Space for beginnings and endings

Matta

Daniel Staaf

Weld, Stockholm

March 19–22, 2026

Performers and viewers commingle during new work by Daniel Staaf. Photo: Nassim Meki

The brief statements that welcome attendees to Matta include both instructions and objectives. Among the former, “Move around throughout the entire experience” and, among the latter, “Matta is created to awaken and refine the senses.” Ushers permit audience members to enter only in groups of eight. At Weld, one descends slowly, as the subterranean venue is quite dark and configured differently than usual. Matta begins gently.

Filipino-Swedish choreographer Daniel Staaf conceived the work’s atmosphere, which completely fills Weld’s capacious, concrete-lined, cubic volume. Artificial turf of relatively high quality covers the floor as well as a diagonally oriented, freestanding wall, twice as long as it is tall. My fellow viewers and I greatly outnumber the chairs available, although the patterned cushions scattered about are each big enough for two to share.

These first impressions might encourage premature conclusions. Perhaps that Matta is not a robust contemporary performance, but more akin to visiting vacant commercial real estate temporarily

wallpapered with projections of works by Matisse or Mucha. It also initially seems for families, in the vein of Italy’s Compagnia TPO — not slight, per se, but not so sophisticated, either.

Fortunately, Matta soon dispels assumptions like these, primarily by being well-executed and full of subtle shifts in detail. Its three dancers — Matilda Bilberg, Mikael Marklund, and Sarah Stanley — move steadily in sync, aesthetically and energetically, each skilled at deceptively simple-seeming techniques like contact improvisation and floorwork. (Few things in dance require more artistic maturity and extensive practice than rolling beautifully, as if totally boneless, on the ground.) Likewise, a lesser version of Matta’s part digital, part analogue soundscape would conjure memories of a spa day or a couple’s massage, but composer and audio designer Hara Alonso continuously, sensitively modulates input and output from her nest of equipment in one corner, such that the ASMR-adjacent score neither settles into white noise, nor does it distract.

Of the creative collaborative’s members, Thomas Zamolo got Matta’s most challenging assignment. Illuminating a show during which attendees are encouraged to “sit, stand, lie down, and rest” as they please means that our attention might unexpectedly be drawn to someone dozing off, whispering with a companion, or staring at the ceiling. The scenography’s wall naturally wants to cast shadows and block sight lines. The overhead LEDs, patterned costumes and pillows, and dark curtains together comprise a cohesive palette — regularly interrupted by whatever clothing and accessories the lights catch. These unpredictabilities keep Matta full of surprises, if also countervailing reminders of the world we left outside.

Finally, Matta — produced in partnership by Weld and the platform FRAME co-led by Staaf, Stanley, and Erik Lobelius — achieves its goals by offering just enough narrative arc to grab onto and remember afterward. (Credit, in part, dance artist Johannes Lind, who has served as an “external eye” during the creative process.) Bilberg, Marklund, and Stanley’s actions and interactions are variously collective and individual, cooperative and codependent, familial and sensual, relaxed and restless. One senses in their fluid exchanges the belonging and the confinement that intimacy cultivates. When tightly intertwined, they move as one creature with six arms and six legs but, in Matta’s final moments, they disperse, each finding their own exit. Each of us then finds our own way out of the underground, grassy box. There is no curtain call. Sometimes, things just end.

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.