Maria Nilsson Waller
Maria Nilsson Waller is a choreographer, dancer and designer. She has been working with dance in more than 20 years and created 14 independent productions.
Presenting at the Swedish Dance Experience, Thursday, August 29th in Sammlung Philara.
Performance – Merry.Go.Round
Merry.Go.Round is weaving in questions around our relationship to love, the romantic myth and sense of home in the world/universe.
Merry.Go.Round is the latest and final piece in Maria Nilsson Waller’s Terra Nullius triptych (2012-2022) based on earths last unclaimed territories. It looks into space and the unknown future of mankind, highlighting our shifting relationship to nature and environment, the future and the unknown.
Merry.Go.Round is both dance and theatre. The sound score is a mix of Swedish jazz, opera, pop and NASA’s sound recordings of our solar system. Performed by an international cast of five excellent dancers, it is a show full of improvisation and presence, different each time. In the work reminiscent of Chagall, Satie, Dali and Kubrick we meet five mythical characters inside what seem to be a world stuck in post-romantic stress disorder. Time, anticipation and transformation are key ingredients when the clockwork of paths and journeys are set in motion – it is a search for true love in the light of the big western romantic myths, cinematic and otherworldly yet strangely familiar. While the work contains obvious references to the movement of celestial bodies, our understanding of the universe, gravity and even time itself, the main questions we face in Flora Fauna Project’s 2022 edition are: What is love, community and home? How do we care for each other and our planet? How do we exist together and what does our shared future look like?
Between 2012 - 2017 choreographer Maria Nilsson Waller made three pieces all around the theme of our last unclaimed territories – Terra Nullius. The first, Last Land was an imaginary journey to Antarctica and Bir Tawil desert, followed by Founder – a deep dive to our unknown and elusive deep sea floor.
Merry.Go.Round is the last piece in the series and is looking out into space and the unknown future of mankind. In different ways, all three pieces highlight our shifting relationship to nature and environment, and are taking a closer look at the unknown – the borderland where science gives way to myth. Merry.Go.Round weaves this together while also taking a closer look at the romantic myth – the many stories and ideas about love, romance and relationships that have dominated the western world since early medieval days. It is a piece about our shared longing for home and authentic connections. Through loops and orbits, in a dance that is as much cosmic and celestial as it is human and recognisable, the five dancers tumble around each other in a world that often seems to suffer from post-romantic stress disorder.
While the work contains an obvious reference to the movements of celestial bodies, our understanding of the universe, gravity and even time itself, the main concern is questions of a more humane character: What happens when you join another person’s orbit? How can you stay together when your paths are splitting apart? Merry.Go.Round is dance and theatre, movement and poetry, presence and improvisation. The sound score is a mix of Swedish jazz, opera, pop and NASA’s sound recordings of our solar system.
Performed by an international cast of five excellent dancers, the score that is partly improvisation based will be different each time, and hard to put into words. Press has described it as “astronomy for poets and lovers” (Marie Palmqvist, Länstidningen 2017), and as “striking images, pure emotion”. (Seona Mac Reamoinn,The Irish Times 2017)
The choreographer – Maria Nilsson Waller / Flora Fauna Project
Maria Nilsson Waller is a choreographer, dancer and designer. She has been working with dance in more than 20 years and created 14 independent productions. In addition to this she has hosted over 200 workshops to school classes in primary and secondary school, as well as created 4 large scale community-dance projects. In 2017 she co-founded Flora Fauna Project together with Irish multi-disciplinary artist Stace Gill – an international dance company based in Östersund, Sweden and Laragh, Ireland.
Flora Fauna Project is working with themes around our relationship to nature, environment and natural intelligence in works that combine dance, music, installation and film. In 2022 FFP began to establish a creative silk road connecting our homelands Sweden and Ireland via land and sea, in search of a more ecological and sustainable way of touring and working. Our touring productions are designed to suit a wide range of venues, making it possible for us to reach rural communities and smaller, alternative venues as well as the traditonal venues. We aim to travel with 100% renewal energy by 2025.
Contact person
Maria Nilsson Waller, Artistic Director Flora Fauna Project, marianilssonwaller@gmail.com
Websites
https://www.florafaunaproject.com
Social media
Twitter: @florafaunaprjct
With support from
With support from Konstnärsnämnden, Kulturrådet and The Irish Arts Council.
Photographer: Stace Gill, Pato Cassinoni