Gry Tingskog (they/them) works with choreography together with dance, sculpture, technology, DIY programming and text, making experimental scenic and sensorial experiences. Their practice moves between making performances in a collaborative manner, performing for others, institutional critique, teaching, dramaturgy and writing. Their work has been presented in Sweden, Germany, Denmark, Norway and France in theatres, galleries and museums.
Gry's works animate human and more-than-human bodies to disrupt normative conceptions and representations of dancing bodies. Their practice explores sculpted objects as scores for dance, asking: how can choreographic parameters be embodied in an object, mediated through touch instead of language, and interpreted through the dancer’s labor? By crafting how various scenic mediums come together to choreograph the audience's perception and attention, Gry explores how to set the conditions for a dance that takes place more in the body and imagination of the audience, then on stage in front of them. Oriented by the politics of queering, traversing ethics, methods and aesthetics, Gry's practice moves across disciplinary borders and conventions.
In 2017 Gry co-initiated INSISTER SPACE, an artist-run organisation imagining choreographic methods to rethink and reorganise artistic work in practice. They were also part of founding höjden, a trans-disciplinary workspace for artists and cultural workers in Östberga, Stockholm.
As a performer they have worked with, among others, Benoît Lachambre, Trisha Brown Dance Company, Myriam Lefkowitz, Halla Ólafsdóttir and Eliisa Erävalo, Isabelle Schad, Ellen Söderhult, Chloe Chignell, Rodrigo Andreolli, Anna Lublina and Luis Garay.
Gry is based between Stockholm, Sweden and Berlin, Germany. They hold a MA degree in Choreography and Performance from the Institute of Applied Theatre Studies at Justus-Liebig-Universität in Gießen, and a BA degree in Dance Performance from DOCH/Stockholm University of the Arts. Gry was awarded the danceWEB Scholarship in 2019, Anders Sandrews Utbildningsstipendium in 2019, DAAD 2020-2021 and DIS-TANZEN 2023.
2024 Sculpture featured in INDUSTRY exhibition
Curated by Neuer Berliner Kunstverein (n.b.k.) as part of Berlin Art Week at Uferstudios Berlin
2024 Production residency at Riksteatern Stockholm
2023 Residency at MDT Stockholm
2023 Residency at Balettakademien Stockholm
Supported by Stiftelsen Längmanska Kulturfonden, Kulturamt Gießen and NEUSTART KULTUR, Hilfsprogramm DIS-TANZEN des Dachverband Tanz Deutschland
2022 Weld, Stockholm
2022 ON DISPLAY, 1-month residency to produce video documentation at LAKE Studios Berlin
2022 Screening at LAKE Studios Berlin
2021 Tanzfestival Rhein-Main, Frankfurt LAB
Co-produced by Künstlerhaus Mousonturm. Supported by Fonds Darstellende Künste within the program NEUSTART KULTUR #takecare, Kulturamt Gießen and HTA
2022 Kvadrennalen, Weld, Stockholm
Manifesto and thematic walk commissioned by Weld for Kvadrennalen
2022 2-months research project in residency at Künstlerhaus Mousonturm
Developed within the frame of #takeheart residency funded by Fonds Darstellende Künste within the program NEUSTART KULTUR, with support from Kulturamt Gießen
2021 Weld, Stockholm
2020 Making Crises Visible, Senckenberg Museum, Museum of Natural History, Frankfurt
2019 Rough Proposals festival, Künstlerhaus Mousonturm, Frankfurt
Co-produced by Weld, supported by the City of Stockholm, the Hessian Theatre Academy and Künstlerhaus Mousonturm
2019 Weld, Stockholm
2019 Köttinspektionen, Uppsala
2019 Dansmässan, Stockholm
2018 endfest.se POSSE blog takeover
2017 ++ Black Box Theatre, Oslo
2017 International Performing Arts Festival, Warehouse9, Copenhagen
2017 DOCH, Stockholm
2017 Scores published in This Container Zine
Co-produced by Weld, supported by Stiftelsen Längmanska Kulturfonden, Köttinspektionen and DOCH
A collaboration with Li Lorian, Diana De Fex, Nastya Dzyuban and Anneliese Ostertag
2019 Künstlerhaus Mousonturm, Frankfurt
Supported by Künstlerhaus Mousonturm, Institute for Applied Theatre Studies and the Hessian Theatre Academy
2019 coyote, Stockholm
2018 Inter Arts Center, Malmö
2018 Spring Clean, Marabouparken, Stockholm
2018 AT ISSUE: PERFORMING, Weld, Stockholm
Supported by Inter Arts Center, INSISTER SPACE and Weld
2018 DOCH, Stockholm
2016 Performing Arts Forum (PAF) Paris
2015 The Festival Festival, Stockholm
A collaboration with Oda Brekke, Olli Lauitola, Pinja Grönberg, Sara Kauppila, Anna Jondelius, Hannele Philipson and Jon Svednell
2015 SADA, Stockholm
2014 DOCH, Stockholm
2024 Accelerator, Stockholm
2023 Künstlerhaus Mousonturm, Frankfurt
2022 Künstlerhaus Mousonturm, Frankfurt
2022 Bloomfield Science Museum, Jerusalem
2022 Workshop performance at the Bloomfield Science Museum, Jerusalem
Conceptual collaboration, performing as well as constructing a conductive weaving loom for 5 performers through which the practice of weaving is explored in relation to synchronisation and asynchronisation. With support from Konstnärsnämnden and Jerusalem International Fellowship
2021 CHUM Ivry, Paris
2021 MDT, Stockholm
2021 Turteatern, Stockholm
2021 Köttinspektionen, Uppsala
2021 Studio Naxos, Frankfurt
2021 Werkstatt, Frankfurt
2021 Theaterlabor, Gießen
2021 Tanzfestival Rhein-Main, Frankfurt
2021 Theater Neben dem Turm, Marburg
2021 Theaterlabor, Gießen
2020 Schloss Solitude, Stuttgart
2019 One week of performances at Mumok Hofstallung, Impulstanz Vienna
Initiated by Carima Neusser and Per Hüttner
2018 Copenhagen, Vaasa and Stockholm
2017 My Wild Flag, Weld Stockholm
2017 DOCH, Stockholm
2017 Weld, Stockholm
2015 Weld, Stockholm
2017 END FEST, Rotundan, The Royal Opera House, Stockholm
2018 Black Box Theatre, Oslo
2017 MDT, Stockholm
2017 Thecarrierbag Festival, Dansehallerne, Copenhagen
2017 Badhuspaviljongen, Åland Islands
2016 The Architecture and Feminism conference, KTH & DOCH, Stockholm
2017 MDT, Stockholm
2017 Thecarrierbag Festival, Dansehallerne, Copenhagen
2017 Badhuspaviljongen Åland Islands
2016 Performing Arts Forum (PAF), Paris
2016 Köttinspektionen, Uppsala
2016 Weld, Stockholm
2015 The Festival Festival, Stockholm
2016 DOCH, Stockholm
2016 DOCH, Stockholm
2016 DOCH, Stockholm
2016 Performing Arts Forum (PAF), Paris
2016 Weld, Stockholm
2016 DOCH, Stockholm
2015 DOCH, Stockholm
2015 The Festival Festival, Stockholm
2024 Recurring writer of dance critique for the independent and artist-run initiative Ravel
2024 MASKA Journal Volume XXXVIII., issue 217-218. Editor-in-chief Pia Brezavšček
2022 Commissioned by Weld for Kvadernalen
2021 Master Thesis, MA in Choreography and Performance, Institute for Applied Theatre Studies Gießen. Self-published.
Supervisors Prof. Dr. Bojana Kunst and Livia Piazza
2020 Self-published
2018 Text and scores published at endfest.se POSSE Blog Takeover
2017 Excerpt published in This Container 3 ed.
2017 Bachelor Thesis, BA in Dance Performance, Stockholm University of the Arts. Supervisor Josefine Wikström
2017 – ongoing. Co-founder and board member
INSISTER SPACE is an artist-run organisation imagining methods and ways to rethink artistic work in practice. We experiment with ways to open source knowledge and resources, ways of meeting and working together across projects, rethinking studio practice, how knowledge is developed and shared, as well as methods to collaborate in administrative work and application writing. INSISTER SPACE aims to create a broad platform for professional freelance dance artists to share, collect and reorganise artistic practices in a sustainable way. We wish to reshape the neoliberal structures in the dance field, replacing competition with collaboration and support
2023 HOFFICE, collective residency week for administrative work, SITE Stockholm (SE)
2023 HOFFICE, collective residency week for administrative work, SITE Stockholm (SE)
2023 AT ISSUE: Practice, Curating and facilitating collective residency , Weld Stockholm (SE)
2022 AT ISSUE: Practice, Curating and facilitating collective residency and performance, Skogen Göteborg (SE)
2022 AT ISSUE:Practice, Curating and facilitating collective residency and publication, Skogen Göteborg (SE)
2022 5-year anniversary, performance ritual and party, höjden Stockholm (SE)
2020 Introducing INSISTER SPACE: Talk at (Re)Union Biennial Performative Arts Meeting, Lisbon
2020 Format for sharing practices at Within Practice, MDT and höjden, Stockholm
2019 AT ISSUE: Practice, residency at Skogen, Göteborg
2019 AT ISSUE: Practice, professional daily training at höjden, Stockholm
2018 AT ISSUE: Practice, residency at Skogen, Göteborg
2018 AT ISSUE: Performing, festival at Weld, Stockholm
2018 AT ISSUE: Practice, 1 week of professional daily training at Danscentrum, Stockholm
2017 Exposition: INSISTER SPACE, launch at Weld, Stockholm
https://insisterspace.se
2019 Künstlerhaus Mousonturm. 4-day festival
2018 – 2019. Co-founder and board member
höjden is an artist driven interdisciplinary house for artistic work and production located in Östberga, Stockholm. It holds dance studios, ateliers, office spaces, a workshop and music studio
https://hojden.house
2018 – ongoing
PIM is a mobile Nordic-sized art institution made in collaboration with initiatives and organisations from the Nordic countries initiated by Anders Paulin
2017 – 2018. Board member
Interim Kultur is an employment cooperative for artists within the field of dance and choreography
2024 UNIARTS Stockholm
Supervising the BA students in Dance Performance on their independent projects within the course Subject Specialisation.
2022 3 workshops at Werkstatt, Frankfurt
"In these sessions we will move our perception. I’m interested in working with scores or tasks that form a point of departure, more than a specific point of arrival. Through playing with fiction, language, objects and sensations, the scores become ways to open the situation differently and re-sensitise the body through gaps, misapprehensions and disorientations. Together we will see what grows out of the scores, follow where they might take us, maybe drift away."
2020 – 2021 3-months weekly seminar co-taught with Prof. Dr. Bojana Kunst's seminar Plants and Performance for the MA in Choreography and Performance at the Institute for Applied Theatre Studies Gießen and MA in Contemporary Dance Education at HfMDK Frankfurt. The co-teaching format explores relations between theory and practice in dance education.
"To see both the forest and the trees, and the myriad other species that inhabit and make the forest; this class sets to challenge perception. Taking the body as a point of departure, we will attend to embodiment not as a personal endeavour, but as a complex entanglement at stake in-between bodies, and attune to the specific knowledges and performativities that unfold in-between them. We will indulge in practices to trouble the ways in which we receive information, think, learn, know and respond, to cultivate other understandings of selfhood; a porous body, entangled with, and constituted through, the surrounding elements.
We will commit to a continuous undoing; not a commanding brain but a thinking taking place in the entire body synchronised by nerve connections, dispersing agency, awareness, desire, intention and consciousness. We will commit to a continuous doing; listening to the materials we practice with as they act back, responding. We will change perspective to turn presumptions around as means to explore other ways of making sense.
We will spend time with the sensed more than the seen. We will attune to times and speeds and linger with what we cannot immediately recognise. We will play with practices as a soil for things to grow out of—out of hand and not at all. We will spend time with verbs more than nouns—planting as a leap into the not-known, not sure, not-yet, not-finished, not-assured. We will play with words to trouble the language that is complicit in any dancing—turning meaning and perception around. We will cultivate abundance and a sense of togetherness. We will experience force and encounter resistance. Hopefully our circumstances will allow us to touch; touch each other, our selves, touch plants, the (in)visible presence of plants in the papers we read. We will write and collect sentences of the remains, memories, the compound of the materials we practice (with). We will get our hands dirty digging into this mess and see what grows out of it—ravelling performativities, forms that never settle and some dances to sprout for."
2020 3-months weekly practical classes at the Institute for Applied Theatre Studies, Gießen (cancelled due to COVID-19)
"In this seminar we will use dance as a way of spending time together. We will trouble dance as a disciplinary technique to train away subject habits, neutralising movement patterns and optimising bodies. We will visit specific notions of ‘body’ and the worlds they are enmeshed in to emphasise the fiction or construct of ‘the neutral body’. What if dance could be a space to practice thinking differently? We will try to in practice ponder upon embodiment not as a personal endeavour, but as a complex entanglement at stake in-between bodies. Specifically, we will spend time with practices that propose ways of meeting and spending time together, such as group bodies, partner work and choir dancing. We will bear in mind that doing together does not entail doing the same. We will use touch to guide perception and zoom attention—to render specific information present. We will work with gaze to challenge our perception and attention—to receive impressions differently. We will play with language to turn presumptions around—to consider other ways of making sense. Anyone can attend this seminar no matter previous experience with dance. We will together try to undo the conventions, norms and expectations that have been embedded into the dance class format as such. Instead, we will explore multiple of ways of spending time together through, and with, dance."
2019 – 2020 Weak proposals Co-initiator, organiser and host. Weak proposals is an invitation to share practices we're anyways busy with or always wanted to try out and happens 3 days/week. The aim is to create a collective memory of methods, practices and exercises. For each session one artist proposes a dramaturgy for 1.5 h. At the Institute for Applied Theatre Studies, Justus-Liebig-Universität, Gießen
2019 One week of professional daily training at höjden, Stockholm organised by INSISTER SPACE within the format AT ISSUE: practice
2018 Professional daily training class at Danscentrum, Stockholm organised by INSISTER SPACE within the format AT ISSUE: practice
2018 1-week long meeting of sharing practices at Skogen in Göteborg organised by INSISTER SPACE within the format AT ISSUE: practice
AT ISSUE: practice is a practical study circle on practices situated in experimental dance and expanded choreography developed by INSISTER SPACE. AT ISSUE challenges the dance class format and the roles it reproduces through its knowledge economy: each week a practitioner in the field invites the study group to visit their practice, with the urgencies, questions, pleasures or issues they are busy with. AT ISSUE is a space to collectively work with the practice, rather than to train the body as a tool. The aim is to create a collective memory of practices, exercisers and issues through the duration of the study circle.
2017 Workshop based on scores from cheating discipline and other artistic affairs moving between reading, moving and writing at POSSE Dance and Reading group, Stockholm
Mentors Anne Juren and Annie Dorsen in dialogue with Mette Ingvartsen
2018 – 2022 Institute for Applied Theatre Studies, Justus-Liebig-Universität, Gießen
2021 10-day artistic laboratory at Copenhagen Contemporary
2019 Impulstanz Vienna
Mentors Anne Juren and Annie Dorsen in dialogue with Mette Ingvartsen
5-week scholarship programme with classes, workshops and field projects
2018 Kulturförvaltningen Stockholm Stad
4-week course by Stockholm Stad to establish and develop new artist studios
2014 – 2017 DOCH/Stockholm University of the Arts, Stockholm
2016 DOCH/Stockholm University of the Arts, Stockholm
2016 Biskops Arnö, Sweden
2013 – 2014 Copenhagen Denmark
2010 – 2013 Södra Latin’s Upper Secondary School