The Grand Dance

In 2022, Mari Carrasco won the Swedish Theatre Critics’ Dance Award for the hit production “Remind Me I’m Not Dead”, created for Skånes Dansteater. In 2026, she was awarded the Jan Zetterberg Memorial ‘Dancers of the Future’ scholarship for her consistently developed choreographic practice and distinct artistic voice.

Mari is a Stockholm-based dancer and choreographer of Swedish and Chilean origin. She creates energetic and quirky worlds with a strong connection to the music. She graduated from the Stockholm Academy of Ballet in 2008 and has since studied at the Stockholm University of the Arts and at The International Visa Program – Dance New Amsterdam in New York.

Mari has created her own works and commissioned pieces for institutions across Sweden and internationally, including the Royal Swedish Opera, the Gothenburg Opera Dance Company, Norrdans, Skånes Dansteater, Region Teater Väst, Sthlm 59 North, Riksteatern and Unga Klara. 

Mikael Karlsson is a Swedish composer based in Harlem, New York. Mikael Karlsson holds a Master’s degree in classical composition from the Aaron Copland School of Music. He has composed the music for several of Alexander Ekman’s works, including Hammer with the GöteborgsOperans Danskompani, Play at L’Opéra Garnier in Paris, and A Swan Lake, A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Eskapist at the Royal Swedish Opera and the Norwegian Opera & Ballet.

Mikael Karlsson has also written music for film and television and collaborated with artists such as Lykke Li, Mariam Wallentin, Andreas Kleerup and Siri Karlsson. Together with Anna von Hausswolff, he wrote the music for the 2018 Nobel Banquet. In 2015, he was honoured by the American Academy of Arts and Letters and received the Wladimir and Rhoda Lakond Award, which is awarded to an “outstanding composer in the middle of their career”.

He has written two operas with librettist Royce Vavrek: Melancholia, based on Lars von Trier’s film, premiered at the Royal Swedish Opera in 2023, and Fanny and Alexander, based on Ingmar Bergman’s film, premiered at La Monnaie opera house in Brussels in 2024. Mikael Karlsson’s opera The Echo Drift was presented at New York’s leading festival for new opera, The PROTOTYPE Festival.

Mikael Karlsson has also composed the music for the video games Battlefield: Bad Company and Battlefield: Bad Company 2.

David Björkman is one of the latest in a distinguished line of Nordic musicians to have moved from the concertmaster’s chair to the conductor’s podium. He was a prize-winner at the 2008 Prokofiev International Conducting Competition in St Petersburg and received the Swedish Conducting Prize in 2004.

Björkman has made a name for himself as a dedicated opera conductor with nearly 40 productions to his credit, including 13 world premieres by composers such as Sven-David Sandström and Daniel Nelson.

From 2016 to 2020, he was chief conductor and artistic director of the Life Guards’ Dragoon Band in Stockholm. During his time with them, he made several recordings, including works for symphonic brass, Swedish contemporary art music, and piano concertos by Hallberg and Sivelöv.

In the 2025/26 season, David returned to Wermland Opera to conduct the world premiere of Mats Larsson Goethe’s new opera, as well as to the Royal Swedish Opera and the Nordic Chamber Orchestra, amongst others. The season also included guest appearances in Finland and Denmark.

David has recorded albums for Naxos, Daphne, Orchid and the Swedish Society with ensembles such as the Odense Symphony Orchestra, the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra, the Malmö Opera Orchestra and the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra.

Jenny Nordberg is a highly sought-after set, costume and make-up designer for the performing arts. She is from Stockholm and lives in Copenhagen. After studying at the Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp, Belgium, Jenny Nordberg studied set and costume design for the performing arts at the Stockholm Academy of Dramatic Arts.

Her designs are site-specific and conceptual, and she often constructs mathematical structures which she fills with contrasts; her visual expression frequently takes the form of site-specific spatiality, time-based set designs, ongoing installations within spaces, and costume design with a concrete basis in real-life conditions and sociological, ritualised behaviours.

Mira Svanberg has a master’s degree in Architectural Lighting Design from KTH and a bachelor’s degree in Lighting Design from Stockholms Dramatiska Högskola. In total she has been active as a lighting designer for more than ten years and has designed more than 40 productions throughout Sweden. She has previously worked with Dramaten, Malmö Opera and Göteborg stadsteater as well as making smaller art installations and her own projects.

Mira carries a significant interest in perception, aesthetics and color which form the pillars of her artistic expression.