Author: Isabel González

Venus

Posted on by Isabel González

What is it like to be a girl in the 2020s? In her performance Venus, Janina Rajakangas explores together with teenage girls the erotization of youth. The piece delves into the role that outsiders play in shaping our perceptions of beauty and the value placed on a girl’s life. By addressing the everyday feminist battles had by youth, Venus forces the ghosting needy subject to fall (for a moment) and draws outlines of Venus again.

Venus is honest, humble and kind, but also dopey, problematic and loud. The portrayal of Venus in this piece is multifaceted, because girliness itself is. Girls don’t fit one mold. What began as a project between a mother and daughter has blossomed into a creation comprising poems, songs, and dance performed by four teenagers. Janina Rajakangas has crafted the text for this piece in collaboration with the performers, based on their shared conversations. The development of Venus primarily took place outside of regular school hours, during evenings, holidays, and weekends.

After having shown Over your fucking body in 2019 at Moving in November, Janina Rajakangas is back at the festival with Venus that premiered in Baltic Circle in 2022.

 

Janina Rajakangas is a Helsinki-based choreographer, performer, and teacher. Rajakangas creates detailed choreographic material and large-scale scores for groups. Her work revolves around understanding how dance emerges from everyday experiences. In her current trilogy, the Janina Rajakangas Project deconstructs the structures of patriarchy by examining everyday power dynamics. The trilogy explores themes such as paternal relationships (Meadow 2021), the sexualization of teenage girls (Venus 2022), and inclusivity as choreography (Dancer 2023). The Project’s pieces have been shown at Moving in November, Zodiak – Center for New Dance, Kiasma Theatre and The Place Theatre London.

HORDE

Posted on by Isabel González

HORDE is a choreographic work by Ingri Fiksdal and Solveig Styve Holte that both through practical organization as well as artistic expression thematizes who can access art and artistic work nowadays. Motivated by a common interest for a larger diversity within all parts of the professional art field, Fiksdal and Holte have been engaged in discussions about who become artists and what artistic work is. At the moment, there is an increased awareness of representation of gender, sexual orientation, and cultural background within the whole field of art and culture. At the same time, there is still a major dominance of white, middleclass kids in all art education. Fiksdal and Holte are interested in who can imagine themselves as artists in the future and who can access professional art today. 

The making of the choreography HORDE takes shape as a paid summer job for nine teenagers between the age of 15 to 18, recruited in the Helsinki area. The project will give the young, performing participants salaries according to union rates, competence, experience, and a network that will strengthen their knowledge of contemporary art today and stimulate talent and eagerness to potentially orientate themselves towards art as a profession. 

HORDE premiered in October 2021 at the CODA Oslo International Dance Festival and has also been performed at the opening of the MUNCH Museum in Oslo. A new adaptation of the work was performed in Kristiansand in summer 2022. In 2023, Moving in November invited Ingri Fiksdal and Solveig Styve Holte to Helsinki and together a new adaptation with nine local teenagers and one professional dancer was produced. The project was carried out in the framework of the Helsinki Model project and in collaboration with Pihlajamäki Youth Centre and Kiasma Theatre. HORDE was performed in August in Pihlajamäki’s Kiillepuisto and in November in the frame of the festival programme in the Kiasma lobby.

Ingri Midgard Fiksdal is an Oslo-based choreographer with a PhD in artistic research from the Oslo National Academy of the Arts. Her research explores affect, perspective, privilege, and posthumanism, investigating the hegemonies of knowledge and power. She views choreography as a speculative fiction format that offers diverse understandings of body, gender, species, ethnicity, knowledge, and history. Fiksdal values the entanglement of practice and theory in her work, considering them equally important. Since 2020, she has been an Affiliated Artistic Researcher with CoFUTURES at the University of Oslo, which focuses on global futurisms beyond anglophone traditions. Fiksdal’s work has been shown at various international festivals and venues, including Obscene Festival in Seoul, Homo Novus in Riga, Kunstenfestival in Brussels, and Palais de Tokyo in Paris. 

Her work Diorama has been presented in Helsinki in 2021 at Hietaniemi beach in the frame of Moving in November. 

Solveig Styve Holte is a dancer and choreographer based in Oslo. She completed her MA in Choreography at the Oslo National Academy of the Arts and is currently a Research Fellow there. Her research project focuses on exploring authorship in dance and choreography, using pre-existing materials and historical archives. Holte often collaborates with others to create performances for various settings, including museums, galleries, theaters, and outdoor spaces. In addition to HORDE, created in collaboration with choreographer Ingri Fiksdal, she has also worked on projects like Frå form til famling and Sixteen Dances. She has contributed to the anthology KOREOGRAFI/CHOREOGRAPHY and is part of the editorial team. 

Amie Mbye is a Norwegian-Gambian dance artist, choreographer and dance teacher based in Oslo and who works between Oslo, Paris, Barcelona and Dakar. She has both participated in and created projects ranging from battles and dance jams to artistic productions for stages, presented both nationally and internationally. 

Amie is the initiator and member of B16 dance collective. The collective consists of 20 dancers, actors, singers, poets and writers between the ages of 16 and 32 who work widely with dance; they do performance, facilitating workshops and talks for youth and young adults, organizing dance jams and battles. The collective represents a rich spectrum of dancers with the aim of creating safe spaces of opportunity for young people interested in the arts and, not least, expanding the horizons of what and who is represented in the dance field in Norway.

Sofia Charifi is a dance artist, performer and producer. She graduated from the University of the Arts Theater Academy from the dance arts education program in 2021 and she has worked in many different roles in the free field of art. Currently, she works as the coordinator of Ruskeat Tytöt ry. In her spare time, she tries to knit a sweater and takes singing lessons.

Alma Nordberg: I am a 16-year-old art lover. My main interests are dance and music, and I study at Sibelius high school in the music department.

Taika Fadte: Hi, I’m a 16-year-old from Helsinki, for whom dance is an important part of life.

Jia Macedo Pirttinen: Hi, I’m Jia, a 17-year-old high school student and my life mainly revolves around dance, school and the people who are important to me.

Metta Pietiläinen: Dance has a place in my heart and that is why I am grateful that I accepted this unique opportunity. With it, I can not only realize myself through dance and movement, but also get to know new people!

Meribel Kaljumets: I like riding motorcycles and I’ll be an animal caretaker when I grow up.

Wilma Lönnberg: I Like traveling and movies.

Juulia Erjanti: I love cats and listening to Stepa! I’m usually called Juju.

Ilo Bingham: I’m in the second year of high school and in my spare time I enjoy scouting and dancing.

Leila Airin Özbek: My ethnic roots are an important part of me and dance is my passion.

D̶A̶R̶K̶MATTER

Posted on by Isabel González

Body can you become hypothetical, a galaxy, in full gear acceleration, a liquid star monster, failing to die?

In DARKMATTER , Cherish Menzo and her onstage partner Camilo Mejía Cortés look for ways to detach their bodies from the way they are perceived and the daily reality in which they move. Among other things, they look up to the sky, at dark matter and at black holes that meet and collide to give birth to a new, (afro)futuristic and enigmatic body. DARKMATTER wants to get rid of the biased way of looking at one’s own body, at that of the other, and at the stories we attribute to them. Together, they throw their bodies into a complex conversation that they want to both enter into and transcend – a duality that feeds the performance.

Having the desire to bring multiple voices to the audience, Menzo forms in every city the performance is shown a Distorted Rap Choir, inviting people from the African diaspora to record a rap anthem that becomes part of the performance. By layering the different local Distorted Rap Choir-recordings the choir grows in number of voices during the tour. Just as in her previous project JEZEBEL, presented in Moving in November 2022, Menzo stretches her movement language further by applying the Chopped and Screwed method to her movement language – a remix technique from hip-hop music in which the tempo is sharply reduced. By stretching the notions of time, the register changes and the performing body manages to generate new readings.

DARKMATTER reshuffles our atoms, looking for a new form for – and a way of looking at – our body and the complex outside world to which it relates.

 

Cherish Menzo is known for her commanding and precise physical presence, both as dancer and choreographer. She completed her studies in Urban Contemporary Dance at Amsterdam University of the Arts in 2013. Since then, she has collaborated with artists such as Eszter Salamon, Akram Khan, Leo Lerus, Hanzel Nezza, Olivier Dubois, Benjamin Kahn, Lisbeth Gruwez, Jan Martens, and Nicole Beutler. In addition to her career as a performer, Menzo has been creating her own works since 2016.

Menzo challenges societal norms and constructs alternative worlds where the black body takes center stage. Her first solo piece, JEZEBEL, was premiered in 2019 and received both the Amsterdam Fringe Award and the International Bursary Award.

Cherish Menzo is one of the four artistic leaders of the dance organization GRIP, together with Femke Gyselinck, Jan Martens and Steve Michel.

Camilo Mejía Cortés grew up in Cali, Colombia, and moved to Spain at 14. He received dance education in Barcelona and then joined the Salzburg Experimental Academy of Dance. He participated in various productions including Sound of the Trap by the Bodhi Project and Cecilia Bengolea, and L’incoronazione di Poppea directed by Jan Lauwers, who later invited him to join Needcompany, where he performed in War and Turpentine, Isabella’s Room, All the good, and PIE (Probabilities of Independent Events). Since May 2022, Cortés has been touring internationally with D̶A̶R̶K̶MATTER.

Currently, Cortés is working on a personal project that explores the influence of salsa music on his artistic discourse. He delves into the artistic, socio-political, and spiritual aspects of this genre to contribute to the archive of the experiences of the African Diaspora.

Soup Talks

Posted on by Isabel González

Soup Talks is a series of informal conversations with the artists presenting their work during the festival. The talks form a discursive line that goes through the festival and brings people together. We want to welcome the audience and the artists around a big table with a bowl of warm soup. Everybody is invited to join in, to listen, to pose questions and to take part in the discussions. Each of the talks will be hosted by an artist based in the Helsinki area.

 

3.11.2023 
Performance Bacchae – prelude to a purge
Guest: Marlene Monteiro Freitas
Host: Elina Pirinen

 

4.11.2023 
Performance Poet in my – my life as Fabou
Guests: Ella Skoikka & working group  
Host: Masi Tiitta

 
5.11.2023
Performance Data Ocean Theatre/Tragedy and the Goddexxes  
Guest: Vincent Roumagnac
Host: Sara Grotenfelt

 
6.11.2023
Performance MIKE 
Guest: Dana Michel
Host: Marika Peura

 
7.11.2023
Performance Save the last dance for me 
Guest:  Giovanfrancesco Giannini  
Host: Nina Vurdelja

 
8.11.2023 HUOM! @ Goethe-Institut
Performance SCORES THAT SHAPED OUR FRIENDSHIP 
Guests: Lucy Wilke, Paweł Duduś & Kim Ramona Ranalter
Hosts: Riina Hannuksela & Aku Meriläinen

 
9.11.2023 
Performance HORDE 
Guests: Solveig Styve Holte, Amie Mbye & Sofia Charifi 
Host: Samuli Emery

 
10.11.2023 
Performance Submission Submission
Guest: Bryana Fritz
Host: Simo Kellokumpu
 

11.11.2023 
Performance Venus
Guest: Janina Rajakangas & Mea Holappa
Host: Joel Teixeira Neves
 

12.11.2023  
Performance DARKMATTER
Guests: Cherish Menzo & Camilo Mejía Cortés
Host: Edit Williams

 

20.12.2023 @ Eläintarhan huvila
Finnish artist, choreographer and performer Lin Da’s Life Long Burning residency in Uferstudios Berlin
In the Soup Talk together with Lin Da will converse Laura Pietiläinen

 

Elina Pirinen

Elina Pirinen, born in North Carelia, lives in Helsinki and by the lake Kalliojärvi with her husband, daughter, Russian blue queen cat and young lapland reindeer dog. Her artistry and practice is entangled in choreography, dancing, music making, experimental writing, pedagogy and psychodynamic-feminism. She loves working with the instrument of a live stage, recorded audio and lyrics/poetry. Pirinen thinks about the living and the dying bodies and their queer states when she creates. She has been passionately researching the subconscious registers, hardcore primary affections and intelligence through them, constructing psychic, feministic, transgressive and romantic inner and outer milieu. She seeks for energy of consolation, hope, a connection with the audience. Her works have toured all around the world. Pirinen regularly works as a visiting pedagogue at the Uniarts Helsinki’s Theater Academy, the Degree Programme in Theatre Arts at the University of Tampere, Zodiak – Center for New Dance,  interdisciplinary summer academy Sukset Ristiin Susirajalla and The Academy of Music and Theatre in Vilnius. Side by staging she makes art rock music and does volunteer work with animal protection. 

Masi Tiitta

Masi Tiitta works as a choreographer, director, performer and dramaturg and as a member of working groups in the fields of new dance and contemporary performance. His work has been presented across the contexts of dance, live art and visual arts, for example at Helsinki City Theatre’s Stage for Contemporary Performance, Baltic Circle International Theatre Festival, Contemporary Art Space Kutomo and Zodiak – Center for New Dance.

Sara Grotenfelt

Sara Grotenfelt is a choreographer, performance-maker and performer based in Helsinki, Finland. Lately Sara’s works have focused on tweaking the social and aesthetic conventions of the performance situation. Her work has been shown at e.g. Helsinki City Theatre’s Stage for Contemporary Performance, Hangö teaterträff, Zodiak Stage and Taidehalli. As a performer she has collaborated with WAUHAUS, Sari Palmgren, Anna-Sofia Nylund and Blaue Frau amongst others. Sara also works as a co-director at the dance school Tanssivintti which offers intensive programmes for young dancers aspiring to engage in dance as an art form. She holds a Master’s degree in choreography from the Theatre Academy of Helsinki and a Bachelor’s degree equivalent from DASPA, Copenhagen. 

Marika Peura

Marika Peura is a choreographer and dancer based in Helsinki. She works multidisciplinary in the fields of dance, contemporary performing arts and commercial productions. Peura graduated from Uniarts Helsinki in 2020. She has a long practice in street & club dance culture. Peura works with the the emotional, poetic and political landscapes that unfolds from the experientiality of the body. Her last work was centered around intimacy of the dancing body; studying the emotional, sensual, sexual and social energies from the intersection of club/rave dance & culture and contemporary choreography. In her upcoming work she is researching and re-imagining the question of intimacy in the relationship with her mother.

Nina Vurdelja

Nina Vurdelja is a performance researcher and cultural worker active across disciplines and geographies, based in Finland. Her interests reside around more-than-human sensuous encounters and ecologies of being together. She is a Phd Candidate at Doctoral school for Communication, Media and Performing Arts at Tampere University, dwelling in meeting spaces between culture, art, and philosophy. 

Riina Hannuksela

Riina Hannuksela is a doctoral candidate in dance at the Centre for Performing Arts Research at Theatre Academy in UniArts Helsinki. In her dissertation, she explores how we could expand the notion of a dancer and a dance to diversify the representation on stage. Before her doctoral research, she worked for over a decade in dance as a performer, facilitator, and teacher. She is particularly interested in community dance as a way to practice co-existing with others. She has established and is still facilitating the artistic processes of Ihanat Dance Company, a company for dancers with and without intellectual disabilities. A dance film trilogy Gen Z (dir. Kati Kallio) created with Ihanat Dance Company premiered earlier this year and is touring internationally at dance film festivals. In recent years, she has also worked as an artist-researcher in ELLA – Embodied Language Learning through the Arts (2021–2024) research project (funded by Kone Foundation) and is currently chairing the Community Dance Association in Finland. Riina is frequently invited to present and teach nationally on accessibility and inclusivity in the arts.  

Aku Meriläinen

Aku Meriläinen (they/he) is a media artist and doctoral researcher who develops practices beyond the normative expectations in works that integrate digital technologies and performing arts. 
At the moment they are interested in combining artistic processes with new technologies to identify discriminatory cultural features from the crip perspective. 

Samuli Emery

Samuli considers themselves a Finnish-British queer art maker from Jyväskylä, who happens to have a complicated but touchingly obsessive relationship to dancing. Samuli crafts performative situations, invites people together into generative and empowering spaces and practices loving ways to remain housed in one’s body. Samuli longs for the collapse of bourgeoisie tendencies in Western staged contemporary dance while craving joyous, epic and absurd shared senses of being alive. 

In 2019 she completed a formal Western “contemporary” dance education at SEAD Salzburg with a major in choreography. During his studies at SEAD he got to perform in the works of many acclaimed artists such as Wim Vandekeybus, Julyen Hamilton and Milan Tomašik. Additionally, Samuli completed an exchange program at the renowned Tisch School of the Arts in New York in 2018. They have also immersed themselves in several Afro-American street and club dance cultures and the Ballroom scene which shape and inform their artistic practice profoundly. 

Samuli has worked internationally with artists like Meg Stuart, Jerome Bel, Imre & Marne Van Opstal, Christoph Winkler, River Lin, Jill Crovisier, Gloria Höckner, Barnaby Booth and Ceren Oran. Samuli has received numerous awards and stipends for their accomplishments as a performer and maker in Finland, Germany, Poland, Estonia and Italy. Additionally she creates her own work, ranging from intimate solos to video works to huge community dance pieces and teaches internationally. 

Simo Kellokumpu

Simo Kellokumpu is a choreographer, performer, researcher and lecturer in the MA in Dance performance program at the University of the Arts, Helsinki. From 2013 to 2019, Simo has conducted the artistic research project ’Choreography as Reading Practice’ at the Centre for Performing Arts Research at the University of the Arts, Tutke and has worked with post-doctoral artistic research project xeno/exo/astro –choreoreadings in 2020-2022. Simo’s multidisciplinary artistic work explores the choreographic relations between corporeality and materiality in the intertwining of space culture, hyper-reading, speculative fiction and site-specificity. 

Joel Teixeira Neves

Director and performance artist Joel Teixeira Neves (TeM) works in the field of performance art, theater and dance. In Teixeira Neves’s artistic work, place-relatedness and direct interaction between the moment of the performance and the audience are emphasized.

Edit Williams

Edit Williams (1996) is a Guinean-Finnish student in her last year of bachelor’s degree in the Swedish acting program at the theatre academy of Helsinki. Williams has been actively involved in various theatre productions both within and outside the academy in projects that involve multiple languages such as Swedish, Finnish and English. As she approaches the end of her degree program, she will be continuing her master’s degree in acting and she hopes to use her skills to create and/or participate in meaningful productions that involve important perspectives from the BIPOC community in the industry, artistic influences and political views. She also wants to encourage others from the BIPOC community to take space in a room that has not been designed for them, especially in the theatre and film industry and especially for the younger generation. 

Lin Da

Lin Da (aka Lin Martikainen) is a Helsinki-based artist, choreographer and performer whose work focuses on observing ecologies of life, touch and encounters with the sense of unreadiness. Lin explores the relationships between beings and their vicinity in dialogues between human bodies and more-than-humans in different contexts. Their works are realized in many different forms, from installations to dance performances and from audio works to sculptures. The combining web between the works is choreographic thinking.

Lin works independently and in collaboration with artists from different fields. Their process-oriented practice utilizes a wide range of techniques and approaches and aims to create art that pushes and redefines the boundaries of the choreographic framework in the form of sound, moving image, installation, performances and events, among others. The venues and contexts of Lin’s works are diverse: they have been exhibited and performed in private residences, public urban spaces, galleries and stage spaces. Their latest project Aukeama – Opening space (2023) intersects with dance, visual arts and performance art. The multi-staged body of work was carried out together with volunteers and included, among other things, a choreographic installation and a dance performance, Napapiiri – Navel Circle. The volunteers had responded to an open invitation letter welcoming queer people to apply to be part of the creation of the MFA thesis project that circled around the navel, touch and movement. Lin has continued to work with the openings of the body, focusing on working with LGBTQIA+ people in a safer space context for semiotics and somatics to bloom, pollinate and transform.

Laura Pietiläinen

Laura Pietiläinen’s journey from the choreography studies at the Theater University since 2005 has initially moved from surrealist stage works to personal encounters with the audience, to darkness, making sensory performances, to scenographic starting points, transporting the audience on moving stages and urban nature, to other spaces, to art research and aesthetic studies, to detaching oneself from other thinkers and collective bubbles, to opera works, to combining the organic expression of classical song and dance, to making costumes, to dressing rooms and Juntta in Ylioppilasteatteri, to the basement and to the woods, to the creation of a drag show dance group, to Kuumat putket, to a concert-like stage spectacle, to the desire to break away from the stage, to fashion shows, to courtyards and streets, to concert halls, churches, galleries and clubs , to ritualistic and transformative performances combining visual art, fashion clothes, music and scents, fashion, music and dance videos, new-age painterly choreographies in video works, series of miniature performances, ever new changes and step by step towards freedom.

Pre-note Moving In November

Posted on by Isabel González

Pre-note Moving in November.
Program release September 14th.

While writing a pre-note for this year’s Moving in November program, I encounter a strong friction, a contradiction in my head.

Why do I have the urge to highlight the aspect that the program consists of a diversity of artistic perspectives? That the program is diving even further into the plurality of bodies and voices on stage. Showing how a complex and diverse society could look like, favouring different perspectives and multiple worlds. Asking again and again what kind of bodies are mainly represented on stage, what stories are told, by whom and importantly for whom.

At the same time there is a strong voice inside me, asking why all this still needs to be mentioned. Shouldn’t we already be at a point were various voices and bodies stand side by side in a program, without specifically having to write about diversity and equality regarding gender, skin color, age, body shapes and various abilities? Are we not there yet? Still living in a world that did not erase inequality and marginalization, being again and again confronted with hierarchy, gender-gaps and racism.

Looking at societies that slowly, but steadily shift towards the right, re-installing gender separation and racism, taking the responsibility as curator and insisting via my program on these questions, opening these reflections seems once more highly important. We are just not there yet. We are not living within societies of true equality, where everyone finds oneself represented on stage. We are still not living in a world where everyone is seen and taken into account.

Having looked at this with a certain bitterness and also anger, while glimpsing with anxiety into an uncertain future, there is something else, that I would like to share in relation to this year’s program and all the different artistic proposals. The invited performances create a notion of hope within me. Might they be poetic, thought-provoking, confrontational, perceived as light or dark or radical, these performances change the conversation, shift the rhythm, the pace, sharpen my gaze and my thoughts, they inspire and nourish me and my sensation towards this messy world we are living in.

Performances, that make me dive into notions of trust, intimacy, care, absurdity and laughter, make me look at relations of different kinds, proximity and alienation, asking for change, pointing out stereotypes and proposing other viewpoints and ways of being, of thinking communities and coexistence.

There is something else that can’t stay untold. It feels like a miracle that we are able to publish the program that you will read in a few days. It has been a wild ride to find the means to realize what you will be looking at in November. Until mid-August, we have been biting our nails, not knowing if we get the funding to realize the full artistic plan, if we can really bring the planned opening performance.
I am more than thankful to everyone, who has helped to make this year’s program happen. Those that have been hanging in there together with us and supporting us to bring all the initially invited performances to Helsinki.

Can we make a difference? I truly hope so!

 

Yours,
Kerstin Schroth & the Moving in November team

Photo: Kerstin Schroth

Moving in November is looking for participants for the Distorted Rap Choir formed by Cherish Menzo

Posted on by Isabel González

Moving in November is looking for participants for the Distorted Rap Choir (inviting people from the African diaspora, 16+) formed by Cherish Menzo for her performance DARKMATTER, that will take place in this year’s Moving in November.

Performance artist Cherish Menzo works with electronic music, Chopped and Screwed and Rap. For her performance DARKMATTER she looks at the notions of Afrofuturism and posthumanism and explores the use of movement and voice, as a tool to look more closely at how we perceive ourselves and others.

 If you have affinity with these topics, we invite you to take part in Cherish Menzo’s labo-workshop between November 8th and 12th to become a part of the Distorted Rap Choir, a project within the performance DARKMATTER.

 

About Cherish and the Distorted Rap Choir

Cherish is a performance artist, based in Amsterdam and Brussels. In her artistic work she is interested in the transformation of the body on stage and in the “embodiment” of different physical images. Images seem recognizable at first glance, but by highlighting their complexity and contradiction, Cherish questions the apparent norm. Cherish creates universes in which the Black body stands central. She floats between the nostalgia of the 90s and 2000s (hip-hop, rap lyrics, sci-fi, manga) and speculative futures to give shape and materialize uncanny, enigmatic forms and realities.

In DARKMATTER, Cherish searches for what might be new strategies and ways to transform the body and bring physicality to matter. For this she researches dark matter, Afrofuturism and Posthumanism, and also looks at the frictions these notions bring along.

She uses the Chopped and Screwed-methodology to shape a movement language specific to the DARKMATTER universe. This remixing technique Chopped and Screwed originated in hip-hop music, slowing down the tempo considerably and creating rhythm changes. The song gets a new “chopped” and “screwed” version through scratch effects, pauses, repeats, remixes, and skipping beats.

Cherish applies these tools and electronic music to movement, voice, and the body. Well-recognised sounds, images, and movements are sampled and shaken up, slowed down, and alienated on stage.

Having the desire to bring multiple voices to the audience, Cherish works with the Distorted Rap Choir: a locally formed choir of participants (the workshop is open for professionals and amateurs).

During the labo-workshop you will get to know the chopped & screwed methodology and learn a rap anthem by Cherish Menzo and vocal coach Daniel Bonsu. At the end of two days the rap anthem will be audio recorded.
On the one hand, the audio recording will be integrated in the soundscape of the performance.
On the other hand, the recording and your picture will be part of the website www.distortedrapchoir.com, that is visible for the audience of the performance DARKMATTER through a QR code in the evening program.

In each city a new locally formed Distorted Rap Choir is formed. Each recording of the rap anthem by the Distorted Rap Choir joins the previous ones. By layering the different local Distorted Rap Choir-recordings the choir grows in number of voices during the tour.

Profile of the Distorted Rap Choir participants

As a part of the search of the project DARKMATTER, the team looks into opening an ongoing dialogue about representation of the Black body in the performing arts with the local participants of the Distorted Rap Choirs.
Therefor we invite a variety of people from the African diaspora with different backgrounds and ages (16+) who are interested in joining the search for other stories and embodiments of the (Black) human body. We highly also encourage for people without an artistic profession or background to join.

When and Where?

The labo-workshop takes place between November 8 – 12 in cultural center Stoa in Itäkeskus.

More information about the practicalities and schedule you can find in the questionnaire.

The participation in the labo-workshop is free of charge and includes the visit of the performance DARKMATTER.

For the recording of the rap anthem and the use of it in the performance and on the website you receive a fee of 60 EUR.

The common language will be English.

 

How to participate?

Please fill in this questionnaire.
We will get back to you as soon as possible.

 

DARKMATTER is produced by GRIP and Frascati. More info on Cherish Menzo can be found on
https://www.grip.house/maker/cherish-menzo/ +  www.frascatiproducties.nl/Cherish-Menzo.

 

 

Photo © Yaqine Hamzaoui 

 

 

The workshop is organized by Moving in November within the frame of European Network Project Life Long Burning – Futures Lost and Found, funded by Creative Europe 2023-2026.

OPEN CALL Life Long Burning 2 residencies—application deadline: 26.05.2023

Posted on by Isabel González

In the frame of the EU project Life Long Burning Moving in November Helsinki and Uferstudios GmbH Berlin are offering two different shaped residencies for professional movement and dance artists based in Finland and Berlin.

With the Artistic Exchange Residency 2023 Moving in November and Uferstudios offer the possibility to work and research embedded in two artist driven structures, working and thinking in close connection with the local artistic scenes of the two cities (Helsinki and Berlin). We would like to offer the possibility to research, to exchange with us and to experience the program of Moving in November festival and Uferstudios.

WHO WE ARE
Moving in November is a contemporary dance festival organised yearly in the Helsinki area. The festival is an invitation to come together. To experience artistic works from the local scene and abroad. Artists voicing their critical thinking, their visions, their experiences, their dreams, opening small windows to the world we are living in. www.movinginnovember.fi

Uferstudios for contemporary dance is a landmarked area in Berlin-Wedding that currently brings together a total of six partners from Berlin’s independent dance scene. Uferstudios are characterized by the coexistence of artistic production, research, education and information, and promote a synergetic collectivity on site with focus on openness and participation.
www.uferstudios.com

THE CALL
Moving in November and Uferstudios Berlin offer both a 2-week residency, each one for one individual dance artist working with contemporary dance or performance.
The call addresses Finland and Berlin based artists, interested in working and researching for two weeks in the other country.

The residency in Berlin, addressing Finland based artists, offers:
– Accommodation, travel expenses, per diem, fee (700€) and studio time for 1 person
(14 days)
– When: Jul 24th – Aug 6th, 2023
– Where: Berlin, Uferstudios

With the Artistic Exchange Residency 2023 Uferstudios offers the participant the possibility to draft, adapt, experiment and exchange their own work in the local context of Berlin/Uferstudios. It encourages artist to deepen their research or production with the possibility of technical support or any other close collaboration they want to engage in with the local artistic community. A final studio showing is possible but not requested.

The residency in Helsinki, addressing Berlin based artists, offers:
– Accommodation, travel expenses, per diem, fee (1000€), studio time for 1 person (5 days) and free access to all Moving in November events.
– When: Oct 30th – Nov 12th, 2023 (Studio time: Oct 30th – Nov 3rd, 2023, Festival period: Nov 2nd – 12th, 2023)
– Where: Helsinki, Moving in November

With the Artistic Exchange Residency 2023 Moving in November offers the participant the possibility to experience the whole festival program and all discursive events. Via this the participant gets to know and exchange with the local artistic community and the invited international artists. Moving in November furthermore gives the possibility to research and experiment in the studio, to think about a new creation, to try out first ideas with the possibility of mentorship or any other close collaboration wished for. A final studio showing is possible but not requested. The studio residency in Helsinki takes place in the studio of choreographer Liisa Pentti, who functions as a co-host and takes part in the selection process.

APPLICATION DEADLINE FOR BOTH RESIDENCIES: 26.05.2023

TO APPLY:
Please send your biography and a short motivation letter in English describing what you want to work on and how you imagine profiting from the residency and your stay in Helsinki or Berlin.

For Finnish Artist wanting to visit Uferstudios (Residency period: Jul 24th – Aug 6th, 2023): send your application to: 

For Berliner Artists wanting to visit Moving in November (Residency period: Oct 30th – Nov 12th, 2023): send your application to: 

The selection process will happen in close collaboration of both parties.

Looking forward to your applications!

Kerstin Schroth & Moving in November team

 

 

Photo © Kerstin Schroth „The Hut“ by Jared Gradinger, Angela Schubot, Stefan Rusconi, Alm Gnista & Shelley Etkin, in the frame of Moving in November 2022
Photo © Johannes Bock
The residencies are organized by Moving in November and Uferstudios GmbH within the frame of the European Network Project Life Long Burning – Futures Lost and Found, funded by Creative Europe 2023-2026.

 

 

Traces from November – the ever changing form Moving in November

Posted on by Isabel González

Moving in November continues this year with Traces from November, a shape shifter that can transform into any form and take place at any month or season during the year.

This year’s Traces from November is a project conceived by Ingri Fiksdal and Solveig Styve Holten: HORDE. The making of HORDE takes shape as a paid summer job for 9 teenagers between the age of 15 to 18 , recruited in the Helsinki area.

“HORDE is a choreographic work that both through practical organization as well as artistic expression thematizes who can access art and artistic work, through the practise and performance of a complex and powerful artistic community.  At the moment, there is an increased awareness of representation of gender, sexual orientation and cultural background within the whole field of art and culture. At the same time, we see a major dominance of white, middleclass kids in all art education. We are interested in who can imagine themselves as artists in the future and who access professional art today. “ – Ingri Fiksdal and Solveig Styve Holte

HORDE will be rehearsed during the summer months and there will be a public showing in the beginning of August in Pihlajamäki. The premiere will be in the frame of Moving in November in the Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma.

You can find the open call here: Searching for summer job? 

Warmly,
Kerstin Schroth & Moving in November team

Photo: Christian Tandberg

Searching for summer job?

Posted on by Isabel González

In this summer job you get to create a performance with a group of international artists.

You don’t have to have a dance background, but you need to:

  • be in good physical condition,
  • have curiosity and be dependable,
  • have good teamwork skills,
  • identify yourself or been raised as a girl.

We welcome applicants from different linguistic and cultural minorities.

HORDE by Ingri Fiksdal (NO) and Solveig Holte (NO) is a choreographic work and a summer-job for 9 teen girls. It premiered in Oslo 2021 and was re-made in Kristiansand in 2022. In 2023 Fiksdal and Holte will re-make a new version with a group of teens in Helsinki together with Moving in November.

Professional dancers Amie Mbye (NO) and Sofia Charifi (FI) work with the teens and assist the work of the choreographers.  Sofia will also perform together with the group.

Still image from the documentation of the project in Oslo in summer 2021.

 

Head picture: Christian Tandberg