Tomas Fredriksson Photography

Met journalist Thorbjörn Svahn and dancer Katarina Genberg the other day. This is her story.

”Hello! I started at the Opera in Stockholm as a ballet student in 1952 and was employed by the ballet in 1958. Left the Opera and moved to Malmö in 1965 and started at Malmö City Theater in November 1967. Retired after the 1982 season. Between 1965 and 1967 I worked as a teacher in Malmö and the surrounding area”.

Her height is about 165 centimeters above sea level and complaining of back pain. From Lidingö. She had an early desire to become a dancer. That was apparently the status then during the 1960s. The lady now living in Hultsfred and retired from teaching when she was 40.

”You can’t keep going anymore as a dancer ”, Genberg says who also is culture secretary.

The opera houses in Stockholm, Gothenburg and Malmö have their own training of dancers. Opera’s student school. They enter the corps, those who dance on stage. Some are taken out as soloists.

There was a medical examination once a year. If there was something wrong, they were not allowed to continue working.

The journalist has a past as a sports journalist at a newspaper in Oskarshamn, he tells me over a cup of coffee standing outside in the sun-drenched backyard minutes after nine on this June day in the days before Midsummer 2023.

”I had to do everything about speedway for the Oskarshamn newspaper. We have actually gone around Värmland where you have a good one in Valsarna from Hagfors”.

Solkatterna from Karlstad are another.

The man mentions dackarna, a speedway team from Målilla west of Oskarshamn.