Advertise on podcast: Cullberg Talks

In the last episode of Small Talks, Benjamin Pohlig meets writer and publisher Fred Taikon who has devoted his entire life to activism been an important voice for the Roma people in Sweden. A large part of his work has been to spread knowledge about the roma language, culture, and life. During Explorations of Now, Fred Taikon shared his experiences, and the history of nomadism, how nomads lived, travelled, and supported themselves in the past. ”The Roma people have been nomads since emigrating from India. During their travel, they have had different types of tents to live in. To make it easier to move from different places, they have had tents that were easy to set up. Some Romas had an animal pulling a cart, or a trolley. Some had donkeys on which they loaded their necessities. Many people ask, why do these people travel around? Some thought that the Romas thought it was romantic and that they wanted a camp life. But that was not the case, the Romas had to support themselves. And the work they performed they found on the roads. All Romas were craftsmen of various kinds. Many of them were coppersmiths and blacksmiths, which meant that they tinned copper vessels and made plows and other tools for farmers. In recent times, the Romas practiced a so-called ”Spilo”. Where they played and danced for a paying audience, the women were often fortune tellers.” – Fred Taikon Explorations of Now is a collaborative project between Cullberg, Kultivator and The Institute for Future Studies, and funded by the Postcode Foundation. 12-15, 19-22 August 2021.

A suspected anomaly in the human genome has caused a few individuals to display behavior never observed before: abstract movement; sudden vocalisation; wordless communication with other entities; uninhibited sensuality; and an acute artistic sensitivity. The scientific community has decided to address them as Homo saltator referring to their dance-like behavior. Scientists all over the world have started taking somatic based dance classes to become more familiar with the issue at hand. Two of these individuals have been spotted around the natural reserve of Orlången in Huddinge, south of Stockholm. In #6, Benjamin Pohlig talks with dancers Eliott Marmouset and Víctor Pérez Armero about an enigmatic durational piece, or is it performance, or maybe a social experiment.   Explorations of Now is a collaborative project between Cullberg, Kultivator and The Institute for Future Studies, and funded by the Postcode Foundation. 12-15, 19-22 August 2021.

Recorded on location at Balingsta Gård in Orlångens nature reserve in Huddinge, Benjamin  Pohlig meets with artist Signe Johannessen and Cullberg dancers Agnieszka Sjökvist Dlugoszewska and Eszter Czédulás for a talk about the video installation Swamp posthumous, the live performance POSTHUMOUS-states, and their shared interest in hybrid bodies, historical paraphrases and the human relationship to animals, both those who walk the earth and the magical.     Signe and the dancers use their own bodies as the point of departure in an investigation of an archaeological find made in 1949 outside Örebro, where a middle-aged female body was found. The finding has puzzled researchers as the body partly consisted of animal parts. She had a cow shoulder, a horseshoe, a pig’s foot and a dog’s jaw. With a swamp as their teacher and companion, they have immersed themselves in more than human perspectives. And, in the time specific performance POSTHUMOUS-states, Agnieszka and Eszter take the work further, into the live performance on this specific location, a glade in the forest of Orlången.    Explorations of Now is a collaborative project between Cullberg, Kultivator and The Institute for Future Studies, funded by The Postcode Foundation. Explorations of Now – Walk in art, with nature in Orlången nature reserve, Huddinge, Stockholm, August 12-15, 19-22, from 10:00. Free admission.  

We’re back with more Small Talks!   This time Benjamin Pohlig talks with Hana Erdman, Louise Dahl and Ulrika Berg about Slowdances/forests, fields and pastures. You are all invited to spend time among the flora and fauna in Orlångens Nature Reserve, and sensorially meander in an expanded now where more kinds of temporal perception may be possible. Slowdances is a series of works where every piece describes a slow experience inside different iterations of context: the theater, the museum, the forest, the church. Each iteration traces kaleidoscopic patterns of dancers sliding between gesture and stillness, dancing passing flow into form, amidst a minimalist celestial soundscape. The phrase ‘slow dance’ is used both as a title and gathering term for dance that resonates with the wider genre of Slow Art: an art movement of embodied watching that calls attention to the experience of time unfolding. Explorations of Now is a collaborative project between Cullberg, Kultivator and The Institute for Future Studies, funded by The Postcode Foundation. Explorations of Now – Walk in art, with nature in Orlången nature reserve, Huddinge, Stockholm, August 12-15, 19-22, from 10:00. Free admission.  

In a series of podcast episodes, Cullberg dancer Benjamin Pohlig meets people on and behind the scenes of the collaborative project Explorations of Now. One part of Benni’s own, personal project for Explorations of Now resulted in an essay in which he investigates the relation between his dancing and ecology. #3 in the special edition Small Talks series presents The Ecologies of my Dancing, by Benjamin Pohlig.  Explorations of Now is a collaborative project between Cullberg, Kultivator and The Institute for Future Studies, funded by The Postcode Foundation.    Explorations of Now – Walk in art, with nature in Orlången nature reserve, Huddinge, Stockholm, August 12-15, 19-22, from 10:00. Free admission. 

In the second episode of Cullberg Talks - Small Talks, dancer Benjamin Pohlig talks with Lars Bergström and Mats Bigert, aka the artistic duo Bigert & Bergström, about their work and the interactive sculpture Phylogenetic Tree Mobile that is part of Exploartions of Now, and placed in Ridhuset on Balingsta gård in Orlången. Lars Bergström and Mats Bigert’s partnership first began in 1986, and have since become internationally recognized for a wide range of conceptually and technically complex art projects. Bigert & Bergström have produced and created art projects ranging from large-scale sculptures and installations to performance and film. Often with a conceptual edge, the core of their work is placed right in the junction between humanity, nature and technology. With energetic curiosity and often using humor as a tool, the duo is known to analyze scientific and social issues discussed in contemporary society, such as climate change or environmental sustainability.   Phylogenetic Tree Mobile is an interactive sculpture that can be activated by humans when climbing on and moving on its various arms. A so-called phylogenetic tree is a graphic model that is usually used to show the relationship between different living organisms. In the sculpture Phylogenetic Tree Mobile, it is the human relationship to the gas carbon dioxide that is shaped. The mobile consists of metal frames that span over 10 meters with step shapes on one side and a counterweight at the other end. The counterweight is a 300 kg heavy CO2 molecule made of cast iron that lies safely on the ground as long as humans can refrain from climbing the evolutionary chart.   Explorations of Now is a collaborative project between Cullberg, Kultivator and The Institute for Future Studies, funded by The Postcode Foundation.     Explorations of Now – Walk in art, with nature in Orlången nature reserve, Huddinge, Stockholm, August 12-15, 19-22, from 10:00. Free admission.  

In a series of short podcast episodes the coming two weeks, Cullberg dancer Benjamin Pohlig meets people on and behind the scenes of the collaborative project Explorations of Now.  First out are the brains behind the project, from Cullberg, the project manager Jane Hopper and from Kultivator on Öland, Mathieu Vrijman, about the ideas behind Explorations of Now, how it all started, and the beauty in having a diversity of perspectives and audiences.    Kultivator is an art collective based in Öland. The interdisciplinary activities include art projects and agriculture that meet social projects and environmental actions, as well as an international residency and exhibition program. About 80 artists have participated in the residency activities over the years, together with about 30 cows, chickens, ducks, sheep and horses. The art collective is led by Mathieu and Malin Vrijman, who in 2017 were awarded the Dynamo  by the Visual Arts Fund/Bildkonstnärsfonden. Explorations of Now is a collaborative project between Cullberg, Kultivator and The Institute for Future Studies, funded by The Postcode Foundation.    Explorations of Now – Walk in art, with nature in Orlången nature reserve, Huddinge, Stockholm, August 12-15, 19-22, from 10:00. Free admission.

This time artistic director Gabriel Smeets meets Aygül Kacaba and Anna Adeniji, workshop leaders in the field of equality, diversity and anti-racism, to talk about the whiteness of Sweden's cultural institutions, particularly in the performing arts. What are their experiences? Where are the problems and the bottlenecks? What needs to be done, and how?    Aygül Kabaca is a certified teacher and earned her Masters in International Development from Columbia University. She is currently Head of Education and Training at Mångkulturellt Centrum, where she leads the strategic and operational work of the education team.   Anna Adeniji defended her dissertation in the subject of gender and culture at Linköping University in 2008. Anna works actively with issues of racism, postcolonialism and representation in the cultural sector. She has been a consultant both at art colleges and at established cultural institutions.

We’re back! Starting out the 2021 Cullberg Talks episodes with dancers Louise Dahl and Unn Faleide on how it all started. On similarities, simpleness, directness and non dramatic dancing, pros and cons, challenges of being part of a group, a new and old normal, and some burnt bridges.

This time we meet two artistic directors who both began new positions at the same time as the corona pandemic spread over the world. Since then, the year 2020 has been filled with constant changes, postponing, cancellations, empty auditoriums, stages and foyers. But it has also been a year of reflection, rethinking, redoing, reevaluating, stretching every possible muscle in an endless creative flow. Cullberg’s artistic director Gabriel Smeets meets Anna Efraimsson from MDT and Johannes Öhman from Dansens Hus in Stockholm in a conversation about infrastructure, diversity, collaborations, taste, and of course corona. 

In episode #6 of Cullberg Talks our guests are dancer and choreographer Jérôme Bel, on the phone from Paris, and Cullberg’s managing director Stina Dahlström. A year ago, Jérôme Bel decided to stop flying, and started rehearsing virtually, over zoom. At Cullberg, Stina Dahlström is working to find ways for transition and sustainable adaptation to climate change, in terms of producing and touring. This is a conversation on the global dance world’s urgent need for change, because of the climate, and not the least due to the Covid-19 pandemic. The episode was recorded in mid-October, prior to the Swedish government’s changed recommendations for audience numbers in theatres, increasing from 50 to 300 as of November 1.      Cullberg is the national and international repertoire contemporary dance company in Sweden, continuously creating and presenting contemporary dance for the many. With dancers and choreographers from all over the world, we are exploring ideas on how dance can be defined, produced and presented. Those explorations are the pillars of a company that is constantly in motion at the heart of the international arena. The core of the company consists of 17 extraordinary dancers with a central role in the creations. 2019-2021, Cullberg works with associated artists Alma Söderberg, Deborah Hay and Jefta van Dinther.

In episode #5 our guests are dancers Sylvie Gehin Karlsson and Mohamed Y. Shika. Sylvie is leaving the company after eleven years to pursue a new career, while Shika joined Cullberg only two years ago. They talk about their parcours as dancers, how to work in an international repertoire company, about changes, challenges, their personal agency and new adventures.    Cullberg is the national and international repertoire contemporary dance company in Sweden, continuously creating and presenting contemporary dance for the many. With dancers and choreographers from all over the world, we are exploring ideas on how dance can be defined, produced and presented. Those explorations are the pillars of a company that is constantly in motion at the heart of the international arena. The core of the company consists of 17 extraordinary dancers with a central role in the creations. 2019-2021, Cullberg works with associated artists Alma Söderberg, Deborah Hay and Jefta van Dinther.