“The fear that the human race might not survive has been replaced by the fear that it will endure.”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

“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.

”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

“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