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.
15-20 September 2020 – The Swedish Ballet: One hundred years ago, from 1920-1925, the experimental ballet The Swedish Ballet existed in Paris. With an initial event at Dansmuséet in Stockholm, Samlingen initaties a five year long research in relation to the ballet, its heritage, and whatever wicked associations they feel relevant to it.
12-13 December 2019 – Telling stories- Samlingen meets Hamburg: As part of the festival Nordwind, Samlingen hosted a workshop with a group of dancers, collecting the subjective and oral histories of Hamburg.
6-7 December 2019 – Samlingen at MDT’s festival “A fine(al) selection”: During this annual festival at the theater MDT in Stockholm, Samlingen made a site specific appearance in relation to the festival, taking on the anus as a portal to universal love.
Spring 2019 – Samlingen on tour with Riksteatern: In collaboration with the National Touring Theater of Sweden (Riksteatern) Samlingen embarked on an investigation of the Swedish dance history with the help of the participants of four local districts. (During this episode with Samlingen, Stina Nyberg was not participating.)
January 2019 – In the works at La MaMa: In conjunction with APAP and with a bunch of great artists, Samlingen presented current herstories and practices at La MaMa Theater in New York.
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?
