We’re all dancing to the tune of our own desires, wrapped in a pink string of digital obsession.

In a raw exploration of digital algorithms, body ideals, and the invisible communication shaping our reality, three gay men dive into their feeds by looking at what we all look at too much. Through the reflections of our screens, the choreography digs into a mass production of the material that constantly overwhelms us. From this, a choreography is born, three beings baptized in their seemingly random scrolling, abandoned in a place where the only thing they can do is practice their own language. By wallowing in their desires and inhibitions, these images and feelings are explored in a series of scenes that are as fragile as they are intense.

In Haunted Desires, Björn Säfsten continues to delve into humanity’s constant failure in communication and what it does to the individual. In this piece, the gaze is specifically directed at iconography created by men who wish to be desired by other men, as the dancers arbitrarily transform select clips from the algorithms thrown at them in social media. On stage, the autobiographical merges with the fictional, the sought-after with the real, in a flicker of exposed haunted desire. The thing that you desire, perhaps you must become?

Premiered at Inkonst, Malmö 7 March, 2025

An autobiographical and arbitrary all-knowing performance about something everybody does but no one knows what it is: dance!

The title “I själva verket” could in Swedish be read in two ways within this context. As a saying it would translate to “In fact”, but it can also be understood as “In the actual piece”. The title contains Anja Arnquist and Björn Säfstens ambition with this performance. It comes from a strive of wanting to answer and open up conversations that Säfsten has had the last 8 years with audience members regarding contemporary dance, theories of dance practices and why some work might look or be read in a certain way.

Björn Säfsten and Anja Arnquist has developed numerous formats individually and as collaborators such as inter-active perforamances, workshops and performance-lectures to find an adequate meeting ground with a general audience. Both has continually toured around Sweden with this type of projects. An experience that has made them notice patterns in what type of questions and worries that puzzles the audience when it comes to contemporary dance. The questions vary but a number of themes tends to come back. In “I själva verket” Björn attempts to talk and dance, sometimes simultaneously, to show, visualise, explain, question and juggle the complicated issues at hand, always with humour and gentleness.

Where does the movements in contemporary dance come from, how can they be interpreted and is there a right way to understand dance? Is dancing a sort of sign language, where movements have certain meaning? It often seems rather self-centered? And how can I relate the dance to the outside world, the artist or my own history?

Premiere: 29 April 2023, Dansplats Skog, Sweden

In an abstract existence, three individuals come together in an attempt to talk and share a listening coexistence. They form a choir, a flock and at the same time are three different people who talk about what happened before. Together they process a multitude of emotions and attempt in different ways to categorise their impressions, actions and thoughts. Some emotions become embodied and wander away, others enable a physical space to serve as an outlet.

In Lost Night Björn Säfsten and dancers Sophie Augot, Alexander Gottfarb and Marianne Kjaersund attempt to approach the feeling of loss. It´s a puzzle of fictional situations whose building blocks process what it means to lose something or someone. In the performance, the dancers use words, sound, song and movement to take in and sing out the choreography. Composer Hans Appelkvist has created soundscapes, compositions and songs together with the dancers who perform them.

Premiere: 21 februari 2020, Atalante, Gothenburg