Stina Nyberg – Chest

Chest delves into humanity’s arseholery through an exploratory choreography at the intersection of ecology, animals and masculinity.

The fear that the human race might not survive has been replaced by the fear that it will endure.* In an attempt to imagine a different world, Chest searches for a shared landscape where new beings can emerge.

Hybrids -- not a car -- but a figure that moves and is moved, acting as a leading figure, background and environment.

Chest is a choreography at the intersection of ecology, animals and masculinity.

Here, seemingly contradictory concepts such as hard and soft, limp and stiff, or hairy and bald are intertwined in sweaty attempts to be nature for one another.

With Chest, Stina Nyberg continues to explore new musical horizons, this time in collaboration with composer Kaki King, based in New York, USA.

King is considered one of the world’s foremost guitarists, known both for her technical brilliance and for her constant drive to push the limits of the instrument.

Chest was created in close collaboration with dancers Robert Malmborg, Pontus Pettersson and Stephen Thompson, as well as the rest of the artistic team: Andros Zins-Browne, Kaki King, Jenny Nordberg and Thabiso Kubheka Persson.

Together, they have embarked on a quest to inhabit the messiness and the joy.

The work is the third part of Nyberg’s exploration of humanity’s arseholery, previously developed in The Dawn Chorus (Norrdans 2022) and Sweet (MDT 2022). *Middle C, William H.Gass Running time: 60 min.

Chest was performed on 8, 10 and 11 May 2024 at Dansens Hus Elvkerket to sold-out audiences.

The performance was also part of Sthlm Dans.

ABOUT STINA NYBERG Stina Nyberg is a dancer and choreographer based in Stockholm.

Her artistic practice takes the political and social history of the body, viewed from a feminist perspective, as its starting point.

She is interested in undervalued forms of knowledge, magical practices and the language of power.

Stina’s artistic processes often centre on a particular person or phenomenon.

This leads to an extended period of research into the political detours surrounding the theme in question, and she creates chains of artistic works in different formats from the same artistic process.

These may include stage performances, city walks, lectures, concerts, texts or other formats.

She is part of the feminist collective Samlingen (Amanda Apetrea, Nadja Hjorton, Halla Ólafsdóttir and Zoë Poluch), which choreographs site-specific interventions with a critical eye on the history of dance.

Since 2013, she has collaborated with Sofia Wiberg, a researcher in Urban Studies, on a series of artistic explorations of collective processes of knowledge production.

She has been part of Rose Choreographic School since 2024.

In recent years, she has explored a perspective on the ongoing ecological catastrophe through a series of speculations about the possibility of an Earth freed from the human species.

In 2022, she choreographed The Dawn Chorus for Norrdans; the following year, her solo Sweet premiered at MDT; and in 2024, Chest premiered at Dansens Hus Elverket.