Marit #1: Humans & Soil Practice in Stockholm

My daily life in the north

I am back home in my town Umeå north of Sweden, seeing icy roads and snow covered birch trees all around. The hours are short with lack of sunshine, but my inner spirit animal – the Bear tells me it is time for hibernation, reflection and introspection. As an indigenous person, who did not grow up with any of my cultural heritage, I can still believe my genetics and spiritual body helps me a lot to deal with these seasonal times, and especially in a pandemic that makes us even go further into ourselves to reflect upon life. I just recently got an acoustic piano in my apartment, where I like to create my own melodies and as a way to relax between working.

Production residency, Stockholm

I just came back from a 3 week residency at the National Theatre Organisation, Riksteatern in Stockholm with my project Humans & Soil. The theatre organised a livestream of our work, which you can watch here:

of itself : in itself (Produktionsresidens Dans på Riksteatern)

Dance and music performance

We are developing a piece named “of itself : in itself” that has a premiere at the Nordic Opera in Umeå, March 2021. We are 7 artists working together; Me as a choreographer and dancer in the piece, Linnéa Sundling and Sebastian Björkman as dancers, Annelie Nederberg – Sound artist, Nina Nordvall Vahlberg – Jojk artist/musician, Juvvá Pittja – and my life partner, and Örjan Fjällström – Light Designer.

We are a big team with unique artistic qualities and competence, uniting traditional Sámi Jojk with experimental play with sound and light. With the dancing we are weaving together our individual personalities and artistic expressions, always looking for ways to find threads between us and a sense of cultural belonging.

Ainu Exchange

We also had a guest artist with us, Ainu researcher Kanako Uzawa. She plays the Mukkuri instrument wonderfully, sharing her heritage and view on Ainu dance and music with us during the residency.

I miss Japan during these times, I started traveling there to study Aikido and Zazen meditation in 2016, being in Shiro Oni Studios as an artist in residence, and training Aikido and Zen studies in Kyoto and Tokyo. I immediately felt home in Japan first time, I could already speak a bit of Japanese because of my martial arts studies, the air was different and the neon lights made me feel like I was an adventurer, an explorer.
But I also knew about the Ainu people, and as a Sámi person – I felt the need to investigate what was beneath the colonised soil, the indigeous culture which I am a part of, and that I will share with you during my residency at S-AIR.