its fascist effects of recursion), proposing instead an emphatically “common practice.”

5 october 13:00 Lecture by Georg Döcker, Elverket/Dansens Hus

Tickets available here: Ticketmaster

Tendencies: Conversational series

Elverket/Dansens Hus

Sat October 5th 13.00 – 16.30

In this year’s edition of Within Practice, the festival’s thematic conversations gather for a speculative afternoon at Elverket.

The day starts with a lecture by the theoretician Georg Döcker where he delves into the concept of practice and its meaning in the field of dance. With a critical eye, he intends to speculate on what practice can mean in today’s art field and the dangers that lurk within it.

The afternoon will be followed by two panel discussions where we invite prominent dance artists to speculate on various trends they see in the dance field right now. What do certain phenomena say about our time? And what can we expect in the future?

The conversation is moderated by choreographer and dancer Eleanor Bauer and tendency partners are the dance artists; Philip Berlin, Bambam Frost, Mira Helenius, Freddy Houndekindo, Tove Salmgren and Stephen Thompson

Tickets available here: Ticketmaster

Open Source - Open Space: Practice sharing bonanza

A self-curating event for practitioners of dance at Stockholm University of the Arts

Are you currently exploring a certain practice or developing a new practice in your art-making? This evening gives anyone and everyone a possibility to share their interests.

Bring your dancing, theorizing, writing, looking, thinking, reading, moving, shaking, singing, talking and all other possible inging practices to share with your peers. Several studios are booked at Stockholm University of the Arts and we will collectively make a schedule, on the spot, departing from the model of Open Space following the logics of Open Source.

There is no curation, no pre-selection, everyone is welcome!

The evening is facilitated by Anna Efraimsson and Björn Säfsten

2 october 18.00 – 22.00 at Stockholm University of the Arts

Within Practice 2024

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Morning class tickets/prices:

Rebecka’s classes at WELD: free of charge

Horacio’s classes with Danscentrum at SKH: Payment on the spot, 50 sek/class or through DC term card

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Tickets for all workshops and practice presentations held at Stockholm University of the Arts and MDT available here: Nortic

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Tickets to Elverket/Dansens Hus for the Practice presentations of Shirley Harthey Ubilla & Jeanine Durning as well as for the Conversational series with Georg Döcker can be booked here: Ticketmaster

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