Memory Wax
Desert & The Quiet Agreement

Memory Wax was founded 2004 by the dancers Johanna Jonasson and Miguel Azcue.

Desert starts with simple dance movements and the search for contact, reunion and freedom. Miguel Azcue won the choreographic competition Certament Coreografico de Galicia in Spain 2005 with Desert and was also chosen for Aerowaves in London in January 2005.

The quite agreement deals with teamwork between people. To see yourself in others, relations and meetings which mirrors, questions and complements your own self.

Dessert & The Quite Agreement was performed in Stockholm, Linköping, Jönköping and Umeå.

Virpi Pahkinen
Sal Mirabile

Virpi Pahkinen is one of Sweden’s most enthralling choreographers and dancers, and fascinated audiences and press all over the world with her personal and intensive dance language. Her source of inspiration is in part mysticism and oriental religion which often mirrors her performances. She has won numbers of prizes and awards and has taken part in numbers of Ingmar Bergman’s productions at Kungliga Dramatiska Teatern

Salt is the starting-point in Sal Mirabile. The artist and stage-designer Lovisa Johansson’s installation Exsaltorium is on stage. Exsaltorium was exhibited at Skulpturens Hus 2005.

Sal Mirabile was performed in Halmstad, Uddevalla, Jönköping and Umeå.

Örjan Andersson/ Andersson Dance
We Dream of Simple Lives

Örjan Adersson’s choreography comes from his education, his dancing career and his long career as a choreographer. He works as a choreographer with his own dance company and for some of the world’s leading companies. Örjan Anderson is sometimes described as a modern classicist. The choreographic material is often technically arduous with full speed, rhythm and musicality as a base.

We Dream of Simple Lives is an abstract, poetic, dreamlike creation, where movements flow and formations replace each other, quickly and without interruptions.

Örjan Andersson reads music and breaks down his choreography in mathematical parts and by so doing he, together with five female and one male dancer, create a sparkling, powerful and poetic dance.

We Dream of Simple Lives was performed in Västerås, Gävle, Sundsvall and Linköping.

Via Katlehong Dance
NKULULEKO

Via Katlehong Dance was founded in1992 by adolescents from the township of Katlehong in South Africa, to keep away from criminality. The company is managed by Michael Moloi, Vusi Mdoyi and Steven Falen, and consists of a local government school and a professional dance company with 18 members. They have won several prizes such as the FNB Vita Dance and the Gautenng MEC Development Award.

Via Katlehong Dance takes the local dance pantsula, which is similar to hip hop, and mixes with a number of other dance styles such as gumboots and step. Pantsula is a pet name for the rebel youth culture which exists in the township. This includes fashion, music and dance but most of all a way of life. The youths in each township finds pride in representing their township’s Pantsula culure. They danced out on the streets and competed with one and other with the coolest clothes and smartest dance steps. In modern a South Africa the dance has slowly moved from townships to commercial arenas. This means that the dance has become wishy-washy and the survival instinct, which was the heart of the dance, is on its way to disappear. Via Katlehong Dance is one of few groups who have been able to keep the original creativity and energy on stage with or without music.

Gumboots was originally danced by miners in the South African goldmines. They worked in gum boots and discovered a way to communicate by stamping and hitting their boots and rattling their ankle chains. Via Katlehong Dance has managed to modernize the gumboots and linked this with step, steps and pantsula. All dancers are simultaneous on stage and use their own dance rhythms.

The performance has been created in several different towns under dance festivals in France.

NKULULEKO was performed in Stockholm, Gävle, Umeåk, Sundsvall, Linköping, Jönköping, Varberg, Göteborg, Vara, Uddevalla and Västerås.

StopGAP
Le Picnic, Portfolio selection

StopGAP Dance Company is a British dance company which challenge the accepted rules of the traditional dance form. Two of the four dancers are disabled and two are non-disabled, but all four dancers perform on same terms. StopGAP works with the dancers’ individual capacities and challenging limits. The company works with different choreographers and strive to create entertaining performances but also to make the audience rethink. Leading in their field of dance the company is engaged with and takes part in national debates concerning dance and disabilities. Le Picnic was created as a work in residence at teaterföreningen (Theatre Association) in Vilhelmina.

Le Picnic, Portfolio selection was, apart from Vilhelmina, performed in Umeå, Stockholm, Linköping, Göteborg, Huskvarna, Västerås, Gävle and Kungsbacka.

Livekonstkollektivet MELO
c/o

The Live art collective MELO, based in Stockholm, consists of ten people; dancers, musicians, light designers, architects and designers. The style is punky, poetic and sensual.

In C/O the audience meet five people, number of instruments, cables, fluorescent lamps and a gang of mini loudspeakers; scaled and personal. A broken story without action. A soft, warm and personal image in contrast to an empty cold room. Live music takes over the room and the audience is on a journey from the small, brittle and intimate to an embrace of the whole place. Flickering moments appear in the dark, beautiful but at the same time unpleasant.

C/O was performed in Linköping, Umeå and Örnsköldsvik.

Rasmus Ölme
On Three

On three was Dansnät Sverige’s residence and hosted by Dansstationen in Malmö.

Rasmus Ölme is educated in the Belgian dance tradition (where one gladly mixes different forms of dance expression), and has danced in Wim Vandekeybus’s famous dance company Ultima Vez. Rasmus Ölme is nowadays the driving force behind REFUG, and this production is his fifth production since his breakthrough with “This is not a test” 2001. His signum is a floating and physical choreography – wrapped in an unsophisticated and undramatic style –  accompanied by newly written music.

In On Three five dancers are on stage ready to defy gravitation, shake up the audience perceptions and play with scenic rules. Jean-Louis Huhta has composed the new, groovy electronic-acoustic music.

On Three was performed in Malmö, Lund, Jönköping, Linköping, Falkenberg, Stockholm, Västerås, Umeå, Härnösand, Gävle and Göteborg.

Björn Elisson
Aurum

Aurum discusses the alchemic transformation-symbolic and delivers a poetic concentrate of humans and butterflies, but also aspects of man and female – disturbing ambivalences and fusions. Marianne Linder’s poem forms the foundation of Aurum’s choreography, in which Elisson combines text-image-rhythm-movements to an art/dance installation form which the audience is transferred to.

Aurum is the Latin name for gold, and the gold – the precious metal, solidified light – also represents fusion to unity. From a chaotic atmosphere of darkness, the performance stretches towards a zone of gold. In Aurum Elisson continue to collaborate with the dancer Anja Birnbaum and poet Marianne Linder.

Aurum was performed in Linköping, Jönköping, Malmö, Uddevalla, Vara and Umeå (2008)