Agadir – The Corona pandemic swept dance queen Mona Berntsen off the stage in 2020 just as she was beginning a world tour. Two years later, on February 20, Berntsen returned to dancing with Justin Bieber’s “Justice” world tour.
The pandemic “has been difficult and has affected us all,” Berntsen stressed when asked by Morocco World News (MWN) to reflect on the two years she spent out of the limelight. “For me, it has both been difficult on a professional level and personal. I am optimistic about our world and the future and praying that we soon can put this pandemic behind us.”
“Reflection” is a theme many have embraced these last two years. As such, here is a glimpse of Berntsen’s ten-year career.
The 30-year-old athlete and dancer Berntsen is well-known for winning “So You Think You Can Dance Scandinavia” when she was just 18 years old in 2008.
The career path of an athlete and/or performer is always challenging. For Norwegian-born Berntsen, there was the added challenge of her Moroccan family members not understanding her desire to pursue professional dancing.
Being raised by trailblazers who overcame the taboo of a cross-religious union was an inspiration for Berntsen to aspire big. In an interview with KK magazine, she noted that her most significant role model “must be my mom and dad. I look up to them so deeply. Both are strong people with strong stories. They give me hope that anything is possible.”
Though Berntsen’s mother was “very strict,” she was also a strong and dependable role model. The dancer acknowledges it “must have been difficult” for her mom. She told the KK magazine, “If I had done the same as her, suddenly having to settle in a completely unknown country and raise my children in a language I did not know – it would have freaked me out.”
But, the dancer suggested, her mother’s concerns about choosing such a career path were more about the insecurity of salary than whether it was right or wrong to do.
Most of the dancer’s loved ones had similar concerns. “At first,” she explained, “my family in Morocco did not realize that I was going to make a living from dancing. They did not understand the sport, the work and the career opportunities in it.” Repeatedly comparing the art of dance to the more serious martial arts seems to have been of great help for the family to get over that hurdle.
Berntsen’s Moroccan grandfather now sends supportive messages to her Instagram page.
“Athlete” is a title Berntsen self-identifies with, not to be known as just a performer. In addition to dancing and teaching master classes in dance, she also does strength training, rock climbing, and mountaineering.
In 2021, the athlete made it to the final stage of “71 Degrees North – Norway’s toughest celebrity” on Discovery. The show challenges contestants to “test their physical limits” in Norway’s uniquely beautiful nature.
Nature, meditation, and stillness were entirely out of Berntsen’s grasp right up until Corona hit in 2020. Before that, she had been touring and performing non-stop for a decade since moving to Los Angeles alone at only 19 years old.
Berntsen’s career highlights include performances with Alicia Keys, Madonna, and Justin Timberlake, at the Superbowl 2018 and in two world tours with Chris Brown. The “Justice” tour will be her second time dancing across the world with Justin Bieber, whom she toured with in 2016-17 in the “Purpose Tour.”
In 2020, Berntsen had been training in Los Angeles for seven weeks for a world tour when the pandemic struck. She returned to Norway, thinking she would stay a month, but sat for a year. For someone who has lived their dream of dancing for a living for 10 straight years, what was Berntsen to do in the stillness of her home for a year?
For starters, she finally created a home for herself. Last year the dancer gave KK magazine a tour of her new residence. Of her “favorite room,” KK says, “She has painted this in a warm color that makes her happy, also a little inspired by her second home country, Morocco. Here she spends several hours every day either dancing, strength training, meditating, or just lying on a mat on the floor and breathing.”
The standstill year of 2020 was the first time the performer was “in the same bed every morning” since her childhood. She explains, “I have never known myself as anything other than the athlete Mona Berntsen before. It’s her I have been all my adult life.”
With all tours and performances off during the pandemic, Berntsen found her love of nature and meditation. She also made a reflective art dance video, “Empty Streets | A year of pandemic lockdown.” The video is a collaboration of personal footage made during the lockdown from around the world, including Singapore, Washington DC, Toronto, and Los Angeles.
In the video, Berntsen dances and recites Lovering’s poem “Empty Streets:”
Mind racing with no finish line,
Goals we can no longer define….
I thought about hearts and veins,
About blocks and cranes,
And how we used to flood out into the city streets
The sound of life was part of me
What makes me real is you
What makes you real is me
Shawn Lovering, the writer of the video and poem Berntsen performs in it, says of the art piece, “Our friends came together to make this special meditation about our new normal.”
As most of us await the new, post-COVID normal, Berntsen is already ready to return to what normal means, or sounds like, to her: the pavement, stages, and dancing across the world. She also has Morocco in mind.
The dancer told MWN, “To get to perform in Morocco has always been a big dream of mine. I really hope it will happen in the near future. I would also love to share dance in Morocco through teaching one day, so that is absolutely in my plans.”
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