Pontus Pettersson — MOPA: The Last Stand (Sky)

The press photographs were made at MDT during the run. Pettersson's choreography operates at the edge of what the camera can follow: the energy in the room precedes the movement, and the task was to find images where that relationship between anticipation and action was still visible.

MOPA — The Last Stand (Sky) is the third and final part of a trilogy that Swedish choreographer Pontus Pettersson has been building since 2009. It began with Dress, a solo; continued with five solos for five different dancers with a collective premiere at Dansens Hus in 2012; moved into the lecture-performance MOPA — I disappear in Darkness at Weld in 2013; and arrived, a decade later, at this ensemble piece at MDT in 2023.

In The Last Stand, Pettersson revisits the classical choreographic tools of time and space while incorporating his own developed practices, what he calls the cat and water practices, to shift narratives, bodies, and choreographic content. Form takes precedence over content; energy becomes an artistic material just like phrases, in a swirling where myth unfolds gradually. Pettersson is a Swedish artist and choreographer trained at the Danish National School of Contemporary Dance in Copenhagen, who has worked with choreographers including Ohad Naharin and Deborah Hay. His practice ranges widely, from fortune telling and cat practicing to poetry and festival curation, held together through a consistent interest in the space between subject and object, spectator and performer.