Archives: Personal Portraits

SIMKA is the project name for the visual artists Simon Häggblom’s and Karin Lind’s shared artistic activities. Through SIMKA they combine their knowledge and skills from visual art, set design and landscape architecture. The core of their work is the investigation and formation of different spaces and sites for human interaction. Informed by the tensions between urbanity and nature, as well as the fictional and the habitual world. The pieces are more or less permanent, located in the gaps, the solitary or disintegrated spaces of the public or private sphere.

SIMKA was formed in 2001, and has since then produced a number of large public commissions, among them: O-wall, Henriksdalshöjden’s pre school (Nacka Kultur), Wonderland, at the penitentiary institution Hall in Södertälje (Statens Konstråd), The song of the forest, Igelstaverket, Södertälje (Söderenergi Kraftvärme AB), and Les Trois Mages, outside Notre Dame in Reims for the festival Reims Scénes d’Europe, France.  They have created  set design and costumes for Tusen år hos Gud , choreography Margaretha Åsberg at The Royal Dramatic Theatre, Stockholm, Leonora Carrington, set design and art installation for theater Unga Klara, project for Orgeval / Foyer Remois & La Friché Artistique and Reims Scénés d’Europe in Reims, France, exhibitions at Körsbärsgården konsthall, Gotland, Luleå Konsthall and Baltic Sea, for European Capital of Culture in Umeå in collaboration with Norrlandsoperan, Sweden, at Gallery Noass in Riga, Latvia and Pori Art Museum in Pori, Finland.

David Kiers (NL) graduated from the Sonology degree program at the Royal Conservatory in Den Haag, the Netherlands. In the recent years his main focus as an image and sound artist has been on the collaboration with Gideon Kiers and Lucas van der Velden under the Telcosystems moniker. Their search for a personal language in the world of abstract computer generated image and sound has produced a string of performances, installations and short films, which have been shown and nominated for awards all over the world. Sonar/Barcelona, de Appel/Amsterdam, International Short Film Festival/Oberhausen, Boijmans van Beuningen/Rotterdam, ArsElectronica/Linz, Cyberarts Festival/Boston, International Film Festival Rotterdam, Transmediale/Berlin and Wood Street Galleries/Pittsburgh USA, to metion a few. In 2009 Telcosystems received the Gus Van Sant award for best experimental film for their short film Loudthings. Besides this, David Kiers has composed music for various theatre and video productions, among them Jefta van Dinther’s productions Kneeding, GRIND, THIS IS CONCRETE, Plateau Effect (for Cullberg), As It Empties Out, Protagonist (for Cullberg), Dark Field Analysis, The Quiet, and Mountains (for Cullberg).

Stina Nyberg graduated from the MA in choreography at DOCH in Sweden 2012. Nyberg has presented several works at MDT in Stockholm, most recently the solo Horrible Mixtures. In 2012 she made the piece Orkestern for the Royal Swedish Ballet School, performed in the gold foyer at the Royal Opera in Stockholm. Since 2012, Stina Nyberg has been developing, choreographing and performing in the Shaking the habitual show with the Swedish band The Knife.

Ina Christel Johannessen is the artistic leader and choreographer of the Zero Visibility Corp, based in Oslo, Norway. The company had its international breakthrough with the work it’s only a rehearsal in 2003, which was a major success performing over one hundered times. The company tours in Europe regularly, most recently with three different works. Ina trained at the National College of Performing Arts in Oslo, where she now teaches choreography classes. A very important part of Ina’s artistic profile and work has been the close relationship with the national company of contemporary dance Carte Blanche, based in Bergen. Since 1992, Ina Christel Johannessen has created thirteen full-evening works for the company.

Ina has also worked with several international companies and institutions, among them Helsinki City Dance Company, The Royal Swedish Opera, Scottish Dance Theatre, Iceland Dance Company, The National Theatre in Oslo, Norway, Dance and Theatre Academy of Helsinki, Finland, and the National College of Performing Arts, also in Oslo.

In 2010 Ina Christel Johannessen premiered new creations for Oldenburg Tanztheatre, Zero Visibility Corp and Carte Blanche. In 2011 she will, beside True Stories of Castaways and Other Survivors, also create new piece for Zero Visibility and The Norwegian National Opera & Ballet

Ina’s work is characterized by high energy in the physical movements merged with very poetic and often theatrical elements. She is involved in and cooperating on the creating of visual elements such as lighting and scenography, which play crucial parts of her work as a whole. The musical elements are always composed of electronic works from international composers, either new or rewritten works.

Benoît Lachambre is a Montréal-based choreographer, dancer, improviser, teacher and artistic director of his own company Par B.L.eux founded in 1996. Benoît has been a part of the international dance community for the past thirty years. He began his career in jazz and modern dance with companies as Les ballets-Jazz de Montréal, Pointépiénu and Toronto Dance Theater before he moved to New York and danced and studied with Stéphanie Skura and Nina Martin, among others. Since then he has devoted himself to an exploratory approach of movement and its sources and to seeking authenticity of motion. In his works, Benoît explores the dynamics of communication and perception, and elements of the visual and performance arts are inseparable from dance. Par B.L.eux is devoted to contemporary and interdisciplinary choreographic creation, and the close connection to an international network of artists. The company has toured around the world, essentially in Europe, but also in the Americas and Asia.

Benoît is part of many projects, working with such choreographers as Lynda Gaudreau, Felix Ruckert, Catherine Contour, Boris Charmatz, Sasha Waltz, and Isabelle Schad, as well as visual artist Laurent Goldring. He has created appreciated solos for Louise Lecavalier and Marion Ballester. With Meg Stuart and her company, Damaged Goods based in Brussels and Hahn Rowe, he co-created the highly acclaimed piece Forgeries, love and other matters for which he won the prestigious Bessie Award in New York. In addition to this Benoît Lachambre has received the Jacqueline Lemieux Award from the Canada Council 1999 and two Dora Mavor Moores for best performance and best choreography in 2001. Benoît Lachambre has also participated in several films, one for which he has won a Moving Pictures Award in Toronto in 2003. Between 2005-2008 he was associate choreographer at Scène Nationale de Brest, France.

Alexander Ekman was born in Stockholm in 1984. He trained at the Operans Balettelevskola 1994-2001. From 2001-2002 he danced at the Royal Opera House in Stockholm. He then joined Netherlands Dans Theater II 2002-2005. During his dance career he worked with choreographers such as Ji?í Kylián, Hans van Manen, Nacho Duato, Johan Inger and Mats Ek.

Between 2005-2006 Alexander joined Cullberg Ballet where he had his first breakthrough receiving a prize at the international choreographic competition in Hannover for his piece The Swingle Sisters, for which he also claimed the critics’ prize. In the same year he was chosen as one of the dancers to create a work; Unknown art? for Cullberg Växtverk  project, which was performed in Stockholm and Malmö in April 2006. During autumn of the same year Alexander created choreography, set and music to Flock Work for NDT II, which premiered in November 2006 and became his international breakthrough as a choreographer.

Since then Alexander has gone on to create works for Netherlands Dans Theater I, Ballet de L’Opéra du Rhin, France, Bern Ballet and Ballet Junior de Genève, Switzerland, IT-Dansa in Spain, the Iceland Dance Company, as well as for the Göteborg Ballet.

Alexander also created choreography for Cullberg Ballet’s 40th anniversary, as well as the dance installations presented at the Moderna Museet in 2008 and at the Bildmuseet in Umeå last autumn. 2009, Alexander created the video projections for Mats Ek’s production of Roland Schimmelpfennings Hållplats at Stockholm City Theater.

In March 2010, Alexander’s first dance film, 40 M UNDER premiered in collaboration with Cullberg Ballet in Stockholm. During spring and summer 2010 he will create a new work; La La Land, for the Göteborg Ballet, as well as a new piece for Cedar Lake Dance Company in New York. The work Cacti, which Ekman created for NDT II during winter 2010 was given as a gift to the Oslo Opera from Her Majesty Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands during a state visit. Alexander Ekman will be resident choreographer for NDT II 2011-2013.

Cristian Duarte is a dancer and choreographer based in São Paulo, Brazil. He graduated from PARTS in Brusssels under direction of Anne Teresa De Keersmaker in 2002. In 2013 and 2015 Cristian Duarte was invited as a choreographer and teacher at DOCH in Stockholm.

Trajal Harrell who works at the interface between contemporary dance and the foundations of voguing tours around the world and several of his works have been selected as best dance works by Time Out New York. Harrell’s works have been invited to international festivals and have been presented on several places in USA. Trajal Harrell is perhaps best known for a series of work titled Twenty Looks or Paris is Burning at the Judson Church which re-imagine a meeting between early postmodern dance and the voguing dance tradition and created in seven series. All seven works in the series continue to tour internationally. Antigone Sr., the large in the series, won the 2012 Bessie Award for Best Production. Most recently, he began a new research examining butoh dance from the theoretical praxis of voguing. His work, Used Abused and Hung Out to Dry, premiered at The Museum of Modern Art-MoMA in February 2013, where he got a two-year residency further developing this new body of work.

Eszter Salamon, ursprungligen från Ungern, med bas i Paris, är verksam som koreograf, dansare och artist. Hennes verk presenteras kontinuerligt i Europa, USA och Asien. Hon har skapat solon som What a Body You Have, Honey (2001) och Giszelle (2001) i samarbete med Xavier Le Roy. Salamon har också skapat Magyar Tàncok (2005) med ungerska folkdansare och musiker. Nvsbl (2006), en filmkoreografi i samarbete med Bojana Cvejic, AND THEN (2007), och tillsammans med Arantxa Martinez, konsertföreställningen Without You I Am Nothing (2007) med Lukas Minkus och Ramon Pozo. Dance #1/Driftworks (2008), i samarbete med Christine De Smedt, Voice Over (2009), ett verk beställt och tolkat av Christina Rizzo, Dance for Nothing (2010) och tillsammans med Peter Böhm, Bojana Cvejic och Cédric Dambrain Tales of the Bodiless (2011).

Edouard Lock began his choreography career at the age of 20 and founded his own company La La La Human Steps in Montréal in 1980. Over the years Edouard Lock has been invited to create works for some of the world’s leading dance companies, including Ballet de l’Opéra de Paris, Het Nationale Ballet, Nederländerna och Nederlands Dans Theater. The award winning Lock has collaborated with artists as diverse as David Bowie, Gavin Bryars, Diana Vishneva and Frank Zappa, to mention a few. Many of Lock’s works have appeared on film, as well as the acclaimed film adaptation of Amelia directed by Lock himself. He is counted as one of the ground breaking choreographers of modern dance.

Unn Faleide earned a BA in Contemporary Dance from the Amsterdam School of the Arts in 2014. She has performed in projects created by various choreographers within and beyond the frame of her education, including Lisa Vereertbrugghen and Clara Amaral (SNDO alumni).

Season 2013/2014, Unn Faleide was an apprentice at Cullbergbaletten, where she performed in works by choreographers such as Jefta van Dinther and Benoît Lachambre. In 2015 she became a member of the company and has since performed in pieces by Eszter Salamon, Edouard Lock, Mattias Andersson, Deborah Hay, Ludvig Daae, Eleanor Bauer, Ian Kaler, Jefta van Dinther and Alma Söderberg. Unn received the DanceWeb Scholarship and participated in the program during the summer of 2018 with Florentina Holzinger and Meg Stuart as mentors.

Born 1979 in Nice, France. Sylvie trained at the Conservatoire National de Région in Nice and at the Rotterdam Dance Academy in Holland. She danced with the Red Notes Company in Toulouse before she joined the Swedish dance company Norrdans in 2003. During the Spring of 2008 Sylvie danced with the Stephen Petronio Company in New York, USA.

She has danced in works by Jyrki Karttunen, Helena Franzén, Stephen Petronio, Ramon Oller, Stephen Shropshire, Pontus Lidberg, Itzik Galili, Rui Horta, Roberto Zappala, Johan Inger, Mats Ek, Crystal Pite, Alexander Ekman, Edouard Lock, Deborah Hay, Jefta Van Dinther, Benoît Lachambre, Eleanor Bauer, among others. Autumn 2009 was Sylvie’s first season in Cullberg.

Samuel Draper was born in Durham, UK in 1992. For seven years he trained in sports acrobatic gymnastics before starting his dance education at the age of 15 at Dance City Academy Centre for Advanced Training, Newcastle in 2007. After graduating in 2010 he moved on to Rambert School of Ballet and Contemporary Dance in London where he trained for three years, until 2013. Samuel has taken part in many workshops such as Authorship and Practice for Performers with Chrysa Parkinson, Fighting Monkey with Jozef Frucek and Linda Kapetanea, Flying Low with David Zambrano and Leila McMillan, Gaga Intensive in Tel Aviv, and Susan Klein Technique with Susan Klein. Since 2008 he has worked with various choreographers including Neville Campbell, Theo Clinkard and Kerry Nicholls, among others. Samuel Draper joined Cullberg Ballet in the spring 2013.

Jac was educated at the Danish National School of Performing Arts and Rotterdam Dance Academy. As a freelancer he has worked with several choreographers, among them Henri Oguike, Rachel Tess and Benedikt MacIsaac as well as choreographing his own work. In 2010 Jac was nominated for the Rolex Mentor and Protegé Arts Initiative in the field of dance. During 2012 he was engaged at the Gothenburg Ballet as a guest dancer and later that same year he joined Cullberg Ballet.

Gesine Moog was born in Germany and received her Bachelor of Arts at Frankfurt University of Music and Performing Arts in 1997. After graduating she has had employments as a dancer in several theaters in Germany, such as Frankfurter Kuenstlerhaus Mousonturm, Staatstheater Mainz, Staatstheater Wiesbaden, Saarländisches Staatstheater Saarbruecken, and Staatstheater am Gärtnerplatz Munich. 2004 Gesine was appointed as “Dancer to watch”, by the leading European magazine Ballet Tanz. Gesine came to Sweden during autumn 2007 where she performed in Riksteatern’s production Kamuyot choreographed by Ohad Naharin, and presented in The Stockholm City Hall, among other venues. For her outstanding performance and dedication Gesine received Riksteatern’s award “Dancer of the Year 2007”. Autumn 2008 Gesine joined Cullbergbaletten and throughout her career in Germany and Sweden she is looking upon a rich repertoire of multifaceted styles and pieces. Her experience span over classical and neo classical ballet, modern and contemporary dance such as body mind centering, somatic and others. She has worked together with Mats Ek, Ana Laguna, Ben van Cauwenbergh, Phillip Taylor, Jirí Kylián, Crystal Pite, Ohad Naharin, Johan Inger, Alexander Ekman, Gaetano Soto, Carolyn Carlson, Robert Cohan, Antony Rizzi, Birgit Scherzer, Benoît Lachambre, Eszter Salamon, Deborah Hay, Jefta van Dinther, Edouard Lock, and many more choreographers. In 2015, Gesine started to get commissioned by Edouard Lock to perform Study for Boijmans, La La La Human Steps for the Boijmans Van Beuningen Museum Rotterdam and in 2017 The Heart of August for the Royal Ballet of Flanders in Belgium. In 2016, Jeanette Langert commissioned her to dance the solo piece Bolero and to perform together with the Symphony Orchestra of Norrland at Norrlands Operan in Umeå. Since 2001 she also has created her own choreographic and creative works and today her creativity is seen in her paintings, crafting with wood and performative installations.

Professional work: Johannes Weiland company/ Staatstheater Kassel, TU Dance Company , Morgan Thorson, Black Lable Movement,
Other: Teacher/practitioner of yoga, student of Cranial Sacral Therapy, hobby musician including guitar, piano and marching euphonium
Side Jobs: Baker, Barista, Painter/Color Consultant, Photographers assistant, Waitress, Paper Folder, Personal Care assistant, singer/songwriter, and landscaper.

Quote that changed my life: “forget any sound or touch you knew that did not help you dance”
That Lives In Us –Rumi

Eszter Czédulás was born in Budapest in Hungary in 1988. She began her dance education at an early age with Hungarian folk dance and continued with studies in jazz and contemporary dance. She did her postgraduate studies at the Hungarian Dance Academy followed by an education at Codarts, Rotterdam Dance Academy. After an apprenticeship with Anouk van Dijk in Amsterdam, Eszter started her apprenticeship year in Cullberg in 2011 and joined the company as a member in 2012. Over the years Eszter has worked and performed in various works by choreographers such as Benoît Lachambre, Jefta van Dinther, Deborah Hay, Tilman O’Donell, Eszter Salamon, Crystal Pite, Edouard Lock, Ludvig Daae, Mattias Andersson, Adam Schütt and Eva Mohn.

Adam Schütt was born 1980 in Sweden. He was educated at the Royal Swedish Ballet School 1996-1999. In 1999 he joined the Royal Ballet in Stockholm, and between 2004 and 2006 he danced with Dansk Danseteater in Copenhagen. Adam has danced in choreographies by Mats Ek, Merce Cunningham, Tim Rushton, Birgitta Egerbladh, Susanna Leinonen, Pontus Lidberg and Matilde Monnier, apart from Cullberg’s repertoire.

Adam joined Cullberg season 2007/2008.