30/10
What’s up Sweden – Johanna Fröjd, Ella Effendy, Iman Gele, Rebecca Livaniou l MALMÖ DANCE WEEK

Three performances have been carefully selected from the numbers of applicants to the Open call earlier this spring. Now you finally get to experience their unique, innovative ideas.

Three different performances – one night every year we probe the terrain for new interesting, innovative and unique ideas. 2023 open call resulted in three different residencies and performances by Johanna Fröjd och Ella Effendy, Iman Gele and Rebecca Livaniou. 

Iman got a second chance after 6 months in coma and after recovering for almost 2 years the urban scene became her safe space. She now want to explore herself in different urban dance styles with the piece “IMAN le Walashé” 

Johanna och Ella believes that differences in rhythm are a factor in the difficulties between us and our surroundings. With dance as her tool, she wants to explore the differences in rhythm from the perspective of “pactivity”, a concept from the philosopher Jonna Bornemark.  

Rebecca and her female dancers asks questions about freedom. Do we ever experience it? What is our definition of it, and what do we need to reach it? Maybe you will find find out in the piece “Souls of freedom” 

IMAN le Walashé.
Dancer and choreography: Iman Gele 

DAGENS
Dancers and choreography: Johanna Fröjd & Ella Effendy
Musician: Inga Klepp Bjørndal

Souls of freedom
Idea, choreography and dancer: Rebecca Livaniou
Dancers: Aphinya Jakobsson, Eshidoreen Paradiso, Shahrzha Hamzhzade

IMAN GELE 
Iman Gele is a krump and hip-hop dancer of East African descent. She has participated in several international hip hop battles, performed at various dance festivals and works as a presenter for various events. She has traveled all over Europe and to New York for inspiration from the hip hop scene. She organizes dance events, is a member of the women’s collective Walashé (sisters (djiboutien)) and works with the Berlin Krump community. In spring 2022 she took part in an artist exchange in Detroit and Chicago and worked as a performance coach. In the years 2020-2022 she worked as a choreographer for the international Tanz im August Festival in Berlin. Earlier this year she founded her second collective NDA BIVINI (The House of the Blacks (Ewondo)) with three other BIPOC dancers.  

DAGENS
DAGENS is a nordic collaboration with the intention to share and develop practices.The artistic working group consists of artists from Finland (Ella Effendy), Sweden (Johanna Fröjd) and Norway (Inga Klepp Bjørndal) that are active in street culture and arts. We emphasize equality and a non-hierarchical working environment. This we will do through researching and inviting collective processes for inclusion and embodied dialogue. 

SOULS OF FREEDOM 
Rebecca Livaniou aka Rebobo has been dancing since her early years. Studied in schools such as Åsa Folkhögskola and Stockholm University of the Arts. Born and raised in Sweden with roots from Ethiopia she has battled and traveled around the world to countries such as France, Germany, New York, Japan, South Africa etc. to dive deep into hiphop culture aswell as her own essence. In addition to this she has been working with preformences called “Unvolution” and “Listen!”. Her most recent work has been in Lisa Janbells “SEARCH”, “Sweet n sticky” aswell as Axakavats “Making waves”. First time coregraphing was together with Kevin Wedin in the preformence “Contemplation” 2019 and now shes debuting with her own piece called “Souls of freedom”.