Nervetråde: Performances by Alma Toaspern & Sofie Winther

Nervetråde (Nerve Fibers) revolves around the grotesque, tracing threads from the nervous sensibility of literature around 1900, when Den Frie was founded, to the frayed nerves of contemporary art. The exhibition brings together works by Danish and international artists whose works pulse with the unease and strangeness running through our time. Across three evenings during the exhibition period, we present an eccentric and off-kilter performance programme of dance, music, language and more to explore the undersides of the categories and conventions that structure the familiar world.

This evening features Alma Toaspern’s _plex (2025/2026) and Sofie Winther’s Outlet (2026).

Admission with normal entrance fee.

_plex – by Alma Toaspern

_plex by Alma Toaspern is inspired by Canadian composer John Oswald’s Plexure (1993). The work translates the album’s rapidly shifting collage of pop fragments into a physical experience of sensory overload, fragmented attention, and fleeting moments of recognition. Centered around a dancing body, the performance ex- plores what happens to perception when the speed and density of information exceed the possibility of sustained attention. Fragments of gesture, sound, and popular culture collide and overlap with one another, eliciting both familiarity and estrangement.

_plex, 2025/2026 Performance Courtesy the artist
Choreography: Alma Toaspern
Created with and danced by: Lúa Mayenco
Outside Eye: Mathias Monrad Møller
Costume: Sabrina Seifried
Production: toaspern|moeller
Producer: Anne Mai Slot Vilmann
Photo: Jacob Stage

Outlet – by Sofie Winther

For Outlet, Sofie Winther presents a new performance that transforms the exhibition space into a make-believe retail shop. Inspired by childhood role-playing games and the ways we learn to navigate the adult world, the performance stages the strained, unnatural and bizarre rituals that it demands of us.

Performance Courtesy the artist
Performers: Tanya Sokolava, Marie Kilde, Ylva Maia Aagaard Havndrup
Costume & styling: Puer Parasitus
Photo: Inside-Out Art Museum, Beijing

Biographies

Alma Toaspern is a German dancer and choreographer working in contemporary dance and performance. She studied classical and contemporary dance in Frankfurt and graduated from P.A.R.T.S. in Brussels. From 2018 to 2022, she was a member of Corpus, the experimental dance company of the Royal Danish Ballet, and has collaborated internationally with artists including Tim Etchells, Trajal Harrell and Alexandra Bachzetsis. In 2020, she co-founded the interdisciplinary company toaspern|moeller with singer and composer Mathias Monrad Møller. In Plex (2025/2026), created with dancer Lúa Mayenco, she explores contemporary pop culture through choreography inspired by John Oswald’s Plexure (1993). For Nervetråde, Toaspern presents _plex (2025/2026).

Sofie Winther (b. 1991) is a Danish interdisciplinary artist based in Copenhagen. She holds an MFA from the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts and a BFA from the Gerrit Rietveld Academie. Working across sculpture, performance and video, often within immersive installations, she examines how relationships between kinship, labour, care, control and power are shaped and internalised in everyday life. Her work has been presented at institutions including Nikolaj Kunsthal, Kunsthal Charlottenborg, EMMA and Den Frie Udstillingsbygning. For Nervetråde, Sofie Winther presents a new work.