Join the Audience Club at Moving in November 

Moving in November festival invites art lovers, curious theatre goers as well as dance and performance professionals of all kinds to join the Audience Club at its 2024 edition.

Would you like to have more opportunities to discuss dance and theatre shows you see on stage or encounter in public spaces? Do you feel inspired or irritated, excited or confused about contemporary dance and performance but see no platform to express your opinions, ask questions and bounce back ideas? Do you want to get vocabulary, framework, or a community to share your experiences as an audience member? Then the Audience Club is for you. 

What is the Audience Club? 

Audience Club is a participatory format that invites festival’s visitors to get deeper understanding of dance art in relation to pressing issues of our contemporary world. It allows you to learn more about the language of dance and performance, gain confidence in articulating your questions and opinions, find a community for discussions and immerse deeper into this year’s festival’s program.  

In a group of 10-15 people guided by dance researcher and facilitator Anna Kozonina, the Club members will collectively watch the festival’s shows, explore relevant dance and art theory concepts through mini-lectures and try out various fun formats of discussing the festival’s pieces in a profound and involving manner.  

The aim of the Club is to expand the participants’ understanding of the contemporary dance field and its diverse points of contact with our private and social lives while helping to build confidence in expressing their thoughts and feelings about the art they experience. The Club strives to balance expertise with emotional responses of the spectators and build fruitful connections between feelings and judgments around performing arts.  

Audience Club Theme 

This Audience Club’s edition topic is “We are undone by each other: intimacy, violence, love and transformations.” 

While experiencing the pieces of the festival, we will discuss, among others:  

  • how formal artistic choices open up spaces for audience members to create meanings and interpretations; 
  • how the practice of dance and choreography challenges the idea of an autonomous self-sufficient body; 
  • how we navigate complex identity matters moving between various dance and performance genres; 
  • what are the opportunities and limitation of inventing ourselves through dance and performance; 
  • and how bodily exposure, vulnerability and ability to transform can or can not be a tool for empowerment and resistance. 

Each show of the program will become an entry point for us to dive into all these matters through various discussion formats. By the end of the program, the participants will have concepts at hand to talk about performance as well as enhance their confidence in expressing their ideas about art. 

Who is it for? 

The Club is welcoming dance, theatre and art lovers of all ages over 18 years old. Artists, culture professionals as well as people with no previous background in performing arts can take part on equal terms. The course is created individually for the festival’s programme and takes into consideration the unique group composition. 

Programme 

Session 1. 7.11 

  • 18:00. WELCOMING SESSION: Introduction, backgrounds exchange, expectations, tips 
  • 20:00. SHOW: Ligia Lewis – A Plot / A Scandal 

Session 2. 8.11 

  • 16:30. SHOW: Pontus Pettersson – Pancor Poetics 
  • 18:00. SHOW: Mette Edvardsen – LIVRE D’IMAGES SANS IMAGES 
  • 19:30. POST-TALK: Intimacies, empathy and inhabiting each other’s bodies 

Session 3. 9.11  

  • 15:00. SHOW: Tiziano Cruz – Soliloquio (I woke up and hit my head against the wall)
  • 17:00. SHOW: Ola Maciejewska – The Second Body 
  • 18:00. POST-TALK: In solo, you are never alone. Entering collective disasters through personal stories 

Session 4. 11.11 

  • 17:30. PRE-TALK/LECTURE: Pushing through or giving up? Endurance, perseverance and boundaries in life, sports and performance 
  • 19:00. SHOW: Milla Koistinen – GRIT (for what it’s worth) 

Session 5. 12.11 

  • 17:00. GUESTS SESSION Patricia Scalco & María Villa Largacha: Dealing with expectations: imagination as a political space 
  • 19:00. SHOW: Rébecca Chaillon – Whitewashing  

Session 6. 13.11  

  • 17:45. PRE-TALK/LECTURE: Puppets, pleasures and humour 
  • 19:00. SHOW: Cade & MacAskill – The Making of Pinocchio  
  • 20:30. MODERATED DISCUSSION 

Session 7. 15.11 

  • 17:00. SHOW: Tiran Willemse – blackmilk  
  • 18:00. MODERATED DISCUSSION 

Session 8. 16.11 

  • 14:00. SHOW: Stina Nyberg – Skvallret (The Gossip)
  • 15:00. WALK and TALK: Encountering the city through other species’ dances + DINNER 
  • 18:00. SHOW: Calixto Neto – IL FAUX
  • 19:00. POST-TALK: Bodies in danger vs. bodies taking risks 

Session 9. 17.11  

  • 15:00 AUDIENCE CLUB WRAP UP: Sharing, feedback, tips for the future encounters with dance and theatre 

How to take part? 

To sign up for the Audience Club, please fill in the Google Form by October, 12.  You will receive instructions by email after registration, how to book and secure your spot. 

The Audience Club is a part of the Focus on the Local Landscape program within the frame of Moving in November. 

Anna Kozonina is a dance writer, researcher, and educator based in Helsinki. As well as obtaining an MA in Political Science and Linguistics, she studied dance history and performance theory and holds an arts MA from Aalto University. Since 2017 she has been reviewing pieces by emerging and established European choreographers, and diving into somatic discourses in contemporary dance, which she observes from critical and political perspectives. She currently gives lectures on dance and performance theory, curates educational programs, and conducts research projects. She collaborated with institutions and festivals across Europe including Norrlandsoperan, Impulstanz, Baltic and Nordic Dance Platforms, Rail2Dance, STHLM DANS, etc. She is also a regular contributor at Springback Magazine (Aerowaves Network Magazine). 

Anna’s website.

Patricia Scalco is an anthropologist (PhD, University of Manchester) who uses ethnographic methods to explore the interplay between personal and collective experiences of naming, expressing, and regulating “negative” emotions. She is a researcher with the Irritation Project at the University of Helsinki, and she draws on her research background to collaborate in live-audience facilitation.

María Villa Largacha is a doctoral researcher at Tampere University, educator and independent curator. She has an academic background in Philosophy (BA, MA) and Curating and Contemporary Art (MA), and has worked extensively with public art programs as editor, facilitator, and public program coordinator in Colombia. Her research focus for the past decade has been designing spaces for discussion, collaboration, sustainability, and social change with varied participatory methods and a feminist intersectional frame. She teaches creative writing and curatorial practices at MA level in Helsinki and is currently the co-curator of the New Performance Turku Biennale.