SWEAT (anthem)
SWEAT (anthem) moves through the terrains of resilience and endurance where determination and persistence become a quiet form of protest.
Endurance is not only stamina and sustained effort, it is also a radical gesture to stay alive, alert and hopeful amidst fatigue, fracture and exhaustion. Between tension, release and play, the performance celebrates the courage to keep dancing and turn exhaustion into a collective rhythm; an anthem of defiance and joy.
Following GRIT (for what it’s worth), the work continues to explore the languages of sport and dance and how resilience and the demands made on the body and performer intersect with culture and societal events.
SWEAT (anthem) highlights the tension between vulnerability and strength, singular ambition and collectivity, asking how to persevere, remain emphatic and keep moving in times of unrest.
Created with the Dance On Ensemble and four emerging dancers, the performance pays tribute to the ensemble’s long, compelling careers and the combined strength of a multigenerational collective.
Milla Koistinen & Dance On Ensemble
Concept, choreography and direction: Milla Koistinen
Creation and performance: Ty Boomershine, Gesine Moog, Alba Barral Fernández, Javier Arozena, Tim Persent (Dance On Ensemble) and Jin Lee, Emma Sofie Gautestad, Raul Aranha, Victor Aaron Bolzmann, Milla Koistinen
Sound design: Paul Valikoski and Grégoire Simon
Light design: Martin Beeretz
Dramaturgy: Synne Behrndt
Costumes: Jin Lee and Jihun Choi
Production Director: Anastasia Luck (Dance On Ensemble) and Jana Lüthje (M.i.C.A.)
International distribution: Chalmont Agentur
Production: DANCE ON / Bureau Ritter
Co-Funded by the Europeans Union’s Horizon Europe programme for research and innovation in the frame of DanceMap.
Co-production: Milla Koistinen, SPRING Performing Arts Festival (The Netherlands), Tanzfabrik Berlin BÜHNE
Supported by Bora Bora Residency Centre, Arts Promotion Centre Finland, Finnland-Institut. With thanks to Dance House Helsinki and the Finnish Cultural Institute for the Benelux.
DANCE ON is a project by BUREAU RITTER, funded by the German Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media.
Premiere on the 18th of December 2025 at Tanzfabrik Berlin BÜHNE in Uferstudios 14
Images ©️ Aino Väänänen
“Endurance here is sustained attention: choosing to stay present despite fatigue, vulnerability, and exhaustion. Choreography navigates tension between propulsion and suspension, acceleration and waiting, revealing resistance that cannot be separated from exposure to limits. Endurance becomes a political stance: continuing, maintaining relation within shared fatigue. Moments of suspension, especially crouches before bursts of speed, return repeatedly and close the piece in darkness, showing contained energy, charged waiting. Audible breathing, touch, and contact structure the work, signalling constant attention to others, responsibilities never purely individual. What emerges forcefully is the ensemble’s capacity to hold difference and cohesion together. Group dance preserves individuality while sustaining shared rhythm.
The multigenerational ensemble brings bodies with varied histories, ages, and experiences, legible in movement quality, effort management, and temporal relation. Energy is high, sometimes euphoric, yet never spectacularised: it arises from doing together, continuing despite everything. In this sense, SWEAT (anthem) functions truly as an anthem not by proclaiming a message, but by creating shared resistance. Endurance is not surpassing limits, but remaining within them: staying present together when the body asks for rest.”
(Elisa Frasson, Stream, Live Art Writing, Feb 2026)
