DANCEWORK is a group exhibition of dances. It looks at the conditions under which dance is made and shared. It looks at value, labour, and precarity as structural conditions shaping the lives of artists and the art.

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Identity is fickle. So is value. Still, we find ourselves drawn to practices that are barely recognized, underpaid, and often invisible. We become choreographers, dancers, producers, curators – sometimes all at once – and we take on the invisible work behind those roles. But what is this work, really?

It might be lying awake at night thinking about speculative futures and unlikely gatherings; it might be making something out of nothing or working with near-zero budgets. It is driven by a willingness to work work work work work (Rihanna), often in the face of uncertainty, in order to make something else—something different, something which might create space for other ways of thinking and being. This is the kind of work that begins in hope, moves through doubt, bitterness, stubbornness, rejection, moments of surrender; and never really ends.

After fifteen years of working as a dancer, Unn Faleide, the dancer and curator of the exhibition, began studying curating. This shift opened up a space to reflect on how precarity not only surrounds artistic work but often becomes embedded in the work itself: shaping its rhythms, aesthetics, and limits. It also gave rise to a curiosity about how choreographic and curatorial strategies might speak to and challenge each other. What happens when practices from the visual arts meet the embodied, processual temporality of dance? What new formats, tensions, or freedoms arise?

Given a modest budget but a desire to realize a large-scale group exhibition, the idea developed of a project where roles blur, where the dancer takes on the curatorial and precarity becomes both content and framework. Rather than assigning tasks or requesting new works, seven choreographers were invited to contribute a dance to the exhibition on their own terms—by giving, lending, selling, donating, or creating a piece specifically for DANCEWORK, the exhibition.

DANCEWORK features contributions from Oda Brekke, Sindri Runudde, Maja Hannisdal, Stina Nyberg, Ellen Söderhult, Deborah Hay, and Freddy Houndekindo.

These choreographers were invited not only for their artistic brilliance, but also because they were part of the curator’s immediate surroundings—people encountered in passing or already in conversation. The project recognizes that one of the things artists gain or “earn”, is community and friendship. DANCEWORK is as much about these relationships as it is about the works themselves.

Each artist was offered a symbolic fee of 999 SEK, regardless of whether they contributed a recycled score, a second-hand choreography, or a custom dance. They were asked to track their time – emails, rehearsals, or thinking – and were free to work as much or as little as they wished. All accepted. Most chose to work physically in the studio. All invested more time than the budget allowed, knowingly and with care. The project became a mirror of the economy of attention and labour underpinning much of artistic production – especially in dance.

DANCEWORK is performed by one body who embodies multiple choreographies and curates the exhibition in real time, through lived presence at Weld. The dancing body becomes a site of convergence, where artistic voices meet, diverge, and transform. The curatorial becomes relational, vulnerable, and political: it questions how people are brought together, and what conditions are created for artistic work to occur. What does it mean to purchase a dance; to loan it; to shape it collaboratively? These are not just legal questions, but artistic and ethical ones. They challenge existing models of working and what a “work” really is.

Throughout the process, authorship was neither assumed nor imposed. In some works, the dancer operates as an interpretive vessel; in others, their contribution is intrinsic to the work’s existence. Where relevant, co-authorship was acknowledged contractually. More than resolving questions of credit, the project asked what each person brings into the collaboration, because ultimately art is collective.

In the end, DANCEWORK is an excuse to dance – to keep working with people and practices that inspire. It is personal. It is an offering, an experiment, and simply, a way to keep moving.

Work(s) by:
Oda Brekke
Unn Faleide
Maja Hannisdal
Deborah Hay
Freddy Houndekindo
Stina Nyberg
Sindri Runudde
Ellen Söderhult

Curated by: Unn Faleide
Light and sound: Patsy Lassbo
With support from: Stockholm University and Weld

Heartfelt thanks to Nina Øverli, Anna Koch, and the Curating Art class for their generous mentorship and support throughout the process. Deep gratitude also goes to all the artists who have dedicated their time and energy to making this evening possible.

ODA BREKKE
is a dance artist based in Stockholm. In her practice she takes on roles as choreographer, performer and writer with an interest in experimenting with performative frameworks and forms. She is active at höjden studio where she often organises study groups and talks.

UNN FALEIDE
is a dance artist, producer and curator whose work explores precarious conditions, alternative structures in dance and the decolonial potential of curatorial practices.

MAJA HANNISDAL
is a dance artist and videographer based in Oslo, whose work moves between the beautiful and the grotesque, exploring value through the overlooked or seemingly irrelevant.

DEBORAH HAY
is a significant postmodern choreographer whose groundbreaking solo and group works continue to reshape the relationship between body, perception and presence in dance.

FREDDY HOUNDEKINDO
is an interdisciplinary artist and dancer working with dance, film, fashion and music, with roots in street dance and a practice grounded in movement research.

PATSY LASSBO
is a composer, theatre maker and performer working with theatre, dance and live music, focusing on technical and sensory dramaturgies.

STINA NYBERG
is a Stockholm-based choreographer whose conceptual, collaborative practice uses choreography to explore everything from electricity to gossip, often with humour, curiosity and feminist critique.

SINDRI RUNUDDE
is a choreographer and performer working at the intersection of dance, sound and storytelling, with queer, somatic and accessibility-centred perspectives in poetic, multi-sensory performances.

ELLEN SÖDERHULT
is a dancer and choreographer based in Stockholm. Her choreographic works have often taken on the collective as protagonist but also explored monstrous emotions and textures in sweet-bitter love and the ghostly in the relationship between dancer and dance. With a background in choral singing and sports, she often works with voice, immersive soundscapes and big leaps.