Lunch dance

Dancer at Skånes Dansteater since 2016.

Madeleine was born and raised in Sweden, Madeleine lives and works in Malmö, Sweden. After graduation in 2011 Madeleine has worked with social development for The City of Malmö and project manager for various youth projects. For ten years she was a manager for the youth group Aktiva Tjejer (Active Girls).

It was through her work with Aktiva Tjejer that she 2012 came in contact with Skånes Dansteater which over the years has developed into close collaborations. Madeleine and other young women from Aktiva Tjejer were part of Skånes Dansteater’s film project Don’t be afraid it’s only movement and the productions Woza Nami (2014) och C me (2015). Out of C me the duet Dare to Wreck has been expanded and turned into an independent work by Madeleine and co-dancer and co-choreographer Peder Nilsson, dancer at Skånes Dansteater, which has since 2016 toured the internationally.

As a dancer at Skånes Dansteater, Madeleine has been involved in productions such as 'Vinterresa', 'Fine Lines', 'Uncharted', and 'Belonging'. Madeleine has also developed methods of inclusive workshop practices as part of the European Union project IDance.

2017 she received the arts stipend award of 50 000 SEK from Sparbanks Stiftelsen Skåne for ‘Dancer of the Year’.

She is currently part of Skånes Dansteater’s four-year European Union project ‘Europe Beyond Access’.

Ellen Pettersson have created the music for little parcels by Madeleine Månsson.

Dance intern at Skånes Dansteater during the 2023/24 season.

Yousin is currently studying dance at Anton Bruckner University in Linz, Austria.

During his internship he will perform in our production 'Lunch dance' among other things.

More information about Yousin will be posted shortly.

Goldberg Variations, Johann Sebastian Bach, mixed by Sweentead.

Liam Francis is an independent dance artist and choreographer based in Brighton (UK). His passion for dance was ignited after seeing ’Into The Hoods’, an award winning show by hiphop theatre company ZooNation: The Kate Prince Company. Liam later went on to work intensively with ZooNation, as well as in the commercial dance industry. He trained vocationally at London Studio Centre (INTOTO) and graduated with a First Class BA Hons degree in 2014.

Liam spent seven years as a leading dancer with Rambert Dance Company, performing and creating roles in works by choreographers such as Mark Baldwin, Kim Brandstrup, Christopher Bruce, Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, Merce Cunningham, Ben Duke, Sharon Eyal, Andonis Foniadakis, Wayne McGregor, Marion Motin, Patricia Okenwa, Hofesh Shechter, Alexander Whitley, Wim Vandekeybus and Didy Veldman.

As a choreographer, Liam is keen to combine his hybrid dance training with a playful approach to movement. He has performed his own choreographic work in London, Massachusetts, New York, Oxford, Rome and Rotterdam. In 2022, his duet ’Dual till the Death’ received four partnership awards at RIDCC, one of which was from Skånes Dansteater. In addition, Liam has been commissioned to create work for Ballett Theater Trier, Rambert Dance Company and Shechter2.

XII. Seven Hunters (Bird & Wind Instruments), Hidden Orchestra (Joe Acheson)
Bluesette, Quincy Jones (Toots Thielemans)
Futura Grotesk, Tomaga (Thomas Relleen, Valentina Magaletti)
My Favorite Things, John Coltrane (Oscar Hammerstein II, Richard Rogers)

Liam Francis is an independent dance artist and choreographer based in Brighton (UK). His passion for dance was ignited after seeing ’Into The Hoods’, an award winning show by hiphop theatre company ZooNation: The Kate Prince Company. Liam later went on to work intensively with ZooNation, as well as in the commercial dance industry. He trained vocationally at London Studio Centre (INTOTO) and graduated with a First Class BA Hons degree in 2014.

Liam spent seven years as a leading dancer with Rambert Dance Company, performing and creating roles in works by choreographers such as Mark Baldwin, Kim Brandstrup, Christopher Bruce, Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, Merce Cunningham, Ben Duke, Sharon Eyal, Andonis Foniadakis, Wayne McGregor, Marion Motin, Patricia Okenwa, Hofesh Shechter, Alexander Whitley, Wim Vandekeybus and Didy Veldman.

As a choreographer, Liam is keen to combine his hybrid dance training with a playful approach to movement. He has performed his own choreographic work in London, Massachusetts, New York, Oxford, Rome and Rotterdam. In 2022, his duet ’Dual till the Death’ received four partnership awards at RIDCC, one of which was from Skånes Dansteater. In addition, Liam has been commissioned to create work for Ballett Theater Trier, Rambert Dance Company and Shechter2.

Åsa Gjerstad has a background as a fashion designer with collections in her own name. Her driving force to be part of something bigger has led her to work exclusively with stage costume for the past 15 years. Everything from circus, theatre, opera and dance to pop bands, movies and television. Her costume designs have appeared on stages such as the Finnish National Opera, Den Jyske Opera, the Göteborg Opera and Teater Republique.

She has created costumes for several prize nominated performances for choreographers such as Ben Wright, Pernille Garde, Jacob Stage, Tim Rushton, Marie Brolin-Tani, Roser López Espinosa and Virpi Pakhinen. Alongside her role as a costume designer, Åsa also has a career as a cellist, with among others the band Fullmånen från helvetet (Full Moon From Hell).

Jia Yi (Judy) Luo is a Chinese Canadian dance artist based in Toronto. A child of east and west, she finds intrigue in patterns, puzzles, people and play. This combination of curiosities led her to grassfields, basketball courts, ultimate frisbee, and eventually the dance studio.

Judy holds her BFA in Performance Dance from Toronto Metropolitan University where she had the privilege of performing works by Peggy Baker, Charles Moulton, Merce Cunningham, Alysa Pires, Bobbi Jene Smith and Or Schraiber. Following graduation, Judy was a member of Rambert2 in London (UK), where she performed and toured works by Sharon Eyal and Gai Behar, Micaela Taylor, Benoit Swan Pouffer and Megan Lawson in live and digital formats.

As a current freelancer, she is a main collaborator of Liam Francis, Nova Bhattacharya and Anne Plamondon, sharing their works with audiences in Canada, UK, Germany and now, Sweden! Beyond borders, Judy seeks to utilize movement to build and bridge communities through shared desires and experiences. She continues her exploration of self both outside, and within, the limitations and labels of science, faith, culture, and history. Whether wearing the hat of performer, educator or rehearsal director, she marvels at the body’s intelligence and delights in sharing this fascination with others.

Helena Franzén is a dancer and choreographer with nearly 35 years in the field. She has created more than 90 works for the stage and toured in Sweden and internationally, with her own productions or on assignments for institutions such as Skånes Dansteater, Göteborgsoperan’s dance company, Norrdans, The Edge, Nytt Dansk Dansteater, Regionteater Väst and others.

Helena Franzén is also a popular teacher and mentor. She teaches regularly at many dance schools and dance companies around the world. Helena Franzén has shared her practice and experience with dancers through her ’Embodied Awareness’ workshops. In 2019–2020, Helena Franzén presented a major retrospective exhibition, ’Mitt dansande liv’ (My Dancing Life) at Dansmuseet in Stockholm. For 10 years, she has created dance films that have been presented at several international dance film festivals.

In 2007, she was awarded a ten-year artist grant by the Swedish Arts Grants Committee. In 2011, she received the City of Stockholm arts scholarship and the Swedish Theatre Critics’ Association’s dance award. In 2014, Helena received the Gannevik grant from the Swedish Arts Grants Committee, with the following words:

“A choreographer, whose artistic practice appeared stringent and mature from the start. Since then, she has engaged in an uncompromising and consistent exploration of the endless movement potential of dance, in close collaboration with music. She is a dance artist who creates articulate physical poetry through her own extreme body control, together with her dancers.”

Jason Southgate is a Theatre & Performance Designer working internationally across theatre, opera, puppetry, film and dance. He trained at Central St Martins London and was awarded an Arts Council Design Bursary. Jason has designed sets and costumes for both classics and modern plays at leading UK theatres and worked at many European opera houses.

Jason has worked for a number of prestigious companies in the UK including Theatre Royal Haymarket, The Royal Opera, English National Ballet, Welsh National Opera, Young Vic, and Citizens Theatre Glasgow. He has also worked internationally for Den Norske Opera, Bregenz Opera Festival, Savonlinna Opera Festival, Komische Oper, Hong Kong Arts Festival, Frankfurt Opera, Opera Zuid and Wexford Opera Festival.

Joonas Tikkanen graduated from the Tampere University of Applied Sciences in 2012 with a degree in lighting and video design. He has been working with performing arts since 2005 and did his first design work in 2008. He has worked as a designer in several productions in the field of dance, theater, music, circus and installation art.

Joonas’ recent designs have been seen in Finnish National Ballet triple bill with Johanna Nuutinen’s ’Hyöky’, Tero Saarinen’s ’Wedge’ and Kenneth Kvarnström’s ’Bolero 2.0’. He has also worked with Johanna Nuutinen’s dance performances ’Opia’ and ’HZ’, Kulturhuset Stadsteatern’s theater production ’Kulla Gulla’ and ’Aniara’, a choral opera co-production with Klockriketeatern and the Grammyawarded The Crossing Choir.

Helle Carlsson is educated at the Stockholm University of the Arts and has been active as a costume designer in film, television and performing arts since 2007. In addition to approxomatly 40 titles for SVT (Swedish television) on her CV, such as the acclaimed TV series ’Grotesco’s Seven Masterpieces’, Helle has made costume design for the feature film Jordgubbslandet, Eurovision Song Contest and the Nobel Prize party.

For the past ten years, Helle has worked mainly at various theaters in Sweden such as Dramaten, Malmö Opera, Riksteatern, Stockholms-Uppsala and Gothenburg’s Stadsteater. ’Once a Whisper’ and ’Zero-Zero’ are Helle’s first two productions at Skånes Dansteater.

Joep Beving has been one with the piano from an early age. His style of playing has changed over the years, searching for a particular aesthetic essence. His path was illuminated by a piano that Beving inherited from his grandmother when she passed away in 2009. This German instrument insisted on a gentler touch and a gracious pace, which eventually led Beving to adapt to a more classical vocabulary to tell his story.

His debut album ‘Solipsism’ investigates the self and how it is related to the other by trying to show we have a shared understanding of what it is to be human. For ‘Prehension’ Beving describes realizing he had zoomed out from the individual level to the level of the collective. ’Henosis’ was the last step, in which Beving’s destination is the vastness of the cosmos in search of “ultimate reality and emptiness of the mind”. With his fourth solo album ’Hermetism’, released in summer 2022, he return to his roots with a pure piano solo album.

Håkan Jelk has worked in dance since 1995. He started working with Dansens Hus, Moderna Dansteatern, Cullberg Ballet and with independent choreographers such as Cristina Caprioli, Margaretha Åsberg and Liza Penkova. In 2011, he began a collaboration with the choreographer Helena Franzén, taking documentary photography of the process of creating dance. The collaboration has since developed and deepened, today they develop performance ideas, set design and lighting design together.

Håkan Jelk and Helena Franzén have created dance films that have been shown at international dance film festivals since 2014. Håkan has also exhibited photography and video installations with dance as a starting point.