Image: Landscape in Bodø, Norway (Gloria Mok)
Performing Arts Relay Lab
Artists from Denmark, Norway and Canada come together for a series of international artistic laboratories
Performing Arts Relay 2024-2026 is a series of artistic research labs, each hosted by one of the Relay partners in Norway, Canada and Denmark. In each lab, artists come together to explore, exchange, and share their artistic practice. The artistic work in the labs is free of the demands of production. The hosting partners facilitate and frame the lab work with questions, themes, individual and collaborative tasks to promote the artists’ awareness of their methods and artistic practices.
The participating artists proposed an idea for an experiment, a question or a field of investigation on the theme Language//Landscape – and explored their ideas in a process of practice and exchange, with each other and with local participants. Each lab included a daily hike to inspire artists with the landscape of each location, followed by studio sessions designed to reflect on and share each person’s approach to creation.
The focus of the labs is the variety of the 3 countries’ languages and (inner and outer) geographies as reflected in the work of the participating artists. The thematic starting point is Language//Landscape, a broad theme that could be interpreted in multiple ways by the artists, as they explore their own and each other’s working practice, mapping pathways that reflect the Language of Landscapes and the Landscape of Languages.
Relay Bodø – November 12-15, 2024:
- Dordi Strøm, scenographer, costume designer and writer (NOR).
- Eva Svaneblom, dance artist (NOR).
- Lucy Coren, theatre maker (CAN).
- Rinchen Dolma, director, dramaturge, performer (CAN).
- Nicola Visser, dance artist (DK).
- Jori Snell, physical performer and visual artist (DK).
1. Barbara Simonsen, Eva Svaneblom, Dordi Strøm, Jori Snell, Nicola Visser, Rinchen Dolma, Gloria Mok at dinner.
2. Rinchen Dolma in rocky terrain in Bodø.
3. Barbara Simonsen & Brian Quirt on a grassy hike in Bodø.
Relay Canada – June 3, 2025
Canadian facilitators hosted an online lab session which included all of the participating artists and facilitators. It was designed as a creative bridge introducing the artists who attended in Bodø with the artists who would be in Aarhus, inviting all participants to share reflections and expectations about their creative work.
Relay Aarhus – September 29-October 3, 2025:
- Col Cseke, theatre maker, director, deviser, Deaf-Disability-Mad Theatre advocate, podcaster and artistic director (CAN).
- Valentina Martinez Mariscal, dance artist, choreographer rooted in Latin American and Afro-Cuban dance traditions (NOR).
- Stine Marcinkowski Pettersson, dancer, performer, choreographer, director, teacher, therapist and project manager (DK).
1. Relay Aarhus group – Top L-R: Nicola Visser, Stine Marcinkowski Pettersson, Valentina Martinez Mariscal, Magda Nordstrøm, Brian Quirt, Barbara Simonsen, Teresa Ariosto. Bottom L-R: Col Cseke, Gloria Mok, Sierra Haynes (Mathilde).
2. Sierra Haynes in the vast landscape of Mols Bjerge National Park (Gloria Mok).
3. Magda Nordstrøm petting a horse at Earthwise Residency (Gloria Mok).
Relay partners:
The Performing Arts Relay partners share a passion for artistic research and lab work for performing arts professionals. We believe that artistic research is a necessity, not a luxury, and essential for artists to continue to grow and develop, all through their career. As project partners we are dedicated to providing a solid framework for lab work to take place, and we feel that the labs we create together, combining practice and reflection in a professionally facilitated and structured frame, are an important contribution to expanding the horizons, knowledge and skills of the participating artists as well as our own.
- Seachange Lab (DK) – Barbara Simonsen, Teresa Ariosto, Nicola Visser
- Nightswimming (CAN) – Brian Quirt, Gloria Mok, Sierra Haynes
- Davvi – Centre for Performing Arts (NOR) – Susanne Næss, Anita Bjørkli, Magda Nordstrøm
- School of Creative and Performing Arts (CAN) – Bruce Barton
Relay History
The first Relay series took place between 2016-2018 with labs held in Reykjavik (Iceland), Hammerfest (Norway), Aarhus (Denmark) and Calgary (Canada). This was an initiative designed first and foremost to share how artists in the performing arts work, inviting one another into their creative processes, free from the pressures of developing a new work. Each lab was designed by the facilitators in that country and each took very different forms.
This initial Relay was formulated in 2015 during a conference hosted in Aarhus celebrating Seachange Lab’s RAPP Research in Artistic Practice Programme. Barbara, Brian and representatives from other performing arts lab organizations discussed Barbara’s proposal to host a series of labs in the form of a relay, in which each helped shape the next and which would accumulate and share knowledge over several years across national borders and disciplines and methodologies.
Following the Covid-19 pandemic, the partners regrouped and initiated a second series for 2024-2026. We decided a thematic framework would assist in identifying artists and projects that would fuel the artistic exchange, and settled on Language//Landscape to reflect the multi-lingual nature of the participants and to align with Barbara’s unique and powerful approach to ‘mapping’ artistic process, a method in which participants are invited to map / draw their experience of the daily hike, the process of making a new project and/or their approach to creation more broadly.
Read more about Lucy Coren and Rinchen Dolma’s experience in Bodø in their final report.
Col Cseke’s will be available in early 2026.
Performing Arts Relay 2024-2026 is supported by Nordic Culture Fund, The Norwegian Barents Secretariat and Aarhus Municipality.
