May 3. Alvorada Lundu / Gwen Rakotovao
Taking place on a Sunday, Alvorada Lundu engages with a reflection emerging from the U.S. civil rights movement — voiced by figures such as Malcolm X and James Baldwin — that “the most segregated hour in American life is high noon on Sunday.” The work considers whether this reflection continues to resonate across different times and contexts. On Sunday, May 3rd 2026, in Stockholm, it imagines another possibility: a contemporary dance performance that invites people to come together, where differences exist but separation does not define the moment. Alvorada Lundu is an invitation to stay together.
From 11:30 to 12:30, the room of Weld becomes a site for a durational dance. Performers repeat a movement sequence, gradually introducing subtle variations and layers. Through repetition, the dance accumulates like a prayer, creating a space of persistence, focus, and collective presence.
Audiences are invited to stay for the full hour, inhabiting the space alongside the performers and becoming part of the shared rhythm and attention. The work proposes a simple yet powerful gesture: spending time together without needing to fully know or define one another.
Performed with care and shared attention, this work enacts togetherness through doing, staying, and persisting — a contemporary ritual dance grounded in presence and connection.
Alvorada Lundu is part of Gwen Rakotovao’s PhD Artistic Research exploration : at Stockholm University of the Arts on a “place of yet to become,” focusing on creating dance through the lens of death, ritual, and togetherness.
May 3 at 11.30am to 12.30pm
Weld
Norrtullsgatan 7
Free admission
Book at: book.weld.se
Dancers: in collaboration with SKH: Ela Villanueva, Thea Liversage, Vilma Ehnberg, Elena Sophia Bürer, Andrew Smal
Choreographer: Gwen Rakotovao
Music: Alvorada Lundu – Carlos Nunes, Zé Miguel Wisnik
Weld in collaboration with SKH
GWEN RAKOTOVAO (MG)
is a choreographer, dancer, and artist-researcher whose work unfolds at the intersection of performance, ritual, and cultural inquiry. A PhD candidate at Stockholm University of the Arts, she approaches choreography as both embodied research and poetic practice. Her work explores cultural memory and diaspora, investigating how movement can carry ancestry, transform grief, and imagine futures. Through dance, music, and ritual, she creates choreographic landscapes where the body functions as both archive and horizon. Her choreographic and academic work engages deeply with cultural memory and diaspora, currently focusing on the Malagasy funeral ritual Famadihana as a site for choreographic thinking and embodied knowledge.
She trained at Alvin Ailey, founded her dance company in New York and has developed a body of solo and ensemble works that tour internationally. Her creations — including Initiation, L’amour. La liberté., Fitiavana, and Mitsangana — have been presented at venues and festivals such as the Goethe-Institut (Madagascar), Tokyo Performing Arts Meeting, Biennale de la Danse en Afrique, and Fringe Manila. As a dancer, she has worked with Qudus Onikeku and artists across Europe, Africa, and the United States. Her work has received several distinctions, including the Trophée de l’Originalité at Théâtre de Chaillot, and she is an associate artist with SoaZara Arts et Partage in France.
Weld is supported by the City of Stockholm, the Swedish Arts Council and Region Stockholm.