Community Projects

Eleven people, aged 14 to 78, from Härnösand participated in Norrdans’ community project KUDE (Translated: Municipal Outward-Facing Dance Ensemble). After 15 weeks of work, the project culminated in the performance Rota runt på lämpligt sätt. The project was led by Jonathan Starr, a multidisciplinary artist from UK with a background in Norrdans’ resident ensemble. He primarily works with movement and sound and was responsible for inspiring and supporting the participants throughout the process.

The performance consisted of a blend of different dances woven together to create new, imaginative worlds. It explored how people can coexist, play, share, build, and remember together. The work zoomed in on the smallest details and out across the entire space, while the landscape and the location of the performance became part of the work.

The audience was arranged around the stage in a square, creating direct and close contact between dancers and spectators, at times almost dissolving the sense of distance. On stage, there were paper sculptures and loose sheets that dancers and audience members drew and painted on together, inspiring movements that gradually transitioned into dance. The paper sculptures were moved around during the performance, and the dance evolved from individual, scattered movements into more collective formations.

The premiere took place on April 27, 2024, at Härnösand Library.

Participating local residents

Elin Olofsson
Erika Lundqvist
Anna Palmstierna Burenius
Frida Hamrén
Andrea Carvallo
Ana Alcantara
Patrik Lundgren
Marja Bennett
Eva Henning
Elisabeth Kalén
Jeff Forssell

About the choreographer Jonathan Starr

Jonathan Starr (he/they) is a choreographer, dancer, and sound maker, born in the United Kingdom and based in Stockholm.

Since moving to Sweden in 2019, Jonathan has worked with Norrdans under artistic director Martin Forsberg and has performed in works by artists including Jeanine Durning, Stina Nyberg, OR/ELLER, Martin Forsberg, Ioannis Mandafounis, Nicole Beutler, and Ludvig Daae.

As an artist, Jonathan works across many mediums: performance, sound, workshops, podcasts, and walking-based projects. Their work is often process-driven and explores themes such as playfulness, birds, magic, and documentation. Jonathan uses dance, sound, field recordings, and drawing as ways of noticing and re-noticing the world, often starting from simple gestures such as walking, listening, sketching, or imitating birds, which then develop into layered compositions.

Technical coordinators: Johan Hakala and Axel Antonsson
Dance developer: Jenny Lundmark

Together with a group of women, dance artist Polena Kolia Petersen created our second community project 'female (with) space.'

The project started with an open workshop for women in the Sundsvall area. A large number of participants then resulted in a smaller core group. This group met several times a week, both physically and digitally, to create the community project. It was of great importance for Polena Kolia Petersen to create the project together with the participants, as well as letting everyone's voices be heard. The community project originated from the question of how the public space shapes women and how women shape the public space.

"I have a great interest in exploring how the anchoring of dance in everyday life can enable us to develop more sustainable structures for a common future"
– Polena Kolia Petersen.

Polena Kolia Petersen has an interest in creating and exploring processes in relationships. Her artistic dance practice is of both physical, aesthetic and political basis. Often her work addresses the relationship between artist, audience and dance.

Participant in the project
Anne Säfvenberg, Jill Taube, Karin Kämsby, Lina Lotta Lundberg, Pearl Mtembu, Pia Fridell, Rebecka Jensen, Polena Kolia Petersen.
Dance artist: Polena Kolia Petersen
Producer: Andreas Thorell

Öm.tålig, our first Community Project, is very close to our heart! 

A group of men from Kramfors was guided by choreographer Maria Ulriksson on a journey where stereotypes were examined. The aim was to create an open space where the men dared and had the access to explore their own selves and use dance as a tool in their search.

Öm.tålig is a tender and powerful illustration of what it’s like to be human. A fragile yet strong performance about and by a group of men. It digs beneath the surface of what it means to be a man and to live in the sparsely populated areas of the Swedish north. Among gentle hands, pulse, breathing and patterns, a new masculinity emerges. One where fragility becomes a strength, and with muscles become a way to dance. One that is not afraid of closeness, the dance and the intimacy that vibrates behind the sternum.

Sore. Enduring. Loyal. Or neither? Who is he really, the rural man from Norrland?

Öm.tålig had its premiere November 7, 2020 at Kramfors theater.

Maria Ulriksson, choreographer

The intention of dancer Maria Ulriksson from Västerbotten is often to create works where you in the audience really get to meet the dancer – but also yourself. Interactivity and the opportunity for the audience to participate in and influence the works is not uncommon. Maria’s choreographic work has been described as containing sensitivity, presence and communication where the movement is the core and the starting point for the tone in the works. She likes to weave in sincerity, integrity and vulnerability together with heaviness, playfulness and power.

Anna-Sóley Tryggvadóttir, composer

Stockholm-based composer and sound designer Anna-Sóley Tryggvadóttir has since graduating from the Sound Design program (2010) at Dramatic Institute managed many exciting projects, including TONCIRKELN, STADSRÖRA and CASABLANCA. There is an exploratory tone in her work, where the spectrum extends from norm-critical workshops in instrument construction to the examination of the atmosphere of Norrtälje and the inhabitants view of the place. More info about Anna-Sóley Tryggvadóttir.