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STINA NYBERG

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, speed, 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.

She has developed a series of independent works in collaboration with choreographers, musicians, visual artists, technicians and magicians and often returns to MDT as her favourite place to dance. Her project, The Tesla Project, involves a solo performance with a Tesla coil (Thunderstruck, 2017), a lecture performance (The woman who lit the world, 2018) and a live concert with musician Maria W Horn (Alternating Currents, 2018), as well as a puppet show about ghost sex in collaboration with Diederik Peeters and Andros Zins-Browne (Spectrophilia, 2018). In 2020 she has developed a choreographed city walk from the perspective of a dog, on commission from the Public Art Agency Sweden (Statens konstråd), and developed and performed early iterations of Make Hay While the Sun Shines in New York and Stockholm. Stina premiered her new piece Chest at Dansens Hus in Stockholm during may 2024.

Skvallret [The Gossip]

STINA NYBERG [SE] - Skvallret [The Gossip] - November 14, 2024 - Moving in November, Community house Pihlajamäki, Helsinki - 15:00
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  • Moving in November, Community house Pihlajamäki, Helsinki
  • November 14, 2024
  • 15:00

Skvallret [The Gossip]

STINA NYBERG [SE] - Skvallret [The Gossip] - November 15, 2024 - Moving in November, Community house Pihlajamäk, Helsinkii - 15:00
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  • Moving in November, Community house Pihlajamäk, Helsinkii
  • November 15, 2024
  • 15:00

Skvallret [The Gossip]

STINA NYBERG [SE] - Skvallret [The Gossip] - November 16, 2024 - Moving in November, Community house Pihlajamäk, Helsinkii - 14:00
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  • Moving in November, Community house Pihlajamäk, Helsinkii
  • November 16, 2024
  • 14:00

Skvallret [The Gossip]

STINA NYBERG [SE] - Skvallret [The Gossip] - November 16, 2024 - Moving in November, Community house Pihlajamäk, Helsinkii - 16:00
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  • Moving in November, Community house Pihlajamäk, Helsinkii
  • November 16, 2024
  • 16:00

Skvallret [The Gossip]

STINA NYBERG [SE] - Skvallret [The Gossip] - November 17, 2024 - Moving in November, Community house Pihlajamäk, Helsinkii - 14:00
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  • Moving in November, Community house Pihlajamäk, Helsinkii
  • November 17, 2024
  • 14:00

Skvallret [The Gossip]

STINA NYBERG [SE] - Skvallret [The Gossip] - November 17, 2024 - Moving in November, Community house Pihlajamäk, Helsinkii - 16:00
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  • Moving in November, Community house Pihlajamäk, Helsinkii
  • November 17, 2024
  • 16:00

Photo credits: Ricard Estay

Skvallret [The Gossip]

”Skvallret” is a choreographed guided city tour from the perspective of a dog. 

Through sniffing up the insignificant stories, smelly cobble stones irresistable peeing spots, this guided tour moves the attention away from the grand Stories and into intimate encounters. Smaller groups of participants are guided through a city from a sensorial and knee high perspective, ending up in a performance by a local agility team of dogs.

In addition to the performed city tour, the project Skvallret involves an audio guide and a public art work in the shape of a pile of gravel for dogs to pee on.

Skvallret was originally created in the city of Sundsvall on commission from Sundsvall city and The Public Art Agency (Statens konstråd) in 2020 and was further performed on Skeppsholmen in Stockholm as part of the festival Lustholmen 2023. It now exists as a site specific choreography, remade for each site it is performed.

Premiere: 20 November, Sundsvall

Credits
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Text, choreography and performance: Stina Nyberg

Set design, costume, public art work: Tove Dreiman

Sound design, audio guide: Elize Arvefjord

Production: Terry Johnson (Johnson & Bergsmark)

Commissioned by Statens konstråd (The Public Art Agency Sweden) and the city of Sundsvall.

Photo credits: Senay Berhe, José Figueroa

Chest

“The fear that the human race might not survive has been replaced by the fear that it will endure.”

Middle C, William H.Gass

In an attempt to imagine a different world, Chest brings us closer to the collapse as a common ground from which new creatures can emerge. Creating hybrids that are not cars, but creatures simultaneously moving and being moved, embodying the myriad properties of protagonists, landscape, and atmosphere.

Chest is a choreography at the intersection of ecology, animality, and masculinity. It folds practices around seeming binaries such as hard and soft, flaccid and erect, hairy and bald, into contradictory landscapes, switching between atmosphere and personhood in trying out ways of being nature to each other.

In Chest, Stina Nyberg continues to explore new musical horizons, this time collaborating with composer Kaki King, based in New York. King is considered one of the world’s greatest living guitarists, known both for her technical mastery and for her constant quest to push the boundaries of the instrument. Chest is the third part of Nyberg’s investigation of the assholeness of (hu)mankind, as previously developed in Sweet (MDT 2022) and The Dawn Chorus (Norrdans 2022).

Premiere: 8 May 2024, Elverket Dansens Hus, Stockholm

Credits
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Choreography: Stina Nyberg
Dance: Robert Malmborg, Stina Nyberg, Pontus Pettersson, Stephen Thompson
Music: Kaki King
Dramaturge: Andros Zins-Browne
Costume, set and mask design: Jenny Nordberg
Light design: Thabiso Kubheka Persson
Film: Senay Berhe
Production: Terry Johnson (Johnson & Bergsmark), Magnus Nordberg (Nordberg Movement)
Residency and co-production: Dansens Hus, The Chocolate Factory Theater and Lower Manhattan Cultural Council (NYC)

Duration: 60 min

Supported by: The Swedish Arts Council, Stockholm stad, Region Stockholm, The Swedish Arts Grants Committee

Photo credits: Res, pavleheidler, Kathryn Butler

Make hay while the sun shines

“All that you touch You Change. All that you Change Changes you. The only lasting truth Is Change.” – Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Sower

Ditching a “neither/nor” in favour of a “yes/and”, Make Hay While the Sun Shines is a dance of constant change. Saying yes to both the habitual and the unknown it samples the dance history of a cross-generational cast of dancers and merges them into new forms. If each moment is a possible future, why not catch them all?

Make Hay While the Sun Shines departs from the incoherency of movements and histories. It engages in time specific and partial views, the uncategorized details that pre-exists the whole, and the chaos called reality. Stemming from a movement practice based on disharmonious change, a dance which might be more like life itself is created: irregular, fascinating, unsuccessful, stumbling, loving and pretty unpredictable.

Make Hay While the Sun Shines is a series of dances developed through movements between Stockholm and New York. Previous iterations have been presented at Center for Performance Research (NYC), Performance Mix (NYC), Dans.Hall (Farsta), La Mama Studios (NYC) and on the grass field outside of MDT.

This performance is a conglomerate and development of several of the previous dances, with an extended cast of dancers, light design by Josefin Hinders and new music by KABLAM.

Credits
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Choreography: Stina Nyberg
Performance: Ingrid Mugalu, Maria Naidu, Maryam Nikandish, Stina Nyberg, Chrysa Parkinson and Katy Pyle
Music composition: KABLAM
Light design: Josefin Hinders
Sound tech: Julia Giertz
Co-dancers in the process: Aurore d’Audiffret, Lydia Östberg Diakité, Molly Engblom. Iréne Hultman
Co-helpers in the process: Zoë Poluch, Yvonne Rainer. Production: Terry Johnson and Nordberg Movement
Administration: The artist co-operative Interim kultur
Co-production: Dansnät Sverige, Norrlandsoperan, MDT

Duration: 40 min

Made possible with support from: The Swedish Arts Council, The Swedish Arts Grants Committee, Stockholm stad

Photo credits: Jose Figueroa

Sweet

”That it will never come again is what makes life so sweet.” – Emily Dickinson

In a series of ten evenings, Stina Nybergs tells ten stories about humanity. From the birth of the human species to our violent journey across the earth and our coming death. What might seem like a tragic end is probably the beginning of an unknown and shiny future, without us.

Sweet is a series of personal, fictive and embodied stories that dig deep into history in order to dare to stay with the unknown future. Stories about the art of living on this planet.

Premiere: 3 November 2022, MDT in Stockholm

Credits
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Choreography and performance: Stina Nyberg
Set and costume design: Jenny Nordberg
Dancing dramaturge: Eleanor Bauer
Production: Terry Johnson (Johnson & Bergsmark), Magnus Nordberg (Nordberg Movement)
Administration: The artist cooperative Interim kultur

Duration; 60 min

Made with support from: Kulturrådet, Stockholm stad

Photo credits: Märta Thisner, Jens Sethzman, Casper Hedberg

Thunderstruck

“Modern science says: The sun is the past, the earth is the present, the moon is the future. From an incandescent mass we have originated, and into a frozen mass we shall turn. Merciless is the law of nature, and rapidly and irresistibly we are drawn to our doom. (…) Meanwhile the cheering lights of science and art, ever increasing in intensity, illuminate our path, and the marvels they disclose, and the enjoyments they offer, make us measurably forgetful of the gloomy future.”
Nikola Tesla “The problem of increasing human energy” 1900

Thunderstruck walks in the footsteps of the genius and madman Nikola Tesla. In the end of the 19th century, the Serbian-American inventor brought us several of our century’s most important innovations in electricity and communication. He also invented the Tesla coil, an electrical resonant transformer circuit used to produce high-voltage, low-current, high frequency alternating-current electricity. Basically, a device that produces lightning bolts and now can be used for entertainment in live electricity shows.

Thunderstruck departs from the 19th century phenomena of touring electricity shows. At a time when electricity was still a scientific novelty it was displayed in public performances as acts of magic. Today, a contemporary heir to the electricity magic show is the Tesla coil performance, making use of the spectacular sound and light effects the coil produces, but often performed in hyper-masculinized, technique-masturbatory and rock’n’roll-fetishistic shows.

In Thunderstruck, Stina Nyberg returns to a time when the artist and scientist believed in transforming the forces of nature into the forces that propel society, harnessing natural energy for crafting nearly magical devices.

Creating an alternative to the existing macho-spectacular Tesla coil shows, Thunderstruck pairs effective technical innovations with a long-term research on science and magic.

Premiere: 28 October 2017, MDT Stockholm

Credits
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Choreography and performance: Stina Nyberg
Assistant on stage: Niklas Ren
Choreographic assistance: Andros Zins-Browne
Research: Sandra Linnell, Stina Nyberg, Zoë Poluch
Composition and sound design: Maria W Horn
Light design: Josefin Hinders
MDT technical supervisor and security: Katti Alm
MDT producer: Frida Tiger
Technical assistance: Axel Norén
Coiler: Finn Hammer / Hammertone
High voltage consultant: Roya Nikjoo
Administration: Interim kultur
Residency, co-production and performances: MDT in Stockholm, Station in Belgrade, The National Touring Theatre of Sweden and residency support by C.off

Duration: 60 min

Supported by: The Swedish Arts Council, The Swedish Arts Grants Committee, Kulturbryggan, City of Stockholm, Stockholm County Council and [DNA] Departures and Arrivals network which is co-financed by the Creative Europe program of the European Commission. Thanks to: David Choi at makerspace Fat Cat Fat Lab NYC, Miroslav Kosanic and Nikola Milenic at makerspace PRAKSA Belgrade, Erik Gabrielsson at KTH.