Pre-note Moving In November

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