FLIP SIDE

Visualizing the woman I want to become in the mirror

Choreography: Frédéric Gies

Dancer: Rachel Tess

At the origin of this solo is a meme, which I randomly gleaned on social media and which became a recurring message in my online communication with Rachel, as a humorous way to channel our anger in the face of situations that upset us. The meme, which gives the title to this solo, depicts a feminine looking, barbie-like doll, looking at herself in the mirror but it is the face of the terrifying queen of the Alien franchise that appears as her reflection. This solo embraces the stigma of the mad, angry woman trope, turning it around with bravura, poetic precision and rigorous composition in the shape of an operatic choreography.

Some parts altered

Choreography: Ulrich Ruchlinski

Dancer: Rachel Tess

Some parts altered is a dance solo for Rachel Tess that explores the inheriting of movement, gestures and expressions as part of our human heritage and culture.

The piece is a minimalistic journey through a performer’s memory accompanied by a musical composition that echoes it. Whereas appropriation nowadays is a delicate subject, the piece approaches the different mechanisms of translating and recycling movement and music from different corners of our western culture in a positive and graceful way. Could we imagine thatour attitude towards found and appropriated material is humble, gentle and thankful, or shall we deny its origins? The piece does not of course answer those questions but rather opens up for a critical discourse of the always present representation of culture within our culture.

She Drifts She Charges

Choreography: Sophia Mage

Dancer: Rachel Tess

Music: Simon Olderskog Albertsen

Costume: Sofia Stål

In this windy solo dance, Rachel seamlessly transitions through a multitude of attitudes, textures, turns, and personas. She forms as she goes, leaving subtle traces of lived experience, nothing stays for long, and everything changes.

She Drifts She Charges is an hour-long, tempest made with and for Rachel Tess, she is accompanied by percussionist Simon Olderskog Albertsen.

Flip side

Concept: Rachel Tess

Choreography: Frédéric Gies, Sophia Mage, Ulrich Ruchlinski

Flip side is a series of ten solos created with and for dancer Rachel Tess between 2024-2027, by contemporary choreographers in Sweden and abroad. Commissioned by Tess as a dance anthology, the title refers to the ‘flip side’ or less hyped ‘B-side’ of a record.

Since 2013, Tess has created work from deep in the Skanian countryside with a focus on site responsive works, people, and place rather than commercial success. Each edition of Flip side is crafted to showcase her skills as a maturing performer, unearthing an artistry accrued over a long career in dance.

In 2024 she commissions choreographers Frédéric Gies (SE/FR), Sophia Mage (DK/US), and Ulrich Ruchlinski (SE/DE). The solos are created for public, museum, gallery, and black box spaces and can be presented individually or as a triple bill. The only guidelines are that she follows the desires of the choreographers.

About the choreographers:

Frédéric Gies (SE/FR), https://www.danceisancient.se

Oscillating between clockwork composition and the intensities and chaos generated by dancing bodies surrendering to the desires and forces that traverse them, Frédéric Gies’ dance pieces bring to the forefront the capacity of dance to speak without having to demonstrate or represent anything. Drawing from their former training in ballet, their encounter with specific trends of contemporary dance at the beginning of the 90s, their dance floor experiences in techno clubs and raves and their study of somatic practices, Frédéric Gies approaches form as possibilities rather than constraints. Their dances weld forms seemingly foreign to each other, recycle and pervert dance history and heritages. They playfully collapse the distinction and hierarchies between erudite and popular forms of dance. Their pieces also address politics in a non-representational way. In their pieces, bodies as the instigators of movement don’treinforce identities but excavate the complexity of their layers. Frédéric Gies’ work is also tightly connected to techno music and infused with references to clubbing and rave cultures. This is widely enabled by their long-term collaboration with the DJ and producer Fiedel.

Sophia Mage (DK/US), https://sophiamage.com

Sophia Mage is a dancer, choreographer and teacher based in Copenhagen. Sophia approaches performance with a mindset of world-building. She often works with a fictional sense of being and place in order to gently tilt the atmosphere towards the uncanny. Her process is influenced by the meeting of intuition, improvisation and coincidences from the mediums she works with. All this with an eye for an immediate and broad appeal so that the finished work appears inviting in itself with rich underlying intention.

Ulrich Ruchlinski (SE/DE), https://www.imulto.com/imulto-ab/

Ulrich Ruchlinski’s artistic expression varies between musical composition, sound and light design, in- cluding live performance, with movement, guitar, bass and electronic elements. His focus is on physicality and 3d space – meaning that his musical compositions, sound or light design interact as equal elements, while supporting the overall concept of each project. Ruchlinski’s works have been presented within the performing arts field, as well as exhibition and museum contexts.

Ruchlinski has worked within the performing arts since 1995 with sound, light and stage crafts. Startingoff in 1994 at Theater für Kinder i München with stage production and light design, he moved on toPunchbag Theatre Company Galway in Ireland, where he created his first lighting designs for three of the company ́s productions. After moving to Malmö, Sweden in 1997 he started working for local theater groups. In this context he became involved in dance and performance. Recent productions include works for Norrdans, Skånes Dansteater and Danish Dance Theatre, where Ulrich’s contribution was musical composition, sound design and creating methodologies for community work.

Since 2014 he co-runs the artistic platform Imulto that supports productions and concepts within the per- forming arts.

About the dancer:

Rachel Tess (SE/US), https://www.rachelvtess.org

Rachel Tess is an American choreographer and dancer living and working in Sweden. She is the director of Milvus Artistic Research Center (MARC) in Knislinge and senior curator for dance at Wanås Konst. She received a BFA in 2004 from The Juilliard School in New York City. While attending Juilliard, Tess received a Princess Grace Award (2002), performed as a member of the Lar Lubovitch Dance Company, and was presented with the Martha Hill Dance Award by the faculty.

Tess has been a member of Les Grands Ballets Canadiens de Montréal, Gothenburg Opera Ballet, and held a permanent position with the Cullberg Ballet in Stockholm. She has premiered her choreographic works in Sweden, Montre- al, New York City, Costa Rica, and Portland, Oregon. In 2013, Tess received her masters in choreography from the New Performative Practices Masters program at DOCH. She won and completed a Princess Grace Foundation Works in Progress Residency at the Baryshnikov ArtsCenter in New York City with her on- going project ‘Souvenir’, a mobile choreographic architecture, in 2013. ‘Souvenir’ was exhibited as part of the ‘Dance Me’ exhibition at Wanås Konst in 2014. She was presented by the Lower Manhattan Culture Council (LMCC), (in collabora- tion with Princess Grace Foundation USA and Baryshnikov Arts Center) in 2014 and 2015. She is also engaged in the ongoing project ‘These are bodies, These are motions, This is the place’ with choreographer/performer Benoît Lachambre, which premiered at Wanås Konst in 2014, New York City in the River to River Festival hosted by LMCC, and Brådjupa festival in Karlshamn in 2022. She completed commissions with and for Corpus (DK), Danish Dance Theatre (DK), Norrdans (SE), and Skånes Dansteatern (SE), in 2019-2022.

In 2019 Tess received the prestigious Birgit Cullberg stipendiat for her work with MARC and the premiere of ‘Any number of sunsets...’ with the following motivation:

In her choreographic work, Rachel Tess builds tactile spaces that allow us to grow inwards, outwards and towards each other. Based on wondering how we would spend time together during the world’s very last sunset, she created in her latest work ‘Any number of sunsets ...’ a poetic landscape in the middle of an awkward horizon.

Rachel Tess is constantly working to find new arenas for dance as an art form. She seeks outside the established stages and instead meets the audience in unexpected places where she acts as an enabler, educator and apostle for the art of dance - not least in the Scanian countryside. In the true spirit of Birgit Cullberg, she makes the complex accessible and understandable.

In 2023 she won the Region of Skåne’s culture prize with the following motiva- tion: ‘Region Skåne’s culture prize winner 2023 is an artist who constantly pushes

the boundaries of her art form: what it is, what it can be and for whom it can be. Through her unique way of involving and collaborating with both the local audi- ence and professional colleagues in Sweden and internationally, the artform’s relationship to itself but also to the surrounding society are constantly tested. This year’s prize winner builds an artistic landscape of dance art in the Scanian countryside that reaches far beyond where it is expected to be. Through her international activities, she brings the world to Knislinge and Knislinge out into the world.’

As a freelance dancer Tess works extensively with choreographer Peter Mills through his project Den Kosmiska Havsträdsgårdspassagen (a performance for the very young), Tim Matiakis, Anna Pehrsson, Frédéric Gies, and Benoit Lachambre. As curator of performance at Wanås Konst (2016-2022) sheinvited choreographers and dancers to present and create new works at the sculpture park including Joanna Kotze (US), Dinis Machado (PT), Xavier LeRoy (FR) and Scarlet Yu (HK), and Maria Hassabi (GR/US) among others. As an educator she teaches upwards of 500 local school children per year in Knislinge and research- es how to present experimental performance works in rural areas through current partnerships with Riksteatern, and other like-minded artist driven platforms in Sweden, Ukraine, and Kosovo. An interest in new modes of production and presentation for performance is the link between her artistic practice and her roles as curator, producer, and teacher. She is the recipient of a ten-year working grant from Konstnärsnamden.