Tues 20 – Fri 23 June
Sadler’s Wells
Conversations, curatorial and choreographic practice will take place in the studio with artists/curators.
Participating artists/curators:
Alex Roberts UK/IS/NO
Ásgerður Gunnarsdóttir IS/NO
Pontus Petterson SE
Karina Sarkissova SE
Hanna Gillgren SE/UK
Heidi Rustgaard NO/UK
Lauren A Wright US/UK
Noémie Solomon CAN/UK
Joe Moran (UK)
Alex Roberts
Alexander Roberts (UK/IS/NO) has worked extensively as an artist, dramaturg and curator in Europe and different parts of the world. Current Artistic and Managing Director at Rosendal Theatre in Trondheim, Norway, former co-Director of Reykjavik Dance Festival (2013-2020), co-founder of the Performing Arts MFA at Iceland University of the Arts (2015-2020), and co-founder of Teenagers in Reykjavík (2015-). A central part of Alexander’s work currently centres on how to involve people of diverse ages, backgrounds, abilities, and orientations in the institution of conditions that are more experimental, inclusive, and sustainable for everyone.
Alexander and Ásgerður were co-Artistic Directors of the international performing arts platform Reykjavík Dance Festival (2014 – 2020 ) and Co-Artistic Directors of artistic and curatorial initiative Teenagers in Reykjavík (2015- 2020). The pair have been approaching the performing arts as a site for community building where anti-racist, pro-queer, anti-colonial, interspecies and feminist ways of being together can be sought after and fought for. Their work has focussed on how the city and those dwelling in it can be empowered to speak and act through the performing arts, and simultaneously how artists can be empowered to bring their questions and practices into significant conversation and collaboration with the city.
Ásgerður Gunnarsdóttir
Ásgerður Gunnarsdóttir (IS/NO) works as a curator, dramaturg and a teacher within the field of contemporary dance and performing arts in Norway, Iceland and internationally. She currently works as a curating producer and dramaturg at DansiT in Trondheim, as well as working on independent projects internationally. Her curatorial interests and practices evolve around how to distribute curatorial agency to lesser heard voices within the performing arts.
Pontus Petterson
Pontus Pettersson is a Swedish artist, dancer, curator and choreographer with dance training from the Danish National School of Performing Arts and a master’s degree in choreography from SKH and in visual arts from Konstfack. Applying choreography, the body and movement to everything he does, his work ranges from installations, poetry and fountains to cat practicing, fortune telling, curatorial projects as well as dance on and off stage
Karina Sarkissova
Karina Sarkissova is a choreographer, dramaturg and curator based in Stockholm. She graduated in 2012 from the School for New Dance Development in Amsterdam (SNDO) and in 2019 from Dutch Art Institute (DAI). Karina is a co-founder of höjden in Östberga, a house for artistic production. Karina’s practice is dramaturgical, choreographic and curatorial; she is regularly working with other artists’ work and develops choreographic contexts.
Hanna Gillgren
Hanna Gillgren is a Swedish choreographer, curator, performer and lecturer, based in London for the last 25 years. Hanna has choreographed and taught to a variety of ages and abilities both in a professional and academic context since 2000.
Together with choreographer Heidi Rustgaard (NO) she formed H2DANCE in 1999, and have since made trans disciplinary works, working primarily between Norway, Sweden and the UK.They have co-created nine full-evening international touring performances co-produced by partners in the UK and Nordic countries, aside from various shorter works and commissions. In 2018 H2DANCE initiated and has since curated Fest en Fest an international festival of expanded choreography presenting British and Nordic artists in London, Cambridge and Colchester.
Hanna has delivered commissions for among others The Place, Norrdans SE, London Contemporary Dance School and Trinity Laban. Hanna is currently a Senior Lecturer at Roehampton University.
Heidi Rustgaard
Heidi trained as a dancer and now works as a choreographer, curator and performer. She recently finished an MRes in Advanced Practises/Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths, University of London, with the project Queer Choreo Curation, off-score, wobbles and conviviality.
Since 1999, she has worked collaboratively as a choreographer and performer duo with Hanna Gillgren operating as H2DANCE, working between Norway, Sweden and the UK. They have co-created nine full-evening international touring performances co-produced by partners in the UK and Nordic countries, aside from various shorter works and commissions.
In 2018, H2DANCE founded and has since curated Fest en Fest, an international festival of expanded choreography presenting British and Nordic artists in London, Cambridge and Colchester.
Heidi has delivered commissions for The Place, The Victoria & Albert and Natural History Museum in London, Transitions/Trinity Laban, London Contemporary Dance School, and The National Centre for Circus Arts. As a performer, Heidi has worked for companies like Duckie, Clod Ensemble, seven sisters group, Colin Pool, and Silence Crossing.
Heidi is currently a lecturer in choreography at Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance.
Lauren A Wright
Lauren A Wright is a curator, programmer and producer. She is formerly Head of Programmes at Metroland Cultures and Programme Director at Siobhan Davies Dance, where she initiated the CONTINUOUS programme to commission and tour dance in visual arts contexts. She was artistic director of the 2015 Biennial of the Americas in Denver, Colorado and curator at Turner Contemporary. She holds a PhD in Humanities and Cultural Studies from the London Consortium, University of London.
Noémie Solomon
Noémie Solomon works in the field of choreography as a writer, teacher, dramaturge, and curator. She received her PhD from New York University where her dissertation, “Unworking the Dance Subject,” was awarded the Michael Kirby Memorial Prize. She has taught dance history and performance theory at various institutions including McGill University, Brown University, Hollins University, and NYU. She edited the DANSE collection with Les presses du réel, which translates and presents key texts on the somatic and linguistic trades between French and North American choreographic cultures. Her curatorial initiatives have been featured in various institutions internationally including Istanbul Modern, MoMA PS1, and the Gropius Bau. Noémie is Director of the Institute for Curatorial Practice in Performance and currently working as advisor and associate curator with the Villa Albertine 2023 Dance Season.
Joe Moran
Joe Moran is a British-Irish choreographer with a wide-ranging practice incorporating performance, critical writing, drawing, curation and advocacy. His work centres the body and embodied presence as a site of complex subjectivities and political unrest with queering frequently deployed as its principal critical strategy. Joe’s work is informed by a background in improvisation and experimentation, and a fascination with the problems and opportunities of formal choreographic composition and notions of expanded choreography. He works extensively in galleries and visual art contexts, as well as making works for the stage and in film. Joe is Artistic Director of Dance Art Foundation through which his performance, organising and curatorial work is produced, including advocacy projects that centre independent artists and collective action for systemic change.
Recent choreographic works include the exhibition Its contours, Its movements, part of Fest en Fest festival of expanded choreography (2022), the film Materiality Will Be Rethought(2020) commissioned by Whitechapel Gallery and shown at Rencontres Internationales, Paris, Haus der Kulturen der Wel, Berlin and Mexico City International Video Dance Festival, where it was awarded the Best Choreography Prize (2022), and Arrangement at Tanzfestival Winterthur (2022), Tanzhaus NRW, Dusseldorf (Tanzmesse 2022), Tanzwerkstatt Europa, Munich (2022) and Sadler’s Wells (2019). Other recent performances include NottDance festival (2019), TantsuRUUM, Talinn (2019), Wysing Arts Centre (2018), Bluecoat (2018) coinciding with the Liverpool Biennial and Kettle’s Yard (2018).
Joe has worked internationally as a dancer with choreographers Deborah Hay (USA), Florence Peake (UK), Siobhan Davies (UK, Bank project) and Stina Nyberg (Sweden) among others. His adaptation of Deborah Hay’s solo At Once, and lecture-performance on the work, has toured widely in the UK and internationally. Notable collaborations include with composer Kaffe Matthews, visual artists Eva Rothschild, Carlos Bunga and Magali Reus, and dancers Temitope Ajose and Andrew Hardwidge.