STHLM DANS invites art lovers, theatregoers, dance professionals and everyone interested to join the Audience Club—a space to deepen your connection with contemporary dance and performance. Want to discuss shows, discover and share your genuine reactions, meet artists, and find a community to explore contemporary dance and performance with? Audience Club offers facilitated discussions, creative tasks and vocabulary to help you articulate your thoughts and explore others’ ideas in a safe but bold space.
What is Audience Club?
Audience Club is a programme that invites festival visitors to explore dance and theatre performances more deeply and connect them to their own lives and the pressing issues of today’s world. Guided by dance researcher and facilitator Anna Kozonina, a group of 10–15 participants will: collectively attend festival performances, explore dance and theatre language through mini-lectures, and experiment with creative tasks to engage with the works on a profound level. The goal of the Club is to open a forum for genuine, engaging and critical discussions around contemporary dance and performance, and help participants find their place and attitude towards this field of art. It also encourages confidence in expressing thoughts and emotions about performances. Audience Club is also a place to find new friends, get in touch with the local art community, and gain a fresh and profound perspective on the place of body and movement in the contemporary world. The Club seeks balance between expertise and emotional response, creating connections between feelings, critical thinking and theory.
2026 Theme: How We Make Sense of Dance and Performance: Body, Reason, and Intuition
How does your body react to the piece you’ve just seen, and how is it different from what your reasoning is telling you? What about the overall after-show vibe? Are you supposed to be shocked but you feel inspired? Or do you feel alienated while everyone seems to have loved the performance we’ve just seen? In the 2026 AC edition, we’ll explore how different parts of our personalities — and sometimes even different perceptive systems of our bodies — can disagree about the art we are experiencing.
As we go through the festival, we’ll explore:
How are our bodies affected by stage performances?
How do we make sense of our immediate sensations?
How do we create connections between our perceptions and our judgements of taste and value?
Which components of performances are deliberately “talking” to our hearts, minds and different body parts?
What in the “logic” and “construction” of each piece makes us feel and interpret it in a certain way?
Each show will serve as a starting point for deeper conversations, explored through different creative formats. By the end of the programme, participants will have new ways to talk about dance, greater confidence in sharing their thoughts on art, and, hopefully, a community to continue the conversation.
Who is it for?
The Club is welcoming dance, theatre and art lovers of all ages over 18 years old. Professional dancers and choreographers, artists, cultural managers and people with no previous background in performing arts, are welcome to take part as well.
Eligibility: Age: 18+
Language capacity: fluent English
Availability: you are able to be present at no less than 5 sessions out of 7.
How to take part
To sign up for the Audience Club, please fill in a simple Google Form by April 20th, and secure your participation by purchasing your ticket. You’ll get the ticket link via email within 72h after filling the application form. Note! The AC ticket includes the performances from the program below as well as all the AC activities.
Prices
700 SEK — regular ticket
600 SEK — students, people under 25 y.o., unemployed
About the facilitator
Anna Kozonina is a dance writer, researcher, and educator based in Helsinki. As well as obtaining an MA in Political Science and Linguistics, she studied dance history and performance theory and holds an arts MA from Aalto University. Since 2017 she has been reviewing pieces by emerging and established European choreographers, and diving into somatic discourses in contemporary dance, which she observes from critical and political perspectives. She currently gives lectures on dance and performance theories, curates educational programs, and conducts research projects. She collaborated with institutions and festivals across Europe including Norrlandsoperan, Impulstanz, Moving in November, Baltic and Nordic Dance Platforms, Rail2Dance, STHLM DANS, etc. She is also a regular contributor at Springback Magazine. Anna’s participation is supported by Kone Foundation.
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Programme
Pre-Session. Monday 4/5 (voluntary)
- 18:00. MOVEMENT WORKSHOP by Jakopo Jenna+ Quick pre-festival Hello-s
Session 1. Tuesday 5/5
- 17:00 WELCOMING AUDIENCE CLUB SESSION: Introduction to the Audience Club
- 19:00 SHOW: Jacopo Jenna (IT) – Manifestus
- 20:00 HANGOUT REFLECTIONS + Opening Party
Wednesday 6/5 – day off
Session 2. Thursday 7/5
- 17:30 DISCUSSION: Discussing Manifestus: Sensations, Intuitions, Reasoning
- 19:00 SHOW: Courtney May Robertson (UK) – Hunter
- 21:00 SHOW: Björn Säfsten (SE) – Haunted Desires
Session 3. Friday 8/5
- 17:45 DISCUSSION/WORKSHOP: Working with the material from Hunter and Haunted Desires
- 19:00 SHOW: Ieva Gaurilčikaitė-Sants and Krišjānis Sants (LV) – Oblicus
Session 4. Saturday 9/5
- 13:00 SHOW: Solo by Gwen Rakotovao (SE, FR)
- 14:00 WALK-AND-TALK: Monologues and Listening
- 15:00 REFLECTIONS + Lunch
Session 5. Sunday 10/5
- 16:00. SHOW: Agniete Lisičkinaitė & Igor Shugaleev (LT, Belarus) – CLAP&SLAP + after-talk
- 18:00. POST-TALK: Appreciations – Critical Questions
Session 6. Monday 11/5
- 17:30 PRE-TALK: Expectations Session
- 19:00 SHOW: Lilian Steiner (SE, AUS) – Dance Becomes Her
- 20:00 QUICK POST-TALK
Tuesday 11/5 – day off
Session 7 Wednesday 12/5
- 18:00 WRAP-UP, final discussion
- 20:00 SHOW: Wet Mess (UK) – Testo
Additional/Optional events:
- Friday 8/5 – Moving with Time: Stories of Dance Makers’ hosted Virve Sutinen. Dansens Hus. 15:00-17:00– free of charge
- Saturday, 9/5 or Sunday, 10/5 – Liis Vares, Taavet Jansen, Held in Human II: Rose in Your Brain (Estonia) mixed reality installation at Transtromer Bibliotek. 10:30-16:30 – free of charge
- Saturday, 9/5 – Sauna Radio Party. EDEN Kungsholmen. From 21:00 or 22:00 until late – free of charge
- Monday 11/5 – Lipsync workshop with Wet Mess. 16:00-18:00 – separately paid, info TBC
