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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 explores herself in different urban dance styles with the piece “IMAN le Walashé”. 

Johanna and Ella explores human needs as a reminder of primitive human power.

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 

CONJOIN
Dancers and choreography: Johanna Fröjd & Ella Effendy

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

IMAN GELE

Do you reconsider your life? My name is IMAN and means faith and patience. Using my name as the metaphor for interpersonal connections, I want to raise questions about the role of a black woman and her different characters in social encounters. This piece, IMAN le Walashé combines various urban dance techniques like Krump dance and Hip Hop inside a theatrical setting and looks for moments of euphoria and relief. Different characteristic roles of IMAN have to learn to deal with different emotional states.

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 organizes dance events, is a member of the women’s collective Walashé (sisters (djiboutien)) and works with the Berlin Krump community. Earlier this year she founded her second collective NDA BIVINI (The House of the Blacks (Ewondo)) with three other BIPOC dancers.  

CONJOIN

Conjoin is a nordic collaboration with the intention to share and develop practices.The artistic working group consists of artists from Finland (Ella Effendy) and Sweden (Johanna Fröjd) that are active in street culture and arts. In Malmö Dance Week you will see a snippet of a work-in-progress that goes by the working title Conjoin.

CONJOIN illuminates human needs and is a reminder of primitive human power. The eagerness to create a supporting choir, a flock that rests in its transformation. In vibration, pulse and rhythm, CONJOIN explores its permeability: through the movement of the body, a loop machine and microphone, dance and music are joined.

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”.