LUCKY & DANCE OR DIE Performance and Film Screening with Charlotta Öfverholm

At this dual event with Charlotta Öfverholm, Scandinavia House presents the live performance Lucky (2018) and the film Dance or Die (2019).

Charlotta Öfverholm’s entire adult life, as well as a large part of her childhood and early years, has been filled with the world of dance. As a performer and choreographer with some of the world’s most renowned artists, she has constantly strived for perfection. And since the start of her company Compagnie Jus de la Vie 1995, where Charlotta serves as artistic director, she has created over 25 productions, which have toured all over Europe, North and South America and Africa. Her work is physical dance theatre with depth, irony, brutality and humor, with a devoted following in her homeland of Sweden as well as worldwide. Now at the age of 50, her will of steel remains as unbending as ever.

Lucky is  a one-woman show created and performed by Öfverholm. This performance expresses longing for happiness: to die young, to live forever, or just in the moment, with a language of dance, text and music. The lighting designer is Tobias Hallgren. In Dance or Die, filmmaker Anders J. Larsson followed the artist over three years and the result is an intimate documentary about an inspiring woman and her raison d’être: dance.

Charlotta Öfverholm studied dance at Balettakademien Göteborg and at Alvin Ailey ADC, NYC and is a theatre graduate of UCLA in Film/TV/Video and from The Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute in Los Angeles. She has a background as a dancer with numerous companies such as DV 8 Physical Theatre/Lloyd Newson, Bill T. Jones/NYC,  Complexions/ NYC, Farm in the Cave/ Viliam Docolomansky/ Prague,Roberto Galván/ Tanzcompagnie Giessen, Joseph Tmim /Toláda Berlin, Ramon Oller/ Metros Barcelona, Robert Poole/ Ballet Linz, Cie Corinne Lanselle in Paris, Dorte Olesen and Björn Elisson Kompani in Stockholm
, among others.

Lead roles include Shakespeare’s Hamlet (Landestheatre Linz by Robert Poole), Alice in Alice in Wonderland (Stadttheater Giessen by Roberto Galvan), and Lola in Lola and Mr Talk at Divadlo Archa (by Jan Kodet), for which she was nominated  a Thalia Prize at the National Theatre in Prague in 2005. She has also performed in musicals like Cabaret at the Royal Dramatic Theatre/ Stockholm and Leva Livet at Chinateatern/Stockholm.

Charlotta choreographs commissioned works for companies such as Vertedance Prague/CZ, Ballet Linz/AU, Tanztheater Münster/DE, Peridance CDC/ NY and in Sweden for GoteborgsOperans Dance Company, Norrdans, RTV Borås, och Folkoperan. She has additionally choreographed films and documentaries for Swedish Television, such as Holiday and Bortkopplad by Anna Duell and Gunstlingen by Astrid Ohlsén. She teaches and choreographs for schools and universities all over the world, and enjoys meeting and giving to new generations of dance.

Charlotta also has been coordinator and programmer for Balettakademiens International Summerfestival since 2005. In 2015, Charlotta initiated the project Age on Stage, presenting maturity on stage and questioning the norms concerning age and bodies in the field of dance. It creates and presents international productions with dancers over 45 by well known choreographers, workshops for people over 65, festivals and seminars on the subject. Age on Stage is the Swedish part of the European project Dance on, Pass on, Dream on, which includes nine dance companies and institutions in eight different countries in the EU.

From Scandinavia House.