MAIA MEANS
Maia Means is a freelance dancer and performer who holds a BA in Dance Performance from DOCH, Stockholm University of the Arts. Her interests move within the potential of performing and making things matter.
She asks how to be intimate on distance, how to make sense without fixating, how to be not static and not automatic, and how to know in order to not know. In recognising the importance of performing, she puts things at stake through turning language and presumptions around. She assumes perception as manifestation and sees dance and performance as a platform to layer, map and move reality.
Maia is currently collaborating with Oda Brekke on the performance On top of things; performing in Gry Tingskog’s Cheating Discipline and I object!, in Mette Ingvartsen’s To come (extended), Mira Mutkas Slowathon, and Love & Emotions by Karen Eide Bøen.
She has previously performed with among others Halla Ólafsdóttir and Eliisa Erävalo, Benoit Lachambre, Ida Sidenvall, Marianne Baillot, Sidney Leoni and Isabelle Schad. She is a co-editor of This container: SZZ and in the board of INSISTER SPACE, a non profit organisation dealing with the conditions and choreographic reality of the freelance dance-artist.
On top of things
Performers are on top of things. The weight of bodies breaks objects. Or objects change the form of the body. Glass crack, muscles give in. Or tension builds to hold a stacked moment – until it falls. A word is stacked on top. The meaning changes. A description, a feeling, a sense. Stacking things shapes and changes each entity. It creates new bodies. Time is passing, short and long. There is a person on an object. There is attention on the performer. There is language on an action. One thing on top of another. 1+1=2.
Performers are on top of things. They know what’s going on. They see what people are wearing and notice how they’re feeling. They know stuff that the audience don’t know. They know how the performance will end. But then someone is upside down, in a headstand. Now, the performers are underneath things. The situation is smarter than them. During a headstand, they are lost and confused. The headstand ends when one loses one’s balance, or strength. At the end of the headstand it’s clear that being underneath and being on top of is actually the same thing, just from different perspectives.
On top of things will be shown as a work-in process in April at Prøverummet, Bergen and in August during Dans/5, Oslo.
My Left, Your Right
What I look at when I don’t look back
or: left right
left right
left right
or: my left, your right
or: in-between construction work and family relations
or: in front of one-hundred-and-six seats
or. forms to perform
or: black square no.666 or: black square no.3 or: untitled
or: getting to know performing pt. 7.
THIS CONTAINER PIECE
AKA:
A bit of romance and also some other stuff.
A deeply superficial choreographic performance
A lapse from virtue or in it for the long run
And then she walked onto the podium and started to recite the Manifesto for Maintenance Art
Being several
Better half
Binaries are so over, quality and quantity are best friends some special Fridays
Chameleons
Chronic imposter syndrome
Clear Eyes, Full hearts
Committed containering
Do no Harm
Don’t Quixote
EPIC Tournament first round
Facts and feelings
Fear of failure and dreams of falling
Fictitious fake trying
Friday Night Lights Light
Friends
Gonzo choreography
This Container was performed at Index and right outside the museum of modern art in Stockholm in the summer of 2016, by Vanessa Virta, Nicole Neidert, Chloe Chignell, Maia Means and Ellen Söderhult.
ZZS: This container
ZINE ZIGN SIGN, a container for texts by artists within dance. Co-edited by Chloe Chignell, Ellen Söderhult and Maia Means
PDF: ZZS1
PDF: ZZS2
PDF: ZZS3
PDF: ZZS4: There is always more to fear
…by studio 11 and friends
A solo made and performed in 2015 in studio 11 at DOCH
// making and changing a form, of a space, the form of a visit. Doing visiting: Visiting is a lot about being nice, she said, but she could have said something or a lot else. She looked, she was a body in space, a body because of space, she added, a practical body, an imaginative body, a visiting body. To spend time with a memory, with a set phrase, the curtesy of knowing what comes next. As we make sense of situations, we could attend to each other’s sense-making, clearly and confusingly, being welcomed into, by oneself or someone else. And if the visit is this: The performance of the relation between this thing and that, a rhythmical sense-making of words and patters into this thing and that //
maia.means@hotmail.com
+46761658137
2018 I Object! by Gry Tingskog, Inter Arts Center, Malmö and Marabouparken, Stockholm
2018 Love & Emotions by Karen Eide Bøen, work in progress, Bergen
2018 To come (extended) by Mette Ingvartsen, replacement dancer on tour
2017 Shadows of tomorrow by Ingri Fiksdal, Ravnedans, Kristiansand
2017 Bitchcraft by Halla Olofsdottir and Eliisa Erävalo, DOCH, Stockholm
2017 That choregraphs us by Benoit Lachambre, Weld, Stockholm
2017 Cheating Discipline by Gry Tingskog, IPAF Warehouse 9, Copenhagen and ++, Blackbox, Oslo
2016 Nouvelle Vague by Marianne Baillot, Mosteiro São Bento da Vitória, Porto
2016 O (Criaturas Fantásticas) by André Soares, Mosteiro São Bento da Vitória, Porto
2016 Set and Reset/Reset by Trisha Brown Company, DOCH, Stockholm
2016 Der Bau (groupversion) by Isabelle Schad, DOCH, Stockholm
2016 Sunday Slowathon by Mira Mutka, CCAP Svarta Huset, Stockholm
2015 Untitled by Ida Sidenvall, CCAP Svarta Huset, Stockholm
2015 Undertone by Sidney Leoni, DOCH, Stockholm
2015 To mix; intermix, to combine or join, as an individual or part, with other parts; bodyparts by Gry Tingskog, The Festival Festival, Stockholm
2015 Slowathon by Mira Mutka, Danscentrum, Stockholm
2014 Étude by Arnaud Bourgoin, DOCH, Stockholm
Choreographic work and collaborations
2018 On top of things w. Oda Brekke, work in progress showing at Prøverummet, Bergen
2017 My Left, Your Right, solo, DOCH, Stockholm
2016 This Container w. Chloe Chignell and Ellen Söderhult, Index, Stockholm & right outside the Swedish Museum of Modern Art, Stockholm
2016 MULTI-PER SE, initiated by Hampus Bergenheim, Sliperiet, Umeå
2016 Intertwisting w. Vanessa Virta and Max Wallmeier, The Royal Operaschool, Stockholm
2015 Nobody’s Dance w. Ellen Söderhult, Alice Chauchat, Elanore Bauer and more, DOCH & Weld, Stockholm
2015 The Container Piece w. Ida Arenius, Vanessa Virta, Dario Bardam, Oda Brekke, Emma Strandsäter and Gry Tingskog, The Festival Festival, Stockholm.
2015 Spectangles w. Max Wallmeier, Vanessa Virta, Marco Behal, Emma Strandsäter, Ivan Wahren, Robin af Ekenstam and Nikita Johansson, STDH, Stockholm
2015 OVER/HEAD w. Manon Siv, Oda Brekke and Claudia Erixon, Uniarts, Stockholm
2015 …by studio 11 & friends, solo, DOCH, Stockholm
2015 IT THE DANCE, initiated by Ellen Söderhult, DOCH, Stockholm and Svarta Huset, Stockholm
2014 A hundred and eleven (111) w. Oda Brekke and Claudia Erixon, Dansekapellet, Copenhagen
Teaching
2015 Play fight contact improvisation; workshop taught together w. Vincent Jonsson, DaCi Copenhagen
Other
2016 Co-editor, This Container ZSS w. Ellen Söderhult and Chloe Chignell
2016 Dancer in the Swedish sci-fi film Aniara, choreographed by Robin Jonsson
2015 Co-curating The Festival-Festival, DOCH, Stockholm
Education
2014- Dance Performance BA, DOCH, University of the Arts Stockholm
2016 Writing Artistic Practice, 7.5, DOCH, University of the Arts Stockholm
2013-2014 Copenhagen Contemporary Dance School
2010-2013 Oure Kostgymnasium – Modern Dance and Ballet
Workshops
Jeanine Durning, Chrysa Parkinson, Anne Juren, Kirstie Simson, Rasmus Ölme, Manon Santkin, David Hernandez, Margrét Sara Gudjónsdóttir, Tilman O’Donnell, Cyril Baldry, Arantxa Martinez, Lucas Condro, Kate Pendry, Renan Oliveira, Nadja Hjorton, Joâo Costa Espinho, Kathleen Fisher, Amy Raymond, Thomas Zamolo, Alexander Georgiev, Mirva Mäkinen, Anna Grip, Dan Johansson, Heidi Vierthaler, Emma Rozgoni, Jan Burkhart, Ulrika Berg, Leila McMillan, Sanna Myllelähti, Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen, Karin Jameson, Eva Meyer Keller, Alma Söderberg, Tove Salmgren, Robert Steijn, Robin Jonsson, DD Dorvillier, Jill Sigman, with more
https://vimeo.com/235816121