by Erick Taylor Woodby
The Audience Club was an innovative participatory format that invited attendees at this spring’s STHLM DANS international dance festival to develop a deeper understanding of contemporary dance and its relationship to issues in our everyday lives. I knew little about dance, so I was intrigued.
Co-founded by Eva Broberg, Marie Proffit, and Jonas Robin, the 2024 festival season was a collaborative effort in and around Stockholm and its suburbs, making everyone feel part of a vibrant and inclusive community.
“We created it three years ago to grow audiences through contemporary dance and spread the art form’s diversity throughout the city, adapting to the context of our partner’s locations,” Marie, the festival artistic director, said.
Transformation was at the core of STHLM DANS. Performances explored shapeshifting and mutations and challenged dominant narratives by considering alternative future scenarios. The festival’s vision is to create a platform for artists worldwide to engage with new audiences and share their craft within and beyond the confines of traditional dance venues.
Artists performed in theatres, museums, and public spaces throughout Stockholm, making the festival accessible to all. This inclusivity not only opened up opportunities for those who may not have the resources to attend a performance in a closed setting, but also ensured everyone felt included and considered, fostering a sense of belonging.
The festival’s first public performance was in Medborgarplatsen, a popular square on the southern island of Södermalm. In collaboration with Cullberg, a Swedish national and international repertoire company, and choreographed by Hooman Sharifi, the piece featured dancers from Cullberg. This was where I met Anna Kozonina and the Audience Club.
Anna’s mission aligned with that of STHLM DANS‘ founders. A Helsinki-based Russian researcher in performing arts, she’s working full-time on a grant in Finland. With a background in art journalism and art history, her project is titled Reinventing the Audience: Love, Irritations, Misunderstanding, and Joy.
“It’s my own,” she said. “Funded by the Kone Foundation. I’m doing a two-and-half-year research project on audience development and different educational strategies in contemporary dance in Europe.”
Understanding Contemporary Dance
Anna, a dramaturg who occasionally teaches dance history and performance theory to contemporary dance students and general audiences, works with choreographers as a creative collaborator during their process of creating solo pieces.
“What sparked me to create the Audience Club was an interest in working with the audience of contemporary dance. To find out how they can better receive the art form and create a space for individuals from any background to enjoy performances.”
Anna first did this as an online course, the first session of which participants watched recorded productions. She used prepared theoretical introductions to provide a lens through which they could view a performance. Another session revolved around looking at dance as a symbolic system of signs or text designed to aid in how a person can read it. One more encouraged audience members to let go of the need to interpret and understand everything they see during a performance, encouraging them to trust and connect with the emotions and kinetic responses that may occur.
“We talked about the structure of the performance. Where it may repeat and why. I encouraged people with no professional language to use the tools and suggestions I provided to become more confident in how they talk about dance. Motivating them to see a production from different perspectives.”
The success of the online course spurred Anna to look for collaborators to create something similar in real time because dance festivals and premieres often lack audience engagement formats that invite conversations.
“If there is a discussion after a performance, the audience is rarely at the heart of them. It’s important to get ideas and reactions from those unfamiliar with contemporary dance. Art has to work for the public. Not just for those creating and performing it.”
Concentrating on Nordic and Baltic countries, Anna received a grant that allowed her to collaborate with dance festivals. She knew Marie from previous projects, and her work coincided with STHLM DANS’s goal of expanding its audience reach, culminating in this year’s pilot for the Audience Club.
After the outdoor performance at Medborgarplatsen, Anna guided me and the other Audience Club members on a leisurely stroll to Medelhavsmuseet for the festival’s opening night presentation of Sepideh Khodarahmi’s My Own Room, part of the Habibi – The Revolutions of Love exhibition, followed by STHLM DANS’s opening DJ’d by Rasuul.
Sepideh Khodarahmi, My Own Room. Performance at Habibi – The Revolutions of Love exhibition, Medelhavsmuseet
Discovering Dance
Walking across Guldbron with Anna on the way to the museum, I learned the other participants were Stockholm residents from China and France and Ksenia Salikhova from Russia. It was Ksenia’s second year attending the festival.
“I found out about STHLM DANS last year through an advert on Instagram,” Ksenia shared. “I discovered the dance master class by Takuya Fujisawa called Skumitate.”
Ksenia liked that Fujisawa’s workshop helped to create a community for those attending the 2023 festival. It offered opportunities for people to connect, share information, and go to performances together.
“Going to most of the shows, I was visible to Marie. She and her team were open. And I noticed they wanted to bring people together. Meeting a few of the dancers widened my knowledge of the community.”
Ksenia went to dance shows in Stockholm before attending the festival’s 2023 season but struggled to know which performances to attend. STHLM DANS made it easier with its program of events and descriptions.
“When I found out about the Audience Club, I immediately sent my application. I liked the idea of being part of a group that encouraged discussions about dance. Last year, I had questions and missed not being able to share my experiences.”
Our Audience Club group arrived at Medelhavsmuseet an hour before Sepideh Khodarahmi’s presentation. Guides led us upstairs to a round table, and Anna told us about her background and the Audience Club. The conversation flowed between dance history, Anna sharing her professional background, and what we hoped to experience. Ksenia was the first to open up about not always understanding contemporary dance.
“I can usually feel and understand parts of a performance,” Ksenia said. “But if you don’t know how to articulate it, it doesn’t exist. Anna’s discussions offered another way for me to experience dance.”
Communicating with Movement
Despite Audience Club members not being Swedish, Swedes were in the majority at shows and the three-hour Krump Workshop given by Nach, who performed her solo piece titled Cellule. Nach is a French-based dancer, choreographer, and researcher with roots in Krump, an African American urban dance of protest and relief control characterized by free, expressive, exaggerated, and energetic movement.
Ksenia recounted her experiences with the Krump workshop. “Nach’s way of communicating changed my life.
She enhanced my perceptions of dance and how we can see our bodies. Not just on stage but in our everyday lives. How we communicate with others using movement.”
“What I learned from Nach was similar to the discussions with Anna. Her pre-show presentation helped me more than I expected. I learned about dance’s theoretical, historical, cultural, religious, and political backgrounds worldwide. The discussions broadened my view. Contemporary dance is no longer an unreachable thing to enjoy.”
Siren Dance and New Expression
Productions Ksenia attended included Nach’s Cellule, Stina Nyberg Chest, and Lilian Steiner’s Siren Dance. Lilian is an Australian dancer and choreographer who joined Cullberg for their 2023/24 season and continues with them for 2024/25. Attracted to the company’s work and diversity of dancers skilled in different ways, Lilian, who trained predominantly in ballet, folk dance, and various artists’ versions of Release Technique, champions “…the deep intelligence of the body and its unique ability to reveal and comment on the complexities of contemporary humanity.”
Siren Dance won the 2023 Green Room Award for Best Performer in Australia. The Green Room Awards are Melbourne’s “…premier, peer-presented, performing arts industry awards.” Performing it at STHLM DANS marked its Swedish premiere.
“I enjoyed returning to Siren Dance and refining it in my new home of Sweden. It provided me with a different level of vulnerability as a performer.”
Breathing new life into Siren Dance and moving to Sweden gave Lilian opportunities to see her growth as a dancer. Combining her experiences from Melbourne with her new life as a performer in Stockholm.
“The structure of the work is reasonably set but with a lot of space for improvisation. Returning to Siren Dance, I recognized new improvisational patterns in my body that generated new expressions. It was exciting to learn about my current self and add this to the work.”
The concept and title for the piece came from a moment in Lilian’s personal life when she was attracted to things that seemed alluring in an intangible way. While knowing the danger of being pulled towards an exciting new energy, she felt helpless in it, like a sailor lured towards fatally jagged rocks.
“It surrounded me in every sense. But there’s something very human about this creation of desire wrapped in the enjoyment of tragedy.”
In choreographing Siren Dance, it was important to Lilian to maintain the audience’s attention throughout the production with visuals and movement. She accomplished this with gestures that vacillated between the intricate and the theatrical—using her entire body to create the allure, confusion, and intrigue of a Siren.
Even when nothing big was happening, there was the soft brush of the Siren’s tail. Or the movement of the eyes to keep the appeal alive, always offering something to feast on. She highly regards the context of STHLM DANS and is open to returning for the festival’s 2025 season to present a different project or participate as an audience member.
“There’s something special about the festival and how Marie and her team have curated it. STHLM DANS supports dance in its different expressions, allowing workshops, discussions, and protest to be recognized as being just as important as performances.”
Something that was on display with Siren’s Q&A facilitated by Ashik Zaman, Editor-in-Chief of C-print, a non-commercial initiative popularising contemporary art and highlighting diversity in artistic practices. Ashik led a discussion that allowed Lilian to share the production process and invited the audience to ask questions.
Bringing Humor
Bringing audiences into productions through humor is something choreographers Björn Säfsten and Anja Arnquist did with I själva verket, a performance/lecture on the art of making dance at Scenkonstmuseet, a museum dedicated to dance, music, and theatre.
“I själva verket has a double meaning,” Björn said. “It’s an expression you can use to redirect a conversation. Like saying, ‘actually’ or ‘perhaps'”
Anja added. “It can also read literally as ‘in the actual piece.’ Like in the actual piece of art. Which adds to the humor of the performance.”
It was the first time Anja and Björn had credits in the same production. However, they’ve collaborated for over twenty years. As friends and colleagues, their symbiotic union is how they best thrive as creatives.
“In my work as a choreographer, Anja has performed in many of the productions. As with all good conversations, it’s difficult to say who said the thing that made it turn in a way to make it better. Our give and take is an easy flow.”
Creating I själva verket was also the first time the duo worked with text, with Anja choreographing and working with the script as a director. Like the long-term relationship between a singer and songwriter, they knew what suited the performance and overall production.
Björn was a panelist for STHLM DANS’s 2023 production, How Do We Talk About Dance? But this was the first time he and Anja proposed something to the festival.
“We had contact with Scenkonstmuseet for several years,” Björn said. “A good venue for this piece because of the teaching segment within it. The proposition from Marie allowed us to make it happen.”
They’ve performed different versions of I själva verket. The first was a complete theatre production, where audience feedback helped Anja and Björn see that it was a piece that they could perform in other types of spaces, such as in towns that don’t have a theatre.”It’s an autobiographical piece where I share anecdotes from my life that Anja and I selected in relation to other themes we wanted to reference. We looked through my history to see what parts to highlight,” Björn disclosed.
Anja continued. “We wanted the piece to be an introduction to contemporary dance. One way we did this was to show the fiction that comes from a performance when talking about the art. And the different reactions we can get from an audience. Through this, it became clear the anecdotes could allow Björn to be himself, sharing how he discovered dance. Which encourages the public to want to listen.”Björn’s autobiographical journey as a dancer made introducing different art theories and interpretations easier, making it an ideal piece for festivals like STHLM DANS.
“Generally speaking,” Bjorn said. “Dance in Sweden is not an art form people tend to know much about. It’s not as established as it is in France.”
Anja and Björn enjoyed their experience with STHLM DANS because of its uniqueness as an international dance festival in Stockholm. Its commitment to reaching a more diverse audience is in line with their experiences of working and performing in places in Sweden where contemporary dance isn’t as well-known or understood.
“They’re interested in building networks and getting different organizations to collaborate. From small independent artists to some of the bigger institutions,” Anja stated.
Both hope STHLM DANS and the Swedish dance community can create opportunities to influence and change how the art form is seen outside of Sweden.
“I saw Linda Blomqvist and Anna Johansson’s Labour & Movement performance at Sergels torg,” Björn mentioned. “It was beautiful to see a collective do something where there’s an interdependency with the audience in a public space. Allowing the audience to interact with a piece can bring out perspectives that make the message clearer.”
The duo will tour I själva verket throughout Sweden during autumn 2024 with Dansnät Sverige. For cities and dates, go to www.dansnatsverige.se. In November 2024, Anja will premiere Dolly at MDT. She choreographed Dolly with Madeleine Lindh, her OR/ELLER dance and choreography partner.
STHLM DANS concluded at Etnografiska Museet with Afro Dance Films – The Past, the Present, and the Future. The museum screened Nora, the 2008 documentary about world-renowned Zimbabwean-born choreographer and dancer Nora Chipaumire. It was one of five films featured.
“Next year, we’ll have more workshops,” Marie announced. “In placing a workshop before a performance, audience members can practice the dance. The movement and material will be in their bodies, helping them to experience a performance differently. It familiarizes them with the genre and the production.”
