Moving Identities – Q&A with STICKY Productions

Moving Identities - A European project of art residencies.

STICKY productions have completed their residency period in Hammerfest, Norway. Here is a Q&A on who they are, what they have learned – and their hopes and goals for future endeavors.

1. Who/what is Sticky Productions?

STICKY Productions is Liv Edginton, Maria Lothe, Ingvild Marstein Olsen, Hannah Parsons. We are a collective of Queer female dance artists, based in Oslo, Norway.

Our work is immersive and sensorial, and we see our practice as a meeting point between dance, ecology and Queerness. Using the receptive and expressive body to investigate the subject matter, our performances play between literal and abstract to offer audiences proximity to imagination and opportunity to kinesthetically absorb stories.

2. What is your aim with Moving Identities?

Our aims for Moving Identities run along three strands: solidifying our practice as a collective, exploring international opportunities, and undertaking research for our new production OOZE. For us, the three intertwine in a symbiotic manner, and we feel grateful and privileged to have space and time to be in process over an extended period.

OOZE will be an immersive dance performance for adults that uses slugs as a slippery metaphor for Queerness. Historically, homosexuality and gender variance have been written out of biological science, labelled as abnormalities or anomalies, and we hope that the performance can bring a wider awareness to this, through playful embodiments of slugs and gastropods.

3. Which method(s) will You use to achieve this aim?

Within Moving Identities our main line of work will revolve around studio practice, researching and developing OOZE. We bring in research from ecological studies, and work on strategies for embodying concepts and phenomena. As a collective, we have a wide range of methods from improvisation and somatic practices that we will explore together.

We’re excited to look at what’s ahead for STICKY Productions, with time to work on strategy and dreams for the future through workshops and discussions. We also see international opportunities as a tool to widen our horizons. During Moving Identities, we are actively reaching out to the international market with our current and future productions to expand our current network through the partners and extended community.

4. Why are you using these methods?

We first met during dance studies at Laban in London and have a wide foundation of shared references. Together, we also share a drive to create environmentally conscious work that centres new or untold narratives and feel that the wide range of methods we employ in our process nurtures this perspective.

We have a strong belief in collectivity as a driving force for our work, and that our individual contributions create an interesting tension in our working practice.

5. How does Your current project relate to your previous/other works? Is it similar or different or other qualities you want to mention.

In 2022, we created Økohelter [Ecoheroes], an immersive dance production for children, that zooms in on the little creatures on the Norwegian forest floor, and has toured extensively across Norway since then. During the process of creating and performing it, we were interested in how we could engage our audiences through different modes of engagement.

We found lots of playful ways to create sensory experiences and found that the adults that accompanied the children also had an interest. Based upon this we became curious about how we could create a playful experience for adults in the same way, that could liberate the childlike wonders that we found with Økohelter.

With OOZE, we also feel our interests in dance, ecology and Queerness coming together to fuel the project. Like we mentioned earlier, it’s also exciting for us to create dance experiences that can shed light on how Queerness is present in nature, and that we can create work that celebrates this.

6. What are you most excited about in this programme a head of you?

We are grateful for the chance to have space and time to explore and research, and it is a real privilege to let the process unfold over a longer period of time. We are excited that we can invest time into the collective, and develop how we work together as a group. The time will be especially valuable for the development of OOZE, but will also feed into future productions and collaborations.

Moving Identities will give us the chance to expand our horizons, to meet new people and engage with a larger dance community through our partners. So far, it’s been great to strengthen our relationship with Davvi in Hammerfest, where we have been for our first two-week residency in October, and look forward to visiting Hellerau in Dresden, Germany, and later Udviklingsplatformen in Copenhagen, Denmark.

About Moving Identities

The 3-year residency programme offer a European network of residencies and experts who wish to open a new world for performing artists to play within. The focus is European identities today, and the dream is to connect with performing artists, venues, and experts across borders in an eco-friendly way.

Partners

During the 3-year residency programme, the artists chosen to be part of Moving Identities will visit the residencies hosted by the venue partners. Here, you can read more about the partner venues in Belgium, Denmark, Estonia, Germany, Norway, and Spain.

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