Samlingen started their official collaboration in 2013 when we staged a work on a new collection for the Dance Museum in Stockholm together with nine dancers from the Cullberg Ballet (Samlingen translates in english as both “The Collection” and “The Meeting”). Since then we have organized a series of events, made specifically for the time and situation in which they are performed, but always dealing with the history and herstory of dance.
January 6th 2019 – In the works at La MaMa: In conjunction with a bunch of great artists, Samlingen will present current herstories and practices.
2018-2019 – The new collection of Riksteatern: During 2019, Samlingen will visit different cities in Sweden to collect and create the Swedish history of dance as told through practitioners around the country.
2016 – Group works? at Works at Work: We worked in residency and held a speech at the Works at Works symposium “Group works? On feminism, friendship and borderlessness” in Copenhagen in October 2016.
2015 – Post Dance Conference: Samlingen held a key note speech in their own collective and feminist way at the Post Dance Conference in Stockholm. You can read it here: Samlingen speech Post Dance. After the conference, I had a conversation with Adriano Wilfert-Jensen about it, you can read it in Movement Research Journal: The Postdance Dialogues.
2015 – The new collection of Kulturhuset: In September 2015 the choreographic project Samlingen invaded the foyer of Hörsalen at Kulturhuset to celebrate the official and inofficial, forgotten and untold oral history of dance. Departing from Kulturhuset’s opening in 1974, Samlingen invited female identified dance artists from all generations in a series of gatherings to orally share their story about the his/herstory of dance. During the public days at Kulturhuset, Samlingen created a time line with an overloaded canon, a series of dances speculating about the future and round table conversations with invited guests. All made with the help of the audience and the dance community. As part of Samlingen at Kulturhuset, four radio conversations were recorded which you can listen to below, or here. Read more here
2013 – The new collection of the Dance Museum: Speculating about an alternative past and a possible future, nine dancers who embody the rich and acclaimed history of the Cullberg Ballet and five freelance choreographers constructed a new collection for the museum of dance in Stockholm. For two weeks they inhabited, inhibited and exhibited the Cullberg ballet – collecting the artifacts, ideologies, costumes, dances, personalities, choreographies, masks, movements and politics. Through collecting, contesting, re-animating and fabricating herstories and histories we transformed the museum, but not just any museum, we transform the museum of dance. Through the act of collecting, SAMLINGEN meets in a place reserved to preserve the past, and shape a future. How can one think about the ephemerality of dancing in this context: dancing as a physical yearning, as a social movement, as an historical event, as an (art)work, as work and as a collectivity generated by doing?
