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.

The Soup Talks are organized together in collaboration with Caisa.

7.11.2025
Performance: Work Body
Guest: Michael Turinsky
Host: Riina Hannuksela

8.11.2025
Performance: Don’t thank for the food
Guest: Antonia Atarah
Host: Ghyslaine Gau

9.11.2025 at 13.00
Performance: Maze
Guest: Marie Topp, Julia Giertz
Host: Patricia Scalco

10.11.2025
Performance: MANUAL
Guest: Adam Kinner, Christopher Willes
Host: Janne Saarakkala

11.11.2025
Performance: FRANK
Guest: Cherish Menzo
Host: Vishnu Vardhani Rajan

12.11.2025
Performance: Mother Tongue
Guest: Lucía García Pullés
Host: Elias Girod

13.11.2025
Performance: La Gouineraie
Guest: Rébecca Chaillon, Sandra Calderan
Host: Tangmo, Ladapha Sophonkunkit & Olga Spyropoulou

14.11.2025
Soup Talk Panel
Guests: Eeva Muilu, Laura Linna, Maia Means, Martyna Grinevskė, Miklós Ambrózy, Torunn Helene Robstad
Host: Simo Kellokumpu

15.11.2025 @Goethe-Institut
Performance: This resting, patience
Guest: Ewa Dziarnowska
Host:  Lin Martikainen & Lätsä (Lauri Antti Mattila)

16.11.2025 @Eskus at 11.00
Performance: Fampitaha, fampita, fampitàna
Guest: Soa Ratsifandrihana
Host: Esete Sutinen

16.11.2025 @Eskus at 13.00
Focus on the Local Landscape
Guest: Liisa Pentti, Laura Cemin & Tareq Abu Nahel, Mean Time Between Failures, Sanna Kekäläinen, Elina Pirinen & Tom Rejström & Jenni-Elina von Bagh, Alina Sakko, Emmi Max Pennanen & Sonjis Laine, Olga Spyropoulou
Host: Anna Kozonina & Audience Club

Riina Hannuksela is a dance artist and doctoral researcher at the Theatre Academy of the University of the Arts Helsinki. In her artistic research, she examines the epistemic agency of dancers with and without intellectual disabilities, and how embodied knowledge is manifested and applied in improvisation-based artistic processes. She is the founder of the Ihanat Company, an inclusive dance company, and has developed her artistic and pedagogical practice over the past decade through long-term collaboration with its dancers and other artists. She has over 15 years of experience with community-based projects, often situated outside conventional performance contexts. In recent years, Hannuksela has co-choreographed and facilitated several works with the Ihanat Company and performed in projects that explored social class and its embodied dimensions. Alongside her doctoral research, she remains active in the arts field, emphasising inclusive approaches that recognise dancers’ different backgrounds, abilities, and interests. She has worked as a visiting lecturer, mentor, and external examiner in university dance and pedagogy programmes, with expertise in community dance, inclusive practices, and broadened conceptions of contemporary dance.

Ghyslaine Gau is a choreographic artist from the Caribbean. Alongside her work as a performer, she has long developed physical practices in schools and medical-educational settings with marginalised audiences. Her research focuses on the spaces between worlds and encourages collaboration between different practices. She sees her projects as research projects that give rise to multiple forms. She has recently collaborated with Kate Macintosh, Alice Chauchat, Juan Dominguez and Arantxa Martinez. During 2025-2026, she is a  Creative Crossroads artist in the frame of the EU project Life Long Burning – Futures Lost and Found with her project S.U.T.U.R.E.

Patricia Scalco is a researcher at the University of Helsinki and a designer and facilitator of Safe-to-Brave collective insight spaces, where anthropology, performance, and public engagement come into conversation. She brings anthropological witnessing and ethnographic sensitivity into artistic work through collaborations with performance artists and the curation of post-performance Safe-to-Brave sessions that invite shared reflection and collective insight. She holds a PhD in Social Anthropology from the University of Manchester and has conducted extensive ethnographic research across South America and Eurasia as part of major ERC and Research Council of Finland projects. At the University of Helsinki, she works as a lecturer and researcher in the Irritation and Human Sociality project and serves on the Board of Mad House Helsinki.

Janne Saarakkala is a Finnish director, writer and performer with extensive experience in both traditional and experimental ways of making performances, particularly documentary theatre and immersive performances. Besides working for theatres, free groups, independent productions, and radio, he is one of the founding members of Reality Research Center and a published writer. Janne is a member of both the Union of Theatre Directors and Dramaturges Finland and the Union of Finnish Writers.

Vishnu Vardhani Rajan is a Hyderabad-born and Helsinki-based body-philosopher, performer, and cyborg witch whose practice ferments theory into touch. Working through film, drag, comedy, and poetry, they treat the body as archive and laboratory. Their practice engages techno-feminism, using cinema and media literacy to reveal and reframe the technologies that shape our understanding of gender, identity, and power. As Vamp Master Brown, Helsinki’s first Indian Drag King, they transform shame into choreography and resistance into care, moving between geopolitics and geopoetics with humor and radical tenderness.

Elias Girod is a Helsinki-based dance artist and master’s student in education. He trained at the Finnish National Opera Ballet School and earned his Bachelor’s degree in Dance from the Theatre Academy in Helsinki and the University of Dance and Circus (Dans och Cirkushögskolan) in Stockholm. He danced for three years with ballet companies in France and Estonia and has worked as a freelance contemporary dance artist for twelve years. Elias has collaborated extensively with Weld Company, Mette Ingvartsen, Sidney Leoni, and Veli Lehtovaara. In recent years, he has performed the lead role in the film FLY, danced in Mikko Hyvönen’s work Kosmos – Reunion, and worked as a choreographer for Porttiteatteri, a community theatre for people in the process of or recently released from incarceration.

Olga Spyropoulou (she/her) is a Finland-based performance artist who explores questions of encounter, agency, and consent. Commitment, trust, and accountability are crucial elements of her artistic practice. Olga advocates for long-term, sustainable, and ethical artistic collaborations as well as fair labour practices in the Finnish Live Art scene. She is currently the artistic director of Reality Research Center and co-chairperson of Catalysti ry, an association of transcultural artists in Finland.

Tangmo Ladapha S. is a Bangkok-born performance artist and theatre-maker based in Helsinki, Finland. Her artistic work revolves around performance and live interaction that explores memory with a particular focus on state violence, abuse of power, and repressed memories. She practices working with and engaging audiences in a variety of modes and settings, where she aims to explore gestures of collective sharing and community gathering. Tangmo holds an MA in Live Art and Performance Studies from Uniarts Helsinki (FI, 2024) and a BFA in Acting and Directing from SWU (TH, 2016).

Lin Martikainen / Lin Da (they/them) works at the intersection of dance, visual arts, and performance art, both collaboratively and independently. Artistically, Lin is interested in sensuality, fragility, fluidity, and the deep embodied and bodily examination of chosen themes, where concepts materialize and settle into new relationships of meaning. Lin graduated from the dance program at Västra Nylands Folkhögskola in 2007, the Salzburg Experimental Academy of Dance in 2013, the University of the Arts Helsinki’s Theater Academy with a master’s degree in choreography in 2016, and the University of the Arts Helsinki’s Academy of Fine Arts with a master’s degree in time and space arts in 2023. Their professional homes are communities, such as Live Art Society, of which Lin has been a member and active participant since 2019. Lin’s creativity is co-carried by wonderful fellow artists who approach both through offering and seeking support.

Lätsä (Lauri Antti Mattila) is a Sipoo-based singer-songwriter, director, and curator working with performance, theatre, text, and art structures. For them art means revolutionary tools for creating spaces for other kind of realities and enabling new forms of political and poetical co-existence. They are interested in fresh ways of participation, and art as rafts for transformation.

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 the topics of somatic-discursive relationship, dance histories and mediation practices in contemporary dance. She currently gives lectures on dance and performance theory, curates educational programs, works as a dance dramaturg, and conducts research projects. She collaborated with institutions and festivals across Europe including Impulstanz, CODA, Norrlandsoperan, Baltic and Nordic Dance Platforms, Rail2Dance, STHLM DANS, etc. She is also a regular contributor at Springback Magazine (Aerowaves Network Magazine).

Simo Kellokumpu is a Helsinki-based choreographer and researcher working across choreography, performing, and contemporary art. His practice explores the transdisciplinary interplay between bodies, movement, and space, influenced by post-internet reading practices, AI research, speculative fiction, and site-responsiveness. Alongside his solo projects, he collaborates with other artists. Kellokumpu earned his Doctor of Arts degree in 2019 from the Theatre Academy, University of the Arts Helsinki, with the project Choreography as Reading Practice and concluded his postdoctoral project xeno/exo/astro-choreoreadings in 2025. In addition to his artistic work, Kellokumpu works as a lecturer in the MA in Dance Performance program at the Theatre Academy, Uniarts Helsinki and as a curator-facilitator at Hakaniemenranta 26 – Työhuone art space in Helsinki.