Dear dance
and dance floor lovers,

We are very happy to announce our program for Maison de la danse Spring 2026!

This year marks the beginning of a big new chapter for Maison de la danse – we have found a home! After years of nomadic programming in Malmö, our dear friends at Fuxia 2 have generously invited us into their premises on Norra Grängesbergsgatan. By sharing resources and exploring ways to work together, we will fill the 200 m² space with performances and ongoing work, alongside Fuxia’s exhibitions and other activities.

A new home needs warming up, and we will do so on February 14, when Frédéric Gies performs Housewarming, a moving-in ritual of recycled movements and gestures from their vast repertoire. The work is part of Frédéric’s ongoing research into their archives which carries special significance in a year when we celebrate the 10-year anniversary of Dance is ancient – the performance that gave our organisation its name.

We will continue to cast spells at Norra Grängesbergsgatan on March 7 with Maria F. Scaroni and Olympia Bukkakis’ performance Unsex Me Her. Through a somatic drag practice, they delve in the figures of the Witch (Maria) and the Queen (Olympia) to bring to life a queer child of politicized sensibility, real personas, cunty Marxism, and heretical prayers.

While we work on establishing Maison de la danse at Fuxia 2, we will keep some activities at Ungdomens hus. On April 18, we return briefly to Norra Skolgatan 10 with Snorre Elvin who will present Dragons Asshole, a subtle, somatic and musical journey. Elvin creates new relations with the space of Festsalen, allowing the choreography to shape-shift through the specific textures, acoustics, and thresholds of the site.

Our cherished Monday Technosomatics sessions will also remain at Ungdomens hus throughout the spring, as we continue exploring the transformative power of the dance floor. We celebrate the end of the season on May 16 at Fuxia 2 with Tea Dance (Extended) – a full workshop day of collective making, sharing and dancing, all guided by techno music. 

We hope you will enjoy this season, as we introduce new practices to the Malmö scene while deepening our commitment to our artists and audiences. More exciting activities are coming in the fall, including performances, workshops, and not least – an exhibition at Moderna Museet Malmö. Stay tuned!

All activities are free of charge, as usual.

Frédéric Gies
Artistic Director

Albin Hillervik
Curator & project developer

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Technosomatics / Mondays sessions (x13)

Maison Ouverte #10
Housewarming & Dans (Sverige)

Maison Ouverte #11
Unsex Me Here + After talk
Performance by Maria F. Scaroni and Olympia Bukkakis

Maison Ouverte #12
Dragons Asshole + After talk
Performance by Snorre Elvin

Maison Ouverte #13
- Tea Dance (Extended)
- Technosomatics warm-up
- Dance Floor Archive - Workshop
- Technosomatics Session & Dance Floor

Dear dance and dance floor lovers,

It is with great excitement that we announce our Maison de la Danse – Fall 2025 programme!

This autumn, Maison de la Danse continues to expand, welcoming new collaborations, and inviting both international and local artists to share their work. We deepen our commitment to Technosomatics, and continue the conversation begun last spring: how do individual movements emerge from, and call forth, collective ones? How does the “I” both contain and call for a “WE”? We continue to assert the power of gestures and movements, not only as artistic expressions, but as reflections of the political landscapes in which they are born.

The season opens with a two-day programme at Skånes konstförening, where Manuel Pelmuş and Rachel Tess challenge dominant norms within dance and choreography by channeling personal and historical archives. Pelmuş’ performance lecture Borderlines, evokes the fluidity and unpredictability of borders: between nations, between identities, and between artistic disciplines. In Flip Side, Tess invites an ensemble of choreographers to create ten individual solos, in which her body becomes a capsule for the choir of voices that have shaped her life and work. 

In October, Maison Ouverte # 8 explores the relationship between choreography and resistance. Manuel Pelmuş and Frédéric Gies’ new work – premiering at Steirischer Herbst in Graz – echoes Kurt Jooss’ anti-fascist piece The Green Table (1932) and the tradition of the “Danse Macabre”. The performance is paired with a lecture by dance scholar Josefin Wikström, in which she asks, from within our present moment of genocide and mass destruction: what is dance’s role or task in times of war today?

The fall programme closes by returning to the body as a site of queer memory and imagination. In Untitled (Figures), Lenio Kaklea draws from the queer icons who inhabit her corporeal archive: a homage to the artists, rebels, and pop stars – the cowgirls, sailors, disco dancers – who have reshaped the past, present and future.

And of course, with our cherished Monday evening Technosomatics sessions, we will continue to commit to the transformative power of collective and individual movements on the dance floor. 

All our activities are for free, as usual. 

Looking forward to seeing you!

Frédéric Gies (artistic director) and Albin Hillervik (curator and project developer)

Technosomatics / Mondays sessions (x14)

Maison ouverte #7: 

Rachel Tess and Manuel Pelmus / Maison de la danse x Skånes Konstförening

Curated by Frédéric Gies and Albin Hillervik

Borderlines / Performance by Manuel Pelmus

Artist talk with Rachel Tess and Manuel Pelmus

Flip Side / Performance by Rachel Tess / included: Some parts altered by Ulrich Ruchlinski; Visualizing the woman I want to become in the mirror by Frédéric Gies; She drifts she charges by Sophia Mage

Maison ouverte #8

Tribute to Kurt Jooss’ Green Table / Performance by Frédéric Gies and Manuel Pelmus

Truth, protest and soma: dance and war 1920 to today / Lecture by Josefine Wikström 

Artist talk with Manuel Pelmus, Josefine Wikström and Frédéric Gies

Maison ouverte #9

Untitled (figures) / Performance by Lenio Kaklea

Alphabet for the camera / Film by Lenio Kaklea

Artist talk

Dear dance and dance floor lovers,

I wish I could simply commit to the pure joy of communicating to you the exciting programme of Maison de la Danse – Spring 2025, but… 

At the time I am writing you, as I do every six months since the beginning of our adventure in the fall 2022, we are one day after a certain inauguration day and the unsettling (disgusting) arm gesture performed by the world’s wealthiest man who happens to have become the best friend of a criminal and rapist elected president. One day after the world’s most powerful country announced its withdrawal from the World Health Organization and the Paris climate agreement.

Fear covers joy.

I reflect on the power of gestures. That despicable, loathsome, abhorrent arm gesture, shamelessly performed by the world's wealthiest man, is not just the new signature of a sad, reckless clown. For the queer, non-binary person I am, that gesture represents a regime that has sent my people to concentration camps. 

Gestures can kill. 

As small and seemingly powerless as we are, this spring at Maison de la Danse, together with you, we will make sure to oppose gestures that kill with the poetic and political power of our own movements, with all the weight and lightness of their oddity and beauty. 

Many dancers dance in a dancer’s body and a dance is always the product of other dances, as well as a call for dances to come. The connective tissue for this spring programme, as well as for the fall, is how individual movements evoke collective ones, how ’I’ contains ‘WE’. This spring, solos won’t be solos.

‘I’ is collective. 

As it has been amazing to witness the growth of the Technosomatics community in Malmö, we will offer more Technosomatics sessions than usual, including a weekend intensive workshop.

The performance programme will consist of three editions of Maison Ouverte, our open house events, including two pieces from my repertoire never presented at Maison, workshops, artist talks and a guest performance to look forward to. Indeed, we will close the spring season with a new performance by an amazing artist, multiply awarded and most of all without whom I wouldn’t be the dancer and choreographer I am today (neither would be the Swedish dance field): Cristina Caprioli. 

One last word, as a teaser: in our fall programme, amongst other directions, we will focus again on international artists. We’ll have the pleasure to share the work of other remarkable and politically engaged artists: Manuel Pelmus and Lenio Kaklea. 

In 2025, at Maison de la danse, together with you, gestures will help us invent another world.

All our activities are still for free, as usual. 

Looking forward to seeing you!

Yours,

Frédéric Gies

Technosomatics / Mondays sessions (x9)

Maison ouverte #4

Almost not ballet + dance history crash course 

Terpsichore in Scorpio – Deposition / Performance by Frédéric Gies

Artist talk 

Maison ouverte #5

Technosomatics intensive 2 days workshop

Tribute – solo version / Performance by Frédéric Gies

Artist talk

Maison ouverte #6

Handled and gone / Performance by Cristina Caprioli

Artist talk

Dear dance and dance floor lovers,

Two years, two fall editions, and two spring editions have passed since the first Maison de la Danse, our program of public events where we, together with you, our dear public, re-imagine what a house for dance could be. We are thrilled to invite you to the fall 2024 edition, featuring a vibrant program of dance performances, conversations, workshops, and dance floors infused with techno beats.

This fall edition will be very special, not only due to its international dimension, as we welcome many guest artists, but also because of the richness, diversity, and relevance of the presented forms of expression and the topics that will be addressed. 

Tributes to the dance floor and ecstatic bodily states, dance and choreography as political action, queer perspectives and intersectional feminist approaches translated into movement, words that dance, collective memory and collective ways of working, the future of nursing and care for dance... This is just a glimpse of what we will treat you to this fall! We look forward to the exhilarating contributions of the guest artists who will temporarily take over, together with you and us, Barbro and the beautiful Festsalen at Ungdomens Hus. 

After launching the season with a series of Technosomatics workshops, we are excited to introduce our first guest artist: Berlin-based choreographer Ania Nowak. Ania’s work, which has been showcased in renowned art spaces and theaters, reimagines what bodies and words can or cannot do while exploring binary-free ways of living. She will join me for our first Maison Ouverte event, where we will spotlight the intersection of the poetic and the political. 

Queerness and the political will definitely spill over from our first event to the second: we invite the new generation of choreographers and artists of the Copenhagen’s artist-led platform Dance Cooperative for a carte blanche. They will share with us their freshest works and practices.

To close the season, we are thrilled to host another international choreographer from Berlin, Thiago Granato. His work has toured to numerous countries, including his 2016 piece Trança, part of his project Choreoversations, which imaginescollaborations between deceased, living or future choreographers and himself. 

As always, our program also provides space for reflection and dialogue, thanks to collaborations with contributors such as Rachel Tess, director of Milvus Artistic Research Center and Rebecca Yates, artistic director of Dans i Blekinge. And of course, we’ll celebrate dance in the best possible way—on the dance floor, to the beats of surprise DJs!

All events are free of charge, but you can support us with a donation if you wish. However, the greatest support you can give us is simply your presence.

Come and dance!

Come and watch dance!

Come and discuss dance!

With love,

Frédéric Gies

Technosomatics / Mondays sessions (x7)

Maison ouverte #1

Interplay / workshop by Ania Nowak

Ballet & Anatomy / Workshop by Frédéric Gies

Deep Inside / Performance by Ania Nowak

Deflecting Misfortune and Averting the Evil Eye / Performance by Frédéric Gies

Obelix Nutrix / Performance by Ania Nowak

Artist talk with Ania Nowak and Frédéric Gies

Maison ouverte #2

Carte blanche to Dance Cooperative

Works in progress and performances by: Andreas Haglund, Camilla Lind, Sigrid Stigsdatter, Klara Lopez and Antoinette Helbing

Artist talk

Maison ouverte #3

Technosomatics workshops

Care for dance / Seminar with Rachel Tess (MARC), Rebecca Yates (Dans i Blekinge) and Frédéric Gies (DIA)

Trança / Performance by Thiago Granato

Artist talk

Closing party

DJ: Rivet

Technosomatics sessions (x4)

Perverting and recycling dance history

Queens of the Fauns / Screening of the video documentation of the performance by Frédéric Gies

Fauning practice / Workshop by Frédéric Gies

Artist talk

Maison ouverte 

The poor but sexy edition

Album (revisited) / Performance by Frédéric Gies

Technosomatics tea dance / Workshop by Frédéric Gies

Unclouded dances for a crowd / Performance by Frédéric Gies

Techno-oke / danceoke to Shadowboxing by Frédéric Gies

Deflecting Misfortune and Averting the Evil Eye

Performance by Frédéric Gies (Premiere)

Artist talk

Workshops & classes:

Technosomatics
Technosomatics live (collaboration with Kontra-musik/Ulf Eriksson)
Open training with Dance is ancient’s team
Open classes

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Performances:

Many wild times (work-in-progress)
An investigation of the overlaps between hetereocis-normative sociability and climate collapse.
Presented in the frame of the programme evening #ONE (A danceaafter a dance after another dance - 2023).
Dance & choreography: Andreas Haglund

Chiron in Aries (excerpts and remixes)
Selected duos and solos from the 7-piece cycle Chiron in Aries. Uniquely revisited with group dances danced as solos and/or solos as duos. After the Spring edition revisiting Brittanie Brown and Elisa Brewer’s solos, the fall edition makes us rediscover the cycle through the prism of dancers Declan Whitaker, Andreas Haglund and Frédéric Gies.
Choreography: Frédéric Gies / Dance: Frédéric Gies, Declan Whitaker, Andreas Haglund / Music: Fiedel / Costumes: Grzegorz Matlag

Dance is ancient dances Dance is ancient’s dance #1, #2, #3 and #4
6 different compilation of dances from our repertoire, presented in their original form or remixed in unexpected way.
Presented it the frame of our Open House Maison Ouverte.
Choreography: Frédéric Gies / Dancers: Elise Brewer, Disa Krosness, Anna Pehrsson and Frédéric Gies / Music: Fiedel / Costumes: Grzegorz Matlag

Excavation Series I
In the first part of three, Excavation Series I, Choreographer and Dancer Anna Pehrsson, sources movement as mass - hot liquid rock lurking around the corner - a comet’s tail blasting through the skies - or a thin layer of evaporated water reaching the pores.
Presented it the frame of our Open House Maison Ouverte.
Choreography and Dance: Anna Pehrsson / Music: Alva Noto

You might plant a rose bush under your bedroom window
A walk through the landscape of bushes and railway tracks. A sequence of desires and needs unfolding alongside the trail. A dance of repetitive riffs that hits tenderly.
Presented it the frame of our Open House Maison Ouverte.
Dance & choreography: Elise Brewer

#TWO (A dance after a dance after another dance – 2023)
A special programme, navigating between Frédéric Gies’ classics and the forgotten corners of their work, in a poetic yet humorous journey. Choreography and dance: Frédéric Gies / Artist talk led by Skånes konstförening.

Penumbral dances
Performance for one spectator at a time, in an intimate setting.
Choeography and dance: Frédéric Gies

Tilt to turn
In 2021, the possibilities of meeting and playing live were uncertain. Intonal Festival decided to do little guerrilla actions where they would crash various locations around Malmö, without notice or announcement, and just create what they loved. No crowd or anything, just them, the artists and their creativity. They invited Frédéric Gies and Rivet, which collaboration gave birth to Tilt to turn.
Presented live for the first time, in the frame of the performance evening #THREE (A dance after a dance after another dance - 2023).
Dance and choeography: Frédéric Gies / Music (live): Rivet

Manifesto 1
A new solo, which will be part of the upcoming piece “Manifestos: Chiron in Aries, Recital #5 and #6”, which will premiere in the fall 2025. It is part of a series of solos, which in their turn are part of the Chiron in Aries cycle, crafted specifically for the dancers who perform them. In this solo, Elise Brewer’s dance oscillate between fierceness and vulnerability, relentlessness and tenderness.
Presented in the frame of the performance evening #THREE (A dance after a dance after another dance).
Choreography: Frédéric Gies / Dance: Elise Brewer / Music: Fiedel / Costume: Grzegorz Matlag

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Club:

#THE PARTY
A party to celebrate a year of dancing, with Rivet & Berghain resident Fiedel.

——

Other:

Open rehearsals
Techno lunch
Afterworks
Artist talks

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Partners (curating) : MARC, Kontra-musik
Partners (venues) : Ungdomens Hus, Skåne konstförening
With the support of : Kulturrådet, Malmö stad, Region Skåne

First edition of Maison de la Danse as we know it today!

Workshops: Technosomatics Regular, Technosomatics Intensive & Ribbon Dance workshop

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Performances:

The Last
A celebration of dancing, dancers, and personal dance histories. It will premiere in August 2023 in Knislinge, with 7 dancers, each presenting a solo. For La Maison de la Danse, Rachel Tess gives a world preview of this work and dances her own solo from the piece.
Dance, concept and Choreography: Rachel Tess / Sound: Uli Ruchlinski

Little did I know that I, ere or since, ever should speak mouthless
Little did I know that I, ere or since, ever should speak mouthless (2011) examines the possibilities of dealing with politics in an artistic work.
Choreography and Dance: Frédéric Gies / Music: Daniel Jenatsch

Dance concert #1
Compilation of different programs of bold, tender and virtuosic dances extracted from our recent performances for the stage: “Constellations and Alliances”, “Warriors” and “Terpsichore in Scorpio”.
Choreography: Frédéric Gies / Dance: Frédéric Gies, Andreas Haglund / Music: Fiedel

Dance concert #2 Compilation of different programs of bold, tender and virtuosic dances extracted from our recent performances for the stage: “Constellations and Alliances” and “Barricades and Legacies”.
Choreography: Frédéric Gies / Dance: Brittanie Brown, Elise Brewer / Music: Fiedel

Dance concert #3
Compilation of different programs of bold, tender and virtuosic dances extracted from our recent performances for the stage: “Penumbral dances”, “Constellations and Alliances” and “Barricades and Legacies”.
Choreography: Frédéric Gies / Dance: Brittanie Brown, Frédéric Gies / Music: Fiedel

Unclouded Dances
Performance/ritual for one spectator at a time, in an intimate setting. It addresses the spiritual dimension of dance and its relationship to healing.
Choreography and Dance: Frédéric Gies / Music: Fiedel

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Other: Techno Breakafsts, Open Movement Research

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Partners (venues): Ungdomens Hus
With the support of: Kulturrådet. Malmö stad, Region Skåne

First Malmö base edition in 2022 under the previous name “ Context”.

Workshops: Technosomatics.

Performances: Good girls go to Heaven, Bad Girls Go Everywhere - Unclouded Dances - Walk + Talk - Ribbon Dance

Dance: Frédéric Gies
Music: Fiedel
Partners (venues): Ungdomens Hus, Teaterhögskolan

With the support of: Kulturrådet. Malmö stad, Region Skåne