The first own productions on the stage of a contemporary performance will premiere in August

In Encounters, Laura Eklund Nhaga, Katri Naukkarinen, Amanda Palo, Olga Palo and Sophia Wekesa from the Helsinki Feminist Secret Society, which operates in the field of art, bring to the audience two performers, borrowed bodies, who are connected to encounterers who remain hidden from the audience through headphones and microphones. Encounters, which deals with power, representation, anonymity and empathy, asks whether facelessness can be a tool for intimate interaction. How can you represent the other? Is representation the same as representation? Encounters will be screened in English on Friday 12 August.

Dancer and choreographer Sara Grotenfelt’s jubilee performance Last Hurrah highlights the different emotional sides of partying. The bodily states of the main performer, the main performer of the performance, and the associations they lead bring the feeling of emptiness and discomfort to the stage. The festive songs and the concerto of snake whistles distributed to the audience create a tense atmosphere within which the performer tries to please his guests. However, the atmosphere becomes more and more difficult and awkward as the performer dances out the existential feeling of emptiness from his millennial body. The work is a tragicomic combination of activities in which the performer tries to find meaningful things to do and wanders between self-esteem and shame.

The third stage premiere of the contemporary performance, dance artist Kati Korosuo’s solo work The Artist Is at Home , will premiere on 23 August at Studio Pasila. Korosuo’s performance emphasizes documentarity and the use of the self as material. Our time is a stage where everything has already been said and done, shown and seen. What else can the performer’s body mirror? The starting point for the solo work is Korosuo’s recurring nightmares about turtles, which he has documented as a video diary since 2012. The video journal penetrates from the private subconscious into the collective consciousness and acts as a bridge between the symbolic reality of dreams and the distorted bodily experience.

The stage of a contemporary performance

The stage of the Helsinki City Theatre’s Contemporary Performance brings various forms of contemporary performance into the theatre’s repertoire, increases job opportunities for independent artists and develops cooperation in the performing arts. The theatre has reserved the studio Pasila stage for the two-year pilot project in 2022 and 2023 from mid-May to the end of August.

The activities are divided into a visiting stage as well as premieres and stage residencies aimed at preparing them. The visiting stage took place in May, the residency work in June-July, and the premieres of the works produced at the residency in August.

The stage design and repertoire of the contemporary performance are the responsibility of a three-person curatorial team, consisting of performance artist and dancer Suvi Tuominen, director, doctoral researcher Tuomas Laitinen and curator Riikka Thitz. At the City Theatre, the project is coordinated by Antti Lahti.

The stage for the contemporary performance was created on the initiative of artists working in the independent field of performing arts. In the spring of 2019, a working group assembled by Lauri Antti Mattila submitted a proposal to the management team of the Helsinki City Theatre, which was signed by 885 performing arts professionals. The proposal asked the theatre to respond to current changes in society and in the field of performing arts.

The Helsinki City Theatre accepted the challenge of the free field and aims to develop a new kind of production framework for the field in the form of a pilot project, which could contribute to changing the structures that create inequality and slow down the development of the arts. The purpose of the project is to provide an example and share experiences with other theatres funded by VOS.

The Stage for Contemporary Performance project is supported by Kone Foundation in 2022–2023. 

Premieres on the stage of the contemporary performance in August 2022:

9. – 15.8.2022 Double bill: Helsinki Feminist Secret Society: Encounters and Sara Grotenfelt: Last Hurrah

23. – 29.8.2022 Kati Korosuo: The Artist Is at Home

Helsinki City Theatre ticket office, First Line 2, Mon-Fri 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., Eläintarhantie 5 Sat 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. and one hour before the performance and Lippupiste Mon-Sat 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., Sun 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., tel. 0600 900 900 (2 €/min + local network charge) www.hkti.fi

Press photos can be found in the image bank and press releases in the newsroom.

Further information, media ticket and interview requests:
Kaisa Pelkonen, Communications Manager, kaisa.pelkonen@hkt.fi, 040 552 3788 
Helsinki City Theatre, Ensi linja 2, 00530 Helsinki