Date: 12 November
Time: 7 pm
Place: Uppsala konstmuseum
Address: Uppsala slott, Drottning Christinas väg 1, entrance E
Tickets: 60 SEK
SLOW RIFFS / FIVE STAGES OF YES is a transdisciplinary sonic choreographic work working from Heidi’s one-note concept. Positioned between concert and performative installation, it unfolds as a spatial sound environment that continuously slows down—an immersive landscape of sculptural bodies and resonant sound that the audience can navigate. The piece reimagines the electric guitar as a gendered cultural artefact, queering its use by limiting its sonic material to a single note.
By tuning every string to one note, the work subverts “guitar hero” tropes and masculine-coded notions of mastery. Sound becomes a space of intimacy, care, and refusal rather than dominance or spectacle. Through the sustained repetition of a single note, the piece distils classical dramaturgy into an extended inhabitation of a collective, destabilising state of vibration.
The choreography is minimal, sculptural, and concept-driven. Movement emerges from the body’s relationship to the guitar. Recurring gestures, such as stroking, rubbing, gliding, and strumming, produce resistance, vibration, and presence and blur the boundaries between instrumental play and embodied pleasure, exploring sound as both physical and affective material.
Concept and Choreography: Heidi Rustgaard
Performers: Moica Bothner, Ida Jacobsen, Linn Nystadnes, Karen Røise Kielland & Heidi Rustgaard
Sound design: Ross Flight
Light design: Phillip Isaksen
Costume and set design: Ulrike Steven
Dramaturg: Martin Hargreaves
Funded by: Norwegian Arts Council, Fond for Lyd og Bilde, Trinity Laban Seed Funding and Rose Choreographic School.
Co-production: Høstscena Ålesund, RAS Sandnes, Rosendal Teater, NO and Köttinspektionen Uppsala, SE
ARTISTS
Heidi Rustgaard
Heidi Rustgaard is a dancer, choreographer, and curator whose practice operates at the intersection of choreography and curation. Trained as a dancer, she holds an MRes in Advanced Practices from the Department of Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths, University of London, and works through a transdisciplinary choreographic approach. As a member of the inaugural cohort of the Rose Choreographic School at Sadler’s Wells (2024–26), she employs queer methodologies to expand her one-note concept, investigating the singular as plural, a line of inquiry that underpins this project. Since 2000, she has collaborated with Hanna Gillgren as H2DANCE, co-creating nine full-length international touring performances alongside shorter works and commissions. In the UK, her work has been presented at venues including ICA, Sadler’s Wells, Dance Umbrella, The Place, Battersea Arts Centre, Nottdance, Dance4, APT Gallery, and Trinity Laban. Internationally, she has shown work at Rosendal Teater, Multiple dansefestival, and Høstscena (NO), La Villette (Paris), Kanonhallen (Copenhagen), Monty (Antwerp), Dock11 (Berlin), and Mengi (Reykjavik). In 2018 she co-founded Fest en Fest, a festival of expanded choreography presenting Nordic and British artists, and she lectures in dance practice and choreography at Trinity Laban and Roehampton University.
www.h2dance.com | www.festenfest.info
Ida Jakobsen
Ida Jakobsen is a guitarist, composer, and performer working at the intersection of experimental rock, noise, and queer performance. Their practice merges sound, embodiment, and identity, challenging normative performance codes and exploring sound’s erotic and political potential. From 2019 to 2023, they were guitarist and composer in Deathman, a performative drag king project built around distortion, drone, feedback, and unconventional guitar techniques. Between 2015 and 2022 they were vocalist, guitarist, and composer in the queer punk/noise band Intetskjønn, which performed at By:Larm and Oslo Pride, toured Finland, and released the album Intetskjønn (2016), the EPs Bög Life and Gull, sølv, blod (both 2018), and the single 10. klasse (Reidar, kan du redde oss) (2018). Earlier, from 2006 to 2015, they composed for and played guitar in the alternative rock band Vanity Vanished, performing at Slottsfjell Festival and touring England. Since 2015, they have DJed within queer club culture, and from 2014 to 2016 they hosted and produced programmes on queer and alternative music for Radiorakel. Collaborations include live guitar for Miriam Kongstad / Poison Paradise’s CRUISING UTOPIA: Queer Futurities at Bergen Kunsthall (2022), a live score to Jean D’Arc with Intetskjønn at Kulturhuset (2019), and vocals on Shaving the Werewolf’s One Way Ticket to Dick City (2018).
Linn Nystadnes
Linn Nystadnes is a musician, composer, sound artist, and producer working across experimental rock, noise, electronic music, and interdisciplinary performance, with a focus on rhythm, texture and the performative body. She holds a BA (Hons) in Sound Technology from the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts (2007) and has also studied sound engineering and music, dance, and drama in Norway. Linn is best known as co-founder, guitarist, vocalist, composer, and producer of the noise-rock duo Deathcrush (Apollon Records), which has received international recognition from NME, Interview Magazine, Le Monde, and MTV Europe. Deathcrush has played Øya, Roskilde, The Great Escape, and Shepherd’s Bush Empire, sharing stages with Mayhem, Trentemøller, and The Dillinger Escape Plan. She also performs in Live AIDS and Sex Judas, as a solo artist, and as half of the noise duo Oilskin, and has collaborated with Jenny Hval, Torgeir Vassvik, Rune Lindbæk, Idjut Boys, and NyMusikk’s Guitar Machine. Linn has extensive live and studio experience, including as Technical Manager at Kafé Hærverk, live sound engineer for Jenny Hval, Smerz, and Tuvaband, and studio engineer and producer since 2003. Arts Council Norway and Music Norway have supported her work, and she teaches workshops in sound engineering, guitar, bass, effects, and ensemble performance.
Karen Røise Kielland
Karen Røise Kielland is a Norwegian performer, choreographer, director, and writer. She holds a BA from the Amsterdam Theatre School (2003), specialising in performance, choreography, and direction, and has trained in mime and physical theatre in London. In 2004, she co-founded Blood for Roses, creating site-specific and stage works in Norway and the Netherlands. She has collaborated with Katja Dreyer (BE/DE) and worked for six years with Ivana Müller’s IM COMPANY. Her works, including CRY ME A RIVER (2019–20), BIG BANG SHINY (2017), and Svale, røyk og sørgepil, have been presented at Black Box Teater, Het Veem Theater, De Appel Arts Center, and Henie Onstad Kunstsenter. She also acts in film, including the role of Tone in Joachim Trier’s Verdens verste menneske (2021), and her literary work includes Å gå med Kølle (2018) and the ongoing project Anonyme kilder. She has received grants and residencies from Arts Council Norway, the National Library of Norway, and the Norwegian Institute at Athens.
www.blood-for-roses.com
Monica Bothner
Monica Bothner is a guitarist and composer who has been an active force in Oslo’s underground music scene since the 1990s. Moving between punk rock, garage rock, and power pop, she has played in a wide range of bands and projects driven by a strong DIY ethos. She has performed extensively and toured Norway and Germany. Her releases include records with Xisters, Punchdrunk, The Barbarellas, and The Pumps. She has also taken part in several smaller collaborative projects, including JoVix. Outside of music, Bothner works as a social anthropologist.
Ross Flight
Ross Flight is a sound designer, composer, engineer, and technologist working across theatre, live arts, digital performance, and installation. Since 2015, he has worked freelance, collaborating with creative and artistic directors to realise complex audio-visual projects, as well as corporate events for clients including the British Museum, the National Gallery, and Tate Modern. He composes and produces original sound and music, often for indoor and site-specific installations incorporating field recordings, live signal processing, and real-time audio manipulation. He works fluently with Reaper, QLab, Max/MSP, Ableton Live, and digital and analogue consoles, with expertise in live sound, front-of-house engineering, AV setup, and studio maintenance. His collaborators include Heidi Rustgaard (Sonic Choreographies: One-Note F), H2DANCE (Amplified Edition No. 2, 2021), Acrojou Theatre, Fuel Theatre, Théâtre Témoin, Abigail Conway, Sogn og Fjordane Teater, Opera Erratica, Dreamthinkspeak, Sheila Ghelani, and Wellcome Collection. He has also contributed to events such as the Rhizome 7 on 7 Conference at the Barbican Centre (2013) and the Festival of British Advertising (2017). Alongside his artistic and technical work, he delivers workshops and mentoring in sound design and theatre production for students and emerging practitioners.
Ulrike Steven
Ulrike Steven is an architect, educator, and co-founder and director of what if: projects, approaching design as a process and dialogue involving multiple perspectives. Driven by a strong sense of spatial justice and informed by personal experience, she is passionate about working in social housing and other marginalised environments. With the what if: projects team and collaborators, she has begun exploring public space through the lens of queer ecology, as in Perfect Flower, a collaboration with choreographer Heidi Rustgaard. She has designed for performance on H2DANCE’s ONE/OFF, Amplified Edition, and Amplified Edition N°2. Since 2023, she has led Stage 2 of the MA Architecture course at Central Saint Martins. In 2024 she set up Queer Scenarios, a research, practice, and dissemination community that explores and supports queer identities and approaches within critical spatial practice.
what-if.info | instagram.com/queer_scenarios
Martin Hargreaves
Martin Hargreaves is a dramaturg and writer whose interests vacillate between boredom and hysteria. His research coalesces around performativity and includes the recent histories of dance and performance, queer practices, and camp misunderstandings. After completing his PhD, he became Editor of Dance Theatre Journal, and he has since taught in a range of educational contexts in the UK and internationally. He has been a visiting lecturer at Stockholm University of the Arts since 2013. Since 2024, he has been Head of Rose Choreographic School at Sadler’s Wells in London.
rosechoreographicschool.com/people
Phillip Isaksen
Phillip Isaksen is a lighting designer and scenographer with extensive experience across theatre, dance, and interdisciplinary performance. He holds a BA (Hons) in Theatre Performance Design and Technology from the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts (2016), having previously studied lighting design at Romerike Folkehøgskole and music, dance, and drama at Hartvig Nissen School in Oslo. He has worked at major Norwegian institutions including Nationaltheatret, Det Norske Teatret, and Oslo Nye Teater, as well as with a wide range of independent companies. His lighting designs include John Gabriel Borkman (2022) and Nostalgi 2175 (2017) at Nationaltheatret, Ei kvinnes kampar og forvandlingar at Det Norske Teatret (2023), and Salamanderkrigen at Teater Innlandet (2024). In dance and contemporary performance, he has a long-standing collaboration with Ingri Midgard Fiksdal, lighting STATE (2016), Spectral (2020), and The Stillness (2024), and has also worked with Inés Moldskred Belli, Susie Wang, and Ludvig Uhlbors Productions. As a scenographer and visual designer, his recent work includes Medea (2024) and Scener fra et ekteskap (2021) at Teatret Vårt, as well as Cassandra and Unge Werthers lidelser at Rogaland Teater (2023). He has also worked as a lighting technician and chief electrician at Nationaltheatret and Oslo Nye Teater, and as a dramaturg and performer in selected productions with Susie Wang and Fiksdal Dans.