TUESDAY MARCH 3 | 19.30
Performing underscore
WITH KATARINA ERIKSSON, MÅSEN ERLANDSSON, KERSTIN ABRAHAMSSON, LISA LARSDOTTER PETTERSON, OTTO RAMSTAD & SALLY E DEAN
DANSSTATIONEN, PALLADIUM
Dancers from Sweden and international contexts meet in Performing Underscore #3 – a dance performance in which improvisation is both method and artistic language. Each performance is shaped in the moment and can never be repeated.
This year’s edition features our Swedish senior and most experienced pioneers in the field of improvisation; Katarina Eriksson, Kerstin Abrahamsson, Måsen Erlandsson and Lisa Larsdotter Pettersson. As well as Sally E Dean (US/UK/N) and Otto Ramstad (US/N) who are connected to global pioneers of somatic practice and improvisation such as Steve Paxton, Stephanie Skura, Joan Skinner, Surprapto, Lisa Nelson and Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen. Together they represent a long-standing and deeply rooted practice in which improvisation is a refined and distinct genre within contemporary dance.
Through a rigorous and devoted practice, philosophical, psychological, and political questions are explored through the moving body. Listening – to the space, to one another, and to the body’s own experience – is central.
Performing Underscore #3 is an experiment and an event that can never be repeated. A choreography of intimacy, relationships, unpredictability, risk-taking, and presence – but also of skill, intricacy, and precision emerging from an experienced embodied craft.
Malmö-based Herman Müntzing supports the performance with a sound landscape and Uli Ruchlinski with light.
The evening is organized by Tuva Hildebrand and the Platform for Improvisation & Somatics, and is part of a mini-festival and symposium on somatic dance practices taking place in March 2026.
What is a score?
A score can be compared to a musical score, but it is open to interpretation. It may consist of instructions, text, questions, or visual information that the dancer interprets through improvisation.
WEDNESDAY MARCH 4 | 19.00
– along the lines
WITH EVA KARCZAG & BETTINA NEUHAUS
FRANK GALLERY & STUDIOS
Along the Lines is a mapping of two somatic dance and improvisation rhizomatic lineages through the personal narrative of Eva Karczag and Bettina Neuhaus. In this performance lecture they will unfold their ancestry in terms of people and practices through-out their life-time, and in the end we will be able to add ourselves to this rhizomatic map.
In the lecture/performance ‘Along the lines’, we invite the audience into an interactive encounter. In each performance, it is the curiosity of the watchers, as well as the recognition of interests and intersections both of us have in common, that builds a unique journey. We share personal narratives of seminal moments, encounters and experiences that shaped our individual histories, and were decisive in guiding the trajectory of our artistic paths. In so doing, we create a multi-directional map in the space. As constellations unfold, they reveal the multi-dimensional nature of our journeys. These took place within the historical context of post-Judson dance, and reflect our individual methodologies, both of which are rooted in our on-going engagement and practice within somatic approaches.
Photos, books, recordings and objects, placed in space, concretize different stations of our past – each being a key to a specific memory or story. Before and after the lecture, audience members can explore these in their own time.
Artists, methodologies and circumstances, referred to along the way, reveal the impact and significance of experiential, personalized and liberating approaches on artistic, educational and human growth. A mesh of connections is exposed, that has allowed inspiration and knowledge to flow between places, people and times.We continue to explore sharing ATL through different formats, including the website, <alongthelines.net>, launched in 2022, whose content we are continually expanding. In Malmö, we will be present via zoom to answer audience questions, thereby becoming part of the materials placed in the space.
Eva Karczag
Independent dance artist. Since 1973, performs predominantly at experimental venues and teaches at major colleges and studios throughout the USA, Europe and Australia. Advocates for explorative methods of dance making that are informed by dance improvisation and mindful body practices. Has an MFA (Dance Research Fellow) from Bennington College, VT. During the 1990s was on the faculty of the European Dance Development Center, Arnhem, Netherlands. Member of Trisha Brown Dance Company (1979-85).
Bettina Neuhaus
Independent dance artist and certified Skinner Releasing Technique (SRT) teacher who has been working in the field of performance for 3 decades, collaborating with dancers, musicians and light designers. Her work investigates the relationship between the tangible, multi- sensorial dancing body with its inherent imagination, intelligence and poetry and its social and ecological context. She has an MA (Dance Creative Practice) from Trinity Laban Conservatoire London and teaches Instant Composition and SRT at major academies and studios across Europe. http://www.bettinaneuhaus.com
fri mar 6 | 19.00
– somatic costume dressing room
WITH SALLY E DEAN
ALMA SÖDERBERG STUDIO
TALK & PERFORMANCE
Undressing the somatic politics of touch and attention
In a culture that prioritizes the visual, our eyes often operate through distance, leading us to perceive the world as separate, consumable objects. This session “undresses” this ocularcentric climate, proposing that tactile, touch-based costume approaches are potent political agents of connection. Rooted in a “politics with a small p,” this research seeks an antidote to disconnection by fostering intimacy, reciprocity, and a “sense of the real.”
The Somatic Costume Dressing Room functions as a liminal site of “entanglement”, a threshold between daily life and performance that harbours the transformative process of dressing up. In this space, a choreography of attention is found in the intimate practice of engaging with our bodies and materials. Here, costumes are no longer static garments but elements co-designed in the moment to meet a wearer’s immediate psychophysical needs—such as sensing the buoyancy of the skull or the weight of the pelvis.
This live site of inquiry is both experienced and witnessed, blurring the roles of designer, performer, and audience. The session features the dedicated dressing of one person—a sensorial ritual revealing how costume is co-created through the body’s movement and touch—alongside open invitations for others to wear the Somatic Costumes themselves. Through this dual lens, we investigate how the “art of attending” can transform our awareness and reconnect us to our bodies and the environment.
Sally E Dean (NO/UK/USA) is an international performing artist, teacher, and improviser with over 25 years of experience integrating the fields of dance, somatic practices, and costume design. She is currently a PhD Research Fellow at the Oslo National Academy of the Arts, where her research further develops her long-term collaborative Somatic Movement, Costume & Performance Project (2011–present). This body of work focuses on co-creating Somatic Costumes that generate psychophysical awareness and immersive sensorial performances. Her PhD research redefines choreography as the `art of attending´, challenging ocularcentrism to foster embodied reconnection through Somatic Costume and the prioritization of touch.Sally is a dedicated advocate for somatic-based methods, with foundational training in Skinner Releasing Technique, Amerta Movement, Environmental Movement (Helen Poynor), and Scaravelli Yoga. In addition to her own work, Sally has performed for choreographers such as Stephanie Skura (US), Joan Davis (IR), and Katrine Kirsebom (NO). Her site-specific and theatre staged works—ranging from Javanese traditional markets to London’s The Place—have been supported by Arts Council England and the British Council. Her publications interrogate the meeting of somatic practice and costume design to transform the sensorial experience for both performer and audience. www.sallyedean.com
AND THE SAME EVENING AFTER THE PERFORMANCE WE WILL HAVE A PANEL TALK:
PANEL TALK:
WHAT IS SOMATICS?
20.30
WITH EVA KARCZAG, OLIVE BIERINGA, SALLY E DEAN, WOLFGANG WEISER & FREDERIC GIES
ALMA SÖDERBERG STUDIO
ON HISTORY, METHOD, LINEAGE AND ART
In this panel talk we will unfold what somatics, somatic practice and somatic dance practice is and its heritage, lineage and ancestry. We will speak about the phenomenons connection to dance and artistic practice; its methods, ethics and intention; and anything that you as a participator in the room want to ask and are thinking about.
SUNDAY MARCH 8 | 15.00
– TEA salon: all my relations
SKÅNES DANSTEATER, BÅGHALLEN
Tea Salon: ALL OUR RELATIONS
Warmly welcome to a contemplative performance space in the black box at Skånes Dansteater where we gather for conversations and experiences around existential questions through ritual and performance. The theme of the salon is “TO ALL OUR RELATIONS.”
We live in a Western world that has mastered the material. What if wealth were not determined by a number in a bank account, but rather by the amount of joy and gratitude we feel in our relationships? This tea salon is a moment, a ceremony, and a conversation to remember and honor the relationships all around us — from stones, to plants, to animals, to humans in all their forms. Which relationships are most present in your life? Which ones do you tend to forget, and might wish to remember today?
We have invited four performance artists to reflect this theme through their art:
Pavle Heidler – Sun Practice
Siriol Joyner – Concert
Tuva Hildebrand – short sharing of her practice Song of the Flesh
Philippe Blanchard – Ending meditation
Olive Bieringa – Opening meditation
We will share herbal tea prepared with plants connected to the theme.
Warmly welcome,
Marie
Marie Klawitter is a space holder, dancer, and community artist. She initiated the tea salon and is driven by a wish to create spaces where art, conversation, and ritual help us meet the existential questions of our time — a place to be, to heal, to ponder, to be in the body-mind, and to meet the temporary community that forms in the room. A place to try, to fail, and to find one another.
FRI MAR 13 | 16.00
– residency performance:
speak through me / tala genom mig då
A SOLO RESEARCH WITH INA DOKMO
SKÅNES DANSTEATER, BÅGHALLEN
Ina is currently exploring embodied connections with her ancestry. Through shifting characters, fragments of memory, and textures, she moves through different states. This new work springs from her practice of staging experiential connections, as developed in Hovering Things (2017). This performance is a first attempt—an exploration of what the work may become.
Ina Dokmo is a dance artist dedicated to the sensorial, experiential dimensions of dancing and choreography. Her own dance practice has since 2004 been her journey into fields of knowledge such as Chinese medicine, ecology, embryology and anatomy. Ina often explores relations between humans and more-than-humans. Teaching is an important part of her practice. Ina gives treatments as a shiatsu therapist which profoundly influences her as a dancer, choreographer and teacher.
SUN MAR 15 | 14.00
– COME AND SEE WHAT WE DO
A CONTACT IMPROVISATION EXHIBITION
WITH ANNA PIPPI WALLIN & CI FOLKS
FRANK GALLERY & STUDIOS
MORE INFO COMING SOON
FRI MAR 20 | 19.00
– BOTTOMS FOR CHRIST;
NO FIXED POSITION
WITH ESTRELLX SUPERNOVA
FRANK GALLERY & STUDIOS
I grew up attending very conservative Latinx Pentecostal churches in the U.S. and memories from this era have been surfacing up within my consciousness lately. I am not necessarily interested in unpacking my relationship to Pentecostal Christianity within this work, but I am interested in revealing parts of the spiritual ecosystem I have created for myself (based on this initial belief system) that honor my queerness, belief in something greater than my physical self, belief in God/dess.
These initial episodes of Bottoms for Christ will implement a mixture of movement, tableaux vivante, voice, and audience engagement as mechanisms for excavating alternative subjectivities of the erotic in service of expressing what it has felt like (and feels like) to engage with intimacy after corporeal-relational ruptures have occurred. The work asks, “What is safe enough for me right now and then again right now? How can a heart-centered gaze support my body with softening? Can we touch without touching or without demanding specific expectations? What part of you aches? What part of you experiences the most pleasure?”
In future performative episodes, I will share insights into the beauty of missed encounters, glory holes as pseudo black holes, the phenomenon of Twin Flames, intimacy choreography, kink and fetish play, rendering the messy art of consent and negotiation visible, phantom limbs, and more.
Estrellx Supernova (they/them) is a queer, sound-sensitive, Afro-Guatemalan-American experimental dance artist, performer, writer and creative producer who devises choreographic performance installations, interventions, and situations. Within their work, they use duration, divination, movement improvisation, social dance forms, voice, and drag aesthetics. Some of their current research questions include, “Are we celebrating or mourning or both? What do you really want and how exactly do you want it? What do we do with the legacies we have inherited?”
At-present, they are researching choreography-as-ritual, ecologies of intimacy (e.g. power dynamics, consent, the art of negotiation, intimacy coordination, active witnessing), Americanisms, influencers and pop stars as modern day prophets, and the queering of Christ consciousness through a series of performative episodes called Bottoms for Christ.
Beyond the context of live performance, they design, curate, and co-facilitate somatic performance labs called RHIZOMATICA and are actively authoring a Substack titled Bottoms for Christ (which is where the title of the aforementioned episodes stems from) and a tarot deck called El Tarot de Quebrantamiento (aiming to be published by Dec. 2027)
Their performative and pedagogical offerings can be considered playgrounds where the aforementioned questions, topics, projects creatively collide with the desires of those in the room allowing for slowness, softness, vulnerability, and heart-centered dialogue to emerge.
SAT MAR 21 | 18.30
– SONG OF THE FLESH
WITH TUVA HILDEBRAND & ULI RUCHLINSKI
SKÅNES DANSTEATER
In Song of the Flesh Tuva Hildebrand invites you to witness a practice-based choreography; a study on the power relations between perception, behavior, body and language.
Song of the Flesh is a raw lo-fi moving landscape of sensation, desire, emotion as motion, gesture and sound. A leap into the unpredictable, vulnerable and absurd. Through practice the work attempts to understand the act of recognition and the formation of the self in relation; the spell and limitations of language. It is fascinated by the too-muchness of the body; a body that leaks, spills over and may unfold itself.
Song of the Flesh attempts to exist in the fullness of the unfinished; of always becoming and never arriving; of not knowing together.
The choreographic practice is supported by a live composed immersive soundscape by Uli Ruchlinski, which highlights the obscurity of the movement material. As well as a minimalist light design, also created by Uli Ruchlinski, entwined with the sound. Ruchlinski works with the concept that light and sound are inseparable and emerging together in the creative process, in close dialogue with the movement.
The project is initiated by choreographer and dancer Tuva Hildebrand, and its process is a collaboration between her, choreography and practice coach Jeanine Durning, dramaturg Sally O’Neill and light and sound artist Uli Ruchlinski.
RESHUFFLING RELATIONS 