Ways of Doing – a personal, thought-provoking and poetic performance for everyone
Ways of Doing is a personal exploration. By Suzie Davies and Mattias Ekholm
Ways of Doing is a personal exploration of a professional dancer’s hidden disabilities. Using dance and text, Suzie navigates through memories, feelings, and thoughts on how illness can impact on creativity.
Suzie is suffering from a chronic illness. As a consequence, she implements the theme of invisible disability into her work. With the help of her life and work partner Mattias Ekholm, she explores how her condition has affected her professional life, and how acceptance plays a part in finding new, artistically satisfying ways of working. By posing questions both to herself and to the audience, she hopes to initiate a contemplation of a theme that is rarely seen in dance, other than through those who are clearly and visibly physically challenged.
Presentation – the performers
Suzie Davies is a dancer and choreographer. She runs the project-based dance company DEED together with Mattias Ekholm. Over a career spanning almost 30 years she has worked within several different constellations, nationally and internationally, over a broad spectrum of genres. As a dancer and actor, she has worked with various companies and independent choreographers including Carte Blanche, Alan Lucien Øyen (Winter Guests), Ingun Bjørnsgaard, Den Norske Opera, and Kate Pendry.
Suzie is a recipient of the Rolf Gammleng prize, for her work as a dancer and for the versatility she has shown as a performer.
Since 2012 she has been employed by SKUDA, The Actors and Dancers Alliance in Norway. In 2019 she became the recipient of a 10-year work stipend for established artists, from Arts Council Norway (Kulturrådet).
Mattias Ekholm is a dance artist, choreographer and the joint leader of DEED. He has worked as a dancer for 30 years and collaborated closely with several profiled choreographers, mainly in the Nordic countries. Notably he has established long and close collaborations with Finnish-Swedish Kenneth Kvarnström and Norwegian Ingun Bjørnsgaard, resulting in several world tours and television productions. For 10 years, Mattias was a celebrated member of Norway’s national company for contemporary dance, Carte Blanche. In 2006 and 2012 he worked as Rehearsal Director for Skånes Dansteater in Malmö. Since 2012 Mattias has been employed by SKUDA, The Actors and Dancers Alliance.