In partner acrobatics, the human body enters a relationship of direct, unmediated dependency. Someone carries, someone else is being carried.The body is simultaneously a burden and a foundation of strength. Writer, choreographer, and circus artist Rebecka Nord considers all these in her latest performance with company Circus by Me, Det får bära eller brista (2020).

What is Det får bära eller brista? Why is this project important for you? 

It’s a performance with six partner acrobats and two live folk musicians, all female, telling a story about what women carried, for the last hundred years. This is a very personal project that sprang from interviews I did with my grandmother about her life, and the lives of her mother and grandmother.