Tanya Montan Rydell Creative Producer and Project Manager

Tanya Montan Rydell is a dance artist, project manager and climate activist. Originally from Sweden, she moved to Copenhagen in 2018 after 8 years in Munich in order to acquire an MFA in Dance & Participation program from the Danish National School of Performing Arts (DDSKS). Through her company Nexus Dance, she now works with producing, creating, performing and teaching dance and movement. Her focus, both as an artist and activist, is on dealing with the present materialities of climate change, and the future with its many challenges and potentials – often in site-specific settings. She also has a big focus on collaborations, and is f ex part of the performance collective Becoming Species and the cross-disciplinary, long-term research project Microgravity by Sparrow Dance.

Tanya works with project management, residency hosting and production for Tårnby Park Studio, where she has co-created the yearly festival, Performance & Soup and other events since 2022. TPS has also showcased two of her projects – “space between cells” and “YANA”.

How do you think culture shapes our understanding of what it means to be human?
This for me depends on which perspecive you take. In one way, I’d argue that it is our understanding of what it is to be human that shapes culture, not the other way around. On the other hand, cultural experiences such as performances or exhibitions can offer the possibility for humans to re-shape their understanding of other human’s perspectives on what it means to be human. That is for me what performance art can do – offer different embodied perspectives of the world, to perhaps create understanding, maybe even empathy, between different kinds of people and towards everything around us.

Which value is the most important for you at the moment?
Honesty, or trust – both in the communication with others but also myself. If we’re not honest with ourselves and others, then what are we talking about? What am I doing and why? What we do and say become kind of pointless if they are not honest, or if we can’t trust other’s to be honest with us.

Who was your childhood hero or role model, and why?
Robyn for her strong music and success as an independent female musician in the pop music industry.