Weld side story
Weld Company’s season has started which continues the work Weld side story, where guest choreographers are invited to each interpret the same piece of music and where the title is used as a toolbox for different ideas. In December, this is gathered in a festival.
This fall Weld Company will be presenting a series of works drawn from a jointly investigated theme, Weld side story. The title as it appears, resembles the 1950´s musical and film, and is in this context made into a toolbox for artistic ideas and investigations, each carrying layers of complexity and richness in many aspects and dimensions. Weld Company tries to open up some of these complexities and continue to explore the history and heritage of dance and choreography through extended practices and artistic outcomes, this time inviting guest-choreographers from a variety of genres.
Music is the choreographic focus this fall. The Prologue is a few minutes extracted from the legendary film above. Through altered methods, each invited guest-choreographer is going to work with these thought- and context provoking tunes, approaching it as the symphonic, rhythmical, enigmatic music it is, pulped from its narrative context. But if you know the original story (the West side), you cannot remove the narrative from its tunes, both historical and present, the never ending violence and racial issues intrigued by love. Amongst our collisions also intrigued by love, we confront the development of American dance in the 20th Century through making a cross reading of the American Jazz dance tradition and the Martha Graham Technique, letting our bodies delve into both. We invite further guests to collide with The Prologue and we invite the possible failure of dancing a dance our bodies are not used to invite.
We have invited two very appreciated and legendary teachers who have worked in Stockholm for more than 30 years and who are part of Swedish dance history after teaching hundreds of students in these genres. Each contributes a choreography to the Prologue taken from their specific style.
In the autumn of 2020, we showed the choreography that Jeanette Bolding created for the company within this framework. This autumn, we will do a new process together with last year’s documented video material.
As an extra bonus this autumn, Weld Company participates in a workshop and further work with Japanese dancer Eiko Otake, who is invited to Stockholm by curator Camila Marambio as part of her postdoctoral studies. We do not yet know how to process this experience, but it will completely blend into our work.
Additional artists create a framing and additional interpretations of the Prologue and we invite the possible failure it means to dance a dance that our bodies are not so used to.
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Invited choreographers 2021
The first process will be performed by musician, dancer, choreographer Marcus Doverud who combines singing and choreographic embodiment of music, with interpretations and analyzes. With Weld Company, he continues his musical exploration, this time through our chosen musical theme.
Jeanette Bolding is a contemporary teacher and dancer trained at Julliard School and Martha Graham School in New York. After working as a dancer in international contexts, she later moved to Stockholm to teach at the Ballet Academy. In 2020, Jeanette choreographed Graham technology to the music of the Prologue. This autumn, we will be processing this material
Charles Moore, is a legendary jazz dance teacher and choreographer, born and raised in the USA, living in Stockholm since 1974. With his cool fast style he has choreographed and taught almost every jazz choreographer in Sweden and had a huge impact on Stockholm’s dance scene as a teacher at the Ballet Academy.
The company works with the Norwegian choreographer Inés Belli, whose work has been inspired by Yvonne Rainer and Anna Teresa De Keersmaeker, and addresses the question ”What would happen to jazz dance if it moved side by side with the postmodern idea?” This is a topic that she explored in her work ”Postmodern Cool” and which she will now continue to explore together with Weld Company.
Dance artist Salka Ardal Rosengren works with dance and performance. She recently took a master’s degree at Stockholm University of the Arts. In her final project Lasting Figures she focused on African American jazz and above all on swing, lindy hop and blues dance. There she worked with touch, harmony, rhythmic footwork, mutual sensitivity and with the intimate space that arises in the dance between two people.
Anna Koch will make an inventory of material from an archive created during last year’s version and create a number of rhythmic interventions based on this material.
In 2020, both JUCK and Nasim Aghili worked with the company and shared their rich practices both physically and digitally, which the company may return to visit this autumn.Participating in Weld Company 2021: Anna Westberg, Sybrig Dokter, Disa Krosness, Per Sacklén, Marie Fahlin, Noah Hellwig, Andrea Aja Svensson, Robin Dingemans, Majula Drammeh, Adam Seid Tahir, Escarleth Pozo, Maipelo Gabang, Anna Pehrsson.
In 2019, the Belgian choreographer Anna Teresa De Keersmaeker rehearsed a new choreography for West Side Story on Broadway, directed by Ivo van Hove, which premiered in early 2020. The transition from one context to another raised questions about which movement is dancing where and by whom.
During the autumn, a number of open showings will take place, which will end with a festival-like event on December 9–12.