Due to the current travel restrictions the festival will spread in time and space. We would like to present you the full festival program that will partly happen in this year’s November and partly spill over to next year.

We have arrived at a moment where we can’t move forward with the original plans anymore, with a program that was finished beginning of April. All pieces and artists for this year’s festival, my first edition, had been invited. During the lockdown we focused on the organizational finetuning of the program and were busy with thinking up all the small details, the interventions and discursive line of the festival.

I was convinced that travel restrictions would loosen again and that the virus would become a more friendly companion to all of us, after interfering in a radical way with our lives and bringing out the vulnerability of our world on many different levels. Convinced that we would be able to present to you this year’s edition how it was planned with guests from aboard and artists from Helsinki. It is not always easy to let go and to acknowledge that there is a different reality, that reality has closed in on us and that time has come to think of a Plan B.

It’s time to shift around the notion of a festival, to reinvent what a festival can be.

Let’s experience together what happens when Moving in November, a festival that normally lasts for 10 days, extends beyond the limits of the originally scheduled dates into 2021. Changing from a short and intense explosion of festivity to a festival spilling over its set time frame and becoming a festival prolonged into a seasonal program. All pieces that we are not able to present this November, due to the current travel restrictions, will be postponed and shown next year.

We decided to announce the program as it was thought, composed, and planned to be presented this November. Releasing all artist names and their invited pieces. We would like to share the program with you, make it visible and recognize the work that has been put into it over the past year. Acknowledge the inspiring conversations with the artists and their teams, the trust they brought towards us, the supportive talks and discussions with our partners and financial supporters.

I invite you to discover the program in its totality, to read the texts, to get curious about the invited artists and pieces, even when you will not be able to see all pieces this November. But only at a later point in 2021.

Traces in/ from November

We invite you to travel in time. Starting in November with Traces in November, a special edition of this year’s festival, presenting two local productions: ÖH by Sonja Jokiniemi and Talking in the Rain – An Entertaining Show about the Weather by Maria Oiva, Kristina Junttila, Ragnhild Freng Dale, Kristin Bjørn, Jussi Salminen, Bernt Bjørn & Topi Kohonen. Artists I got to know through several conversations when arriving in Helsinki last fall and that I was lucky to be able to follow during their working process, listening to their ideas and thoughts. Traces in November furthermore aims to present some artists traveling from abroad (artist able to stay in quarantine before encountering the audience). We are happy to already now announce that Consul and Meshie a project by Antonia Baehr and Latifa Laâbissi in a visual installation by Nadia Lauro, will be presented in Taidehalli. Furthermore we aim to arrange some of the planed Soup Talks (conversations with the invited artists), hints and traces of the postponed part of this year’s festival and of a festival yet to come, yet to be continued.

A few words about the program

A few words about this edition and some thoughts regarding the invited works: For this year’s edition I looked for pieces that play with another temporality. Pieces that take place in other spaces than the classical black box and that propose another relation to the audience. In this program you will discover mostly artists whose work and development I have followed for quite some time, artists that have been influential to me, through their works, their practices and the conversations I have had with them. Pieces that address political questions, point in a poetic way at our society, ask us to reflect, to dream or reconsider and bring out that we are still not living in an equal society, with equal rights, in which every being has a substantial voice, independent of sexual orientation, age, skin color and bodily ability. Some of the pieces have become even more actual, urgent and pressing during the past months, since we have invited them.

I would like to thank first and foremost the artists and their teams: Luiz de Abreu and Calixto Neto, Sheena McGrandles and Elena Polzer, Meg Stuart & Damaged Goods, Antonia Baehr, Latifa Laâbissi, Nadia Lauro and Alexandra Wellensiek, Frédéric Gies, Anna Koch and Weld Company, Giuseppe Chico, Barbara Matijević and Marion Gauvent, Sonja Jokiniemi, Esther Severi, Nada Gambier, Mark Etchells, Thomas Kasebacher, Maria Oiva, Kristina Junttila, Ragnhild Freng Dale, Kristin Bjørn, Jussi Salminen, Bernt Bjørn, Topi Kohonen and Iiris Tuisku / Reality Research Center, the wonderful festival team: Isabel González, Minerva Juolahti, Jaakko Pietiläinen, Pietari Kärki, Ilkka Riihikallio, and Mariangela Pluchinothe, Tanssiareena board members: Liisa Pentti, Sanna Myllylahti, Maria Matinmikko, Mikko Niemistö, Maija Mustonen, Mammu Rankanen, Anna Borgman, Eeva Muilu, Masi Tiitta, all partners: Cátia Suomalainen Pedrosa and Johanna Rissanen / Caisa, Erik Söderblom, Katri Kekäläinen, Matilda von Weissenberg / Espoo City Theatre, Jonna Strandberg and Sanni Pajula / Kiasma, Ulla Bergström and Monika Silander / Stoa, Birgitta Orava / Taidehalli, Nuoren Voiman Liitto and Zodiak, and financial supporters: Helsinki City, Arts Promotion Centre Finland, Kone Foundation, Goethe Institut Finnland, Institut Français de Finlande, Austrian Embassy, TelepART Mobility Support Platform: Institut finlandais, The Finnish Cultural Institute for the Benelux, Finnland-Institut in Deutschland, and The Finnish Institute. For inspirational talks, trust, good ideas and questions and thinking along.

We keep you posted and will reach out when we have more news. And hope to start and continue a conversation with you over a stretched amount of time.

Warm wishes,

Kerstin Schroth