Stages: Dance on Screen

An evening screening of North Atlantic Dance Films. The North Atlantic, known for its cinematic landscapes – what moves people in these places, and how is it captured on screen?

The curators of the evening are Klāvs Liepinš (IS/LV) Rúna H. Volmarsdóttir and Vár Bech Árting (FO) and Alexander Montgomery-Andersen (GL).

Iceland

Presented together at North Atlantic Dance Films, the works of Tristan Elísabet Birta (they/them), Asra and Kiljan ( she/her and he/him), and Klāvs Liepiņš (he/him) offer different views of dance film in Iceland. Shaped by different artistic backgrounds, mediums, and lived experiences, they bring together a range of perspectives in which the body is never fixed. It remembers, performs, adapts, resists, and imagines.

Across these films, the moving body is approached in three distinct ways, showing dance film not only as choreography, but as a way of thinking through embodiment. The body becomes an archive, a site of change, and a vessel for intimate, political, and ecological stories. Though each artist has a distinct visual language, they share an interest in the body’s ability to hold contradiction. It is vulnerable and resistant, recognizable yet elusive, deeply personal and shaped by the environments around it.

In these films, movement becomes more than choreography. It becomes a language through which questions of identity, belonging, desire,  and transformation can be felt. Together, they invite audiences to encounter dance not simply as movement, but as a way of seeing and being in the world.

Kallalit Nunaat

The two dance shorts are chosen for their diversity in style, concepts, and location. Both shorts feature Greenlandic dance artists, where one short was recorded in Kalaallit Nunaat and the other abroad. This reflects the reality of being a very small professional dance community, where artists are forced to live abroad to be able to sustain a professional dance career. 

Faroe Islands

The curation is an exploration of various ways of framing movement through a somewhat anthropological lens. The first half follows individuals through an explorative situational journey towards personal liberation. For the second half we zoom out, and observe collectivity through compositions and arrangements of bodies in motion. 

The bulk of the curation is works by the creative collective RAMMATIK, formed by Rannvá Káradóttir and Marianna Mørkøre, the pioneers of Faroese dance films specializing in movement and dance within a cinematic framework. Additionally, presenting a music video directed by Maria Tórgarð.

About Stages

Stages is a project that gathers twelve dance artists from Greenland, Iceland, and the Faroe Islands to collaborate artistically and create three choreographic works. The project will allow a meeting between North Atlantic dance artists facing similar challenges and geographic barriers to connect and build colleagueship through working in the dance studio.

You can find more information on the project and network organising Stages here: https://www.naidancenetwork.com/stages

The project Stages is supported by: Dansverkstæðið, The Nordic House in Iceland, Nordic Culture Point, Nordic Culture Fund, Capital Fund (Nuuk, Reykjavík, and Tórshavn), NATA, FÍLD, Performing Arts Center Iceland, and Örvar.

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