Meet the first works by the current students of the MFA in Choreography at the Danish National School of Performing Arts.

The five works are the first productions of Carla Anacker, Inaja Katharina Skands, Lara Vejrup Ostan, Ottavia Catenacci and Thjerza Balaj, students in the second semester of the MFA in Choreography.
They have been working in close collaboration with lighting design students Anna Westh, Jakob Juul, Sol Patrick Ravn and Magnus Hjortlund.
Learn more about each showing below







Carla Anacker
This piece is not about the dancers. It is also not about their movements. It is about what both dancers and movements move.
What they move is time.
Between them rhythm unfolds.
Rhythm not as in regular counting, but rather like rhythm in language.
Some syllables longer than others. Here and there a pause that allows a thought to ripe. One word stretched to fully taste it on the tongue. Another one quickly swallowed.
This piece is not about the dancers. It is also not about the movement itself. And yet, the piece depends on both.
choreography
Carla Anacker
created in collaboration with and danced by
Emma Marie Bruun
Tilda Lärke
Vilda Palmkvist
Josephine Zethsen
light
Sol Patrick Ravn
Sound
Philip Munksgaard Meedom


Inaja Katharina Skands
A frontal fiction of perpetual transformation, a flatscape that deepens itself before your eyes.
'But, I Am Shaped like a Star' explores the body as a vessel for fantasy — a fictitious play of mundane magic.
Three dancers appear, reappear, disappear, and reveal themselves to you, as you reveal to us.
The project explores the icon(s) of the Fool and the Wishing Table, which in this context serve as symbols for representing the mundane body and the dancing body, as mediums through which ever-evolving fiction and fantasy can unfold and develop from.
The piece is based on a series of scores, continuing on Inaja’s interest in developing choreography through text(s) and written material.
choreography
Inaja Katharina Sands
created in collaboration with dancers
Ella Östlund
Magalí Camps
Inaja Katharina Skands
light design
Jakob Juul
sound editing
Inaja Katharina Skands
Todd Sarfaraz
outside eye and sparing partner
Amalie Bergstein Nielsen


Lara Vejrup Ostan
All the roads are in love with Linda. Linda has decided to stay home.
'All These Roads Just for You' is a musing on orientation and travel – on particular spatial and temporal paradigms that exist in road mythology. It is an unrequited romance between an ancient architecture, sprung from the need to move, and a woman who has other ideas.
choreography
Lara Vejrup Ostan in close collaboration with performer Ella Östlund
light designer
Jakob Juul
outside eye
Yeong-Ran Suh
composer
Moritz Nahold
thanks to
Philip Munksgaard Meedom


Ottavia Catenacci
'The Script' is intended as an object, a choreographic score, a metaphoric path to follow.
While pretending, exploring allusive relationships, riding dances and engaging in choreographic compositions, two dancers read through pages where narratives and geographies of a fictional mundane leak out of synchronicity, separation, encounters and rhythms.
choreograPHER
Ottavia Catenacci
dancers
Miranda Josephine Riviere
Vilma Ehnberg
Composer
Julie Østengaard
light designer
Anna Westh
costume designer
Veronica Fabon
photo
Þórunn Guðmundsdóttir
thanks to
Ella Östlund, Eliza Bozek, Amelia Tan, Þórunn Guðmundsdóttir, Lara Vejrup Ostan and Carla Anacker for their conversations, support and for witnessing this project along the way
text excerpt
From the book 'No One Belongs Here More Than You' by Miranda July


Thjerza Balaj
'ANTAGONIST' features five characters - four humans and a dummy - exploring how power and judgement relates to perspective.
Using the camera lens, the piece asks questions about who the viewer is, who has the authority to pass judgements and how shifting perspectives can transform power dynamics and offer new dimensions of meaning and presence.
direction and choreography
Thjerza Balaj
performers
Alvilda Faber Striim
Amalie Bergstein Nielsen
Anne Sofie Stubbe Lindeberg
Thjerza Balaj
music
Albert Hertz
Light
Magnus Hjortlund
outside eye
Angela Bundalovic
time and place
Thursday, 6 March at 19:00 (Carla, Ottavia, Lara)
Friday, 7 March at 19:00 (Inaja, Thjerza)
Saturday, 8 March at 17:00 (Carla, Ottavia, Lara)
Saturday, 8 March at 20:00 (Inaja, Thjerza)
Sunday, 9 March at 15:00 (Thjerza, Lara)
Sunday, 9 March at 17:00 (Carla, Ottavia, Inaja)
The Danish National School of Performing Arts
Per Knutzons Vej 5, Salen
1437 København K