Harald Beharie, down and dirty

Sweet Spot

Harald Beharie

February 14–15, 2026 MDT Moderna Dansteatern, Stockholm

Harald Beharie ensemble members in Sweet Spot. Photo: Studio Abracadabra

A good amount of dance presented in a theatrical setting aspires to ascension. The work might aim to demonstrate transcendence through precise composition, inspire with superhuman feats of strength and grace, or elevate a basic narrative until it touches what’s timeless and universal. “Concert dance,” as it’s called, is well-suited to such uplift. From their seats in the dark, viewers might imagine themselves being the ones onstage, running and leaping, daring and weightless, each effortlessly capable in their role, always in the right place at the right time, an essential part of the music made visible.

Other dances aim elsewhere and elicit nervous laughter, revulsion, or even abject fear, but these less-common wellsprings of discomfort can be just as profound. (To be fair, they can also degrade, and waste the time of all involved.) The final installment in a trilogy, created over six years by Norwegian-Jamaican artist Harald Beharie plus collaborators, Sweet Spot is as earthy and elemental as pig iron buried in a bog. Some of the six performers begin floorbound, dragging themselves laboriously while seated, inch by inch, as if partially paralyzed or mortally wounded, their open mouths emitting unnerving shrieks at low volumes and whistle-high pitches. If two of these bodies manage to hoist a third onto their shoulders, it seems only to be the setup for an awkward, potentially injurious fall.

Each person, starting with the arresting and magnetic Amie Mbye, also appears mostly or entirely naked, besides kneepads and boots or shoes; one wears over their nipples skin-matched pasties that eventually fall off. Those seated in the front row or along the aisles risk some degree of confrontation — the whip of long braids against their legs or a frankly proctological view. The first third of Sweet Spot is like a throwback of fifteen or twenty years, to the rowdy days of provocateurs like Dave St-Pierre and Ann Liv Young, and then it moves on.

Its momentum builds quite slowly but inexorably and, just as soon as one thing starts to settle into happening, Sweet Spot transforms into something else. The show can either be considered one long scene, or a succession of as many as thirty scenes joined by dissolves. Dim lighting evokes prehistoric sources like small fires, full moons, and fireflies. Barely visible in the near dark, during a long diagonal procession, a shocking question arises: Is that person defecating? The answer is ultimately — fortunately — No, but the mysterious, muddy substance is eaten, drooled, and smeared all over the stage by the end of the evening. It pools inside concave, metal plates that might be discarded armor.

Rhythm and music enter the picture about halfway through Sweet Spot. The pacing and tonality they bring are more than welcome, even as they further intensify the mood. Wearing crimson tights and high heels and playing a Hardanger fiddle, Ester Thunander whips the other five into a series of frenzies; they stomp and slap their thighs and throw their whole bodies onto the filthy floor. (This nod to The Red Shoes is a good example of the show’s subtlety and wit.) Some of the arm gestures ricochet around vogue aesthetics.

The choreographic traffic incrementally adopts a circularity that persists. Beharie and Mbye, along with Loan Ha, Carlisle Sienes, and Irene Vesterhus Theisen, subgroup and regroup as they skip and twirl around the central setpiece: a hanging assembly of kinked rods by Karoline Bakken Lund that themselves rotate with slow synchronicity, like a taffy pulling machine or the dented innards of an old clock. Other, smaller items on filaments include chimes and toneless bells, kicked and swatted on occasion as the sweaty performers pass them by. Their feet seem possessed by Thunander’s tunes. (I was not the only attendee for whom Sweet Spot brought the film Sinners back to mind.)

Alone in the end, Beharie spins and spins and spins clockwise, while traveling counterclockwise again and again around the floor’s perimeter. Like two brushes, Beharie’s bare feet paint the runny brown excretion, now dried, into small spirals of evidence.

Described by the artist as, in part, an extrapolation from the Norwegian dance form leikarring, Sweet Spot summons ancient and current energies onto common ground. Over the course of its duration — apparently variable by 15 minutes or more per performance — it conjugates agony and ecstasy, reuniting heaven and hell.

The aftermath of Sweet Spot at Moderna Dansteatern. Photo: Zachary Whittenburg

Zachary Whittenburg 

Zachary Whittenburg has been a journalist, administrator, photographer, and grantmaker in arts and culture since 2008. A regular contributor to Dance Magazine and former dance editor at Time Out Chicago magazine, he has written for numerous additional publications including Critical Correspondence, Critical Read, Dance International, Flavorwire, Pointe, and Total Theatre UK.