It’s today. The saddest day of the week. Chill vibe, spotlight, disco ball. You take a bow, no one cares… hyper choreographed material, all is set. Or is it? You always wanted backup dancers. Then sometimes, dreams come true, “wait, where are you from?”, and sometimes things fall apart. Don’t forget the mic or your drink. But do forget yourself. Ooh, it gets dark, it gets lonely. Welcome to the party.

local guest local ghost is a participatory and site-specific duet with artists Kadence Luella Neill and Chen Amor Nadler who find themselves in moments of transformative meeting through the performance format of Karaoke. Karaoke, also “empty orchestra” when translated from Japanese, sets the stage for infinite possibilities. Perhaps a kind of dramaturgy unfolds from the emptiness? Part neighborhood haunt, part space to become someone else, local guest local ghost invites sitting with sorrow and confusion, courage and escapism, dancing through different states of emotion and performativity that blur-blend inside and into real life stories. Placed within a social space of distracted and multi-directional attention, the duet questions the main event-ness of a performance itself. A dance of continuous shapeshifting emerges as Chen and Kadence research what is necessary in order to bear your soul through song and dance.

Kadence Luella Neill is a dance artist currently based in Helsinki, whose work lies somewhere around the intersection of choreography, community exchange, and performance theory. Her artistic practices often explore contradiction, ecstatic states of being, the concept of “the end”, and the body as a site of political and spiritual tension. Originally from New York City, Kadence is constantly cross-referencing different contexts, dance styles, disciplines, and realities. As a former company member of Nature Theater of Oklahoma, she has performed in venues and festivals including Zürcher Theater Spektakel, Wiener Festwochen, NYU Skirball, Kampnagel, Southbank Arts Center, HAU Berlin, Epidaurus Festival, Steirischer Herbst and others. Her work has been shown at institutions such as KokoTeatteri (Helsinki), IKLECTIK (London), JACK Arts Space (NYC), and Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. She holds a BFA from NYU Tisch’s Experimental Theater Wing and an MA in Choreography from Uniarts Helsinki. Kadence was a 2024 danceWEB scholar at ImPulsTanz – Vienna International Dance Festival under mentorship of Isabel Lewis.

Chen Amor Nadler is a choreographer and dancer based in Helsinki, with transcultural and diasporic roots. In her artistic practice she loves to explore what the body can do—celebrating the knowledge carried by the individual and awakened through the collective. Her creative search engages with the dilemmas of meeting the other: the emotional, energetic, spiritual, and ethical forces that emerge from encounters. Together with collaborators, she traces what echoes across generations, moving through the intimate, the chaotic and the tender registers of dancing presence. Her embodied practice spans Western dance techniques alongside North African, Romanian, and Middle Eastern traditional, ritualistic and folk practices. Her choreographic work unfolds through various forms—from stage productions to intimate performances and community-inclusive projects to facilitating multidisciplinary jam events, video art projects, movement workshops, and social gatherings.
Her recent works include The Feast (2025), Jam&Juice (2024), and Present Party, shown at Lugar Futuro Festival, Portugal in 2024. Chen has hosted workshops at ImPulsTanz – Vienna International Dance Festival and Zodiak – Center for New Dance, Helsinki. She has been invited to residencies supported by Life Long Burning – Futures Lost and Found and Moving in November, Liisa Pentti +Co, Sosta Palmizi, Routa Company, and more. As a performer she has worked with Romeo Castellucci, Sonya Lindfors, Barak Marshall, Michal Mualem and Giannalberto de Filippis among others. Chen holds an MA of Arts in Choreography from Theatre Academy, Uniarts Helsinki (2025) and studied for a B.Ed. in Steiner Education and Social Education (Haifa and Helsinki, 2022).