Embrace – dance performance by Meleat Fredriksson, Adam Seid Tahir and Lydia Östberg Diakité

Embrace is a performance working with the intimacy of getting your being woven into a spectacular mess of softness and care. And we said, we are all that and a little more, and a little more, and a little more more and a little more. Meleat, Adam and Lydia will bring the audience on a journey where they are embracing all of that which a society in a scandinavian landscape have been pushing them to let go off. Come lay with us. Take a nap on our chests. Hear the sound of generations of hard work and hard love. Hear the contradictions of belonging, hear the shade. Hear the scream from our inner peace. Hear cries and screams of joy.

Meleat Fredriksson is a dancer and choreographer, educated from The Danish National School of Performing Arts in Copenhagen. Since graduating in 2015 she has been part of danseatelier: a studio-collective consisting of 11 dance artists working with creating continuity within the freelance world and explore art making, sharing and hosting – using multiple hierarchies. Meleat’s work often springs out of and features improvisation, rhythm and attitude. She is currently tuning into and questioning how her blackness is connected to her artwork. On the mission to duck imposed white values, standards and affirmation she wonders what happens when she places her whole (intersectional) self at the core of the research? Meleat’s work has been shown in Norway, Denmark, Sweden and Hong Kong at festivals such as My Wild Flag 2019, Gothenburg Dance and Theatre Festival 2018, TheCarrierBag Festival 2016, Hong Kong International Choreography Festival 2016.

Adam Seid Tahir is first and foremost a dancer and performer. He has studied at the Royal Swedish Ballet School and has worked in the dance company Ballet Junior de Geneve in Switzerland. He has also studied computer technology, history of ideas, aesthetics and more at Konstfack, Uppsala University and University of Gothenburg. Adam has performed in works by choreographers such as Sharon Eyal, Hofesh Shechter, Emanuel Gat, Alexander Ekman, Thomas Hauert and others. He has also worked with Michael Keegan Dolan, James Finnemore, Noah Hellwig, Louise Mochia, Zoë Poluch, Eleanor Bauer, Paloma Madrid. In his own artistic work, Adam is very interested in technology and film. In 2018, he collaborated with the Index Foundation to create the film “hyperskin.” Which was shown at Index, Stockholm’s dance film festival, the Ecotrash Festival in London and the Lift-off festival. Adam is also one of the founders of the collective Body Intelligence. A collective that works interdisciplinarily with dance and technology. Together they won Dansathon 2018 in London and have since performed with their work Digital Umbilical at Sadler’s Wells in London, Maison de la Danse in Lyon and Theatre de Liege in Belgium. Besides performing and creating artistic work Adam also works as a Web developer.

Lydia Östberg Diakité is an Afro Swedish dancer, choreographer, curator and union organizer based in Copenhagen. This past years since graduating from “The Danish National School of Performing Arts” in 2017 they have been working with many variations of practicing, making dance, performing, activism, community building and creating together with/shout out to i.a Bambam Frost, Sonya Lindfors, Tamara Alegre, Cassie Augusta Jørgensen, Célia Lutangu, Stina Nyberg, Justin F Kennedy, Emilie Gregersen, My Wild Flag, POSSE – dancing and reading group, and the The Union – Culture workers union for black and people of color.