Dec 1–8. The In-Between Talks
The In-Between Talks is an interview project where Nelia Naumanen has asked questions to classmates who have graduated from the Bachelor’s Programme in Dance at Stockholm University of the Arts in 2023. How is your existence as a newly graduated dancer? What does the future look like? What are you preoccupied with? And how do you make the transition from everyday life in school to creating routines in a now open life? By signing up, you get an interview every day for eight days, a bit like an advent calendar.
Register by mail to inbetween@weld.se no later than December 1 at 12.00 to receive the interviews in your mailbox.
The In-Between Talks
Interviews between friends who recently graduated as dancers and are now trying to navigate what that means.
In June 2023, me and my sixteen classmates graduated from the BA in Dance Performance at Stockholm University of the Arts. During our studies, one of the most recurring parts were introduction rounds – sitting on the floor of a studio with a new teacher, everyone introducing themselves one by one in a circle. It’s quite fascinating to hear people you know well introduce themselves again and again almost weekly throughout three years. Each time one wonders: How will they do it this time? What things stay the same? What changes?
Five months have passed. It’s not really a full beginning anymore, nor something established either. Things are emerging. We’re in between, we’re digesting, we’re “trying to make it work.” We’re sensing the air and feeling all the feelings. We’re keeping up with dancing, showing up in the studio, rolling our feet with fascia balls. We are enjoying the dance, even though it’s not looking too good for the art field in Sweden with the current government, and it’s not looking very good for the whole world with the climate crisis and other violent, burning directions. British visual artist David Shrigley has this drawing of a circle made of fire, inside of which it says: “you dance here – we will clap and cheer.” I think about that picture a lot. I love to dance in that circle of fire, but sometimes I wonder if it needs to be burning constantly, if it could stop burning for a moment for things to not be so precarious for once.
The life after graduation has been an open sea and many mornings I wake up and I think I should be doing things but I’m not yet exactly sure what those things are. I want to meet my friends on this shaky ground. We have been learning how to work collectively for three years, and it would feel strange to stop now. I want to talk to my friends about dancing, practicing, our daily lives. What feels urgent, what keeps us dancing. What we are up to. With these interviews we are writing down the in-between, this moment of finally being out there and trying to understand what to do. Dealing with money jobs, questions, doubts, excitements, jealousies, and hopes. Getting lost in the endless universe of dance, like Philippa Felländer- Tsai puts it in her interview. Getting curious about dancing, trying to nurture our inner dancer.
In a way these interviews are just yet another introduction round, only this time we are outside of Brinellvägen 58, introducing ourselves to new people and contexts again. And after the introduction round we get up from the floor, stretch our legs and that stiff part between the shoulder blades, and begin dancing again.
The In-Between Talks consists of interviews of Philippa Felländer-Tsai, Nelia Naumanen, Nellie Björklund, Mira Jochimsen, Kacper Migas, Joanna Kerkelä, Brina Dokl, and Bartek Mikuła. All interviews were done during October and November 2023 through talking, and later transcribed to text.
Concept: Nelia Naumanen and Anna Koch
Interviews and texts: Nelia Naumanen. Nelia’s interview was done with Bartek Mikuła as the interviewer.
Editing help for the introduction text: Bartek Mikuła
Credits: Question “what are you full of?” is influenced by a similar question Eleanor Bauer asked us during our education at SKH.
Done with the support of Weld.
Weld is supported by Stockholms stad, the Swedish Arts Council and Region Stockholm