Somewhere between rehearsal and a fragmented stage show: A group of dancers try to remember what still lingers as a vague memory of glorious dance scenes and songs, recapturing and holding onto a Broadway musical that may have never existed at all.

At Open Studio, the Theatre Academy Dance Collective—TADaC—presents early fragments from their new performance with choreographer Hannah Krebs. The event invites the audience to witness the artistic process behind the final artistic work of the artists-students in the MA in Dance Performance program at Theater Academy, University of the Arts Helsinki.

In the curriculum of the MA studies, TADaC provides an artistic learning environment where artists-students can collaborate with choreographers and makers from various cultural backgrounds and locations, including Finland. This artistic work is not only a collective learning process about artistic production but also offers artists-students the opportunity to tour their work across various venues. By doing so, they can share the work with diverse audiences and familiarize themselves with professional platforms for potential future collaborations. The Open Studio, realized in collaboration with Moving in November, marks a meaningful step towards opening this kind of possibilities for the dance artists in this MA program.

Hannah Krebs (she/they) approaches choreography from the perspective of a dancer, creating performances that move between entertainment and melancholy. Working with fictional worlds, unstable memories and collective imagination, Hannah often uses entertainment as a critical tool rather than an escape from reality. Through choreography, storytelling and serious playfulness, she creates performance worlds where spectacle, laughter and vulnerability unfold simultaneously.

Hannah holds a BA in Dance from University of Music and Dance Cologne and an MA in Choreography from Stockholm University of the Arts and also studied at EXERCE in Montpellier. Her works have been presented at venues and festivals including OUTNOW! Festival (DE), Tanzhaus NRW (DE), MDT Stockholm and Weld Stockholm. Alongside her own work, she has been a dancer for Nature Theater of Oklahoma, Lisen Pousette, Ellen Söderhult and Judit Förster.

 

Students from the MA in Dance Performance -programme in the Theatre Academy, University of the Arts Helsinki:

Anniina Dyster is a dance artist and performer based in Helsinki. In her work she’s interested in physical potentials of the body combined with spiritual and emotional realities. She works with intuition as a performer’s tool, researches pop culture phenomena, and is curious about creating communities through art practices. Anniina holds a degree in dance arts from Riveria Outokumpu dance department (2020) and BA in Dance from Uniarts Helsinki (2025).

Inari Hulkkonen is a dancer newly based in Helsinki, after living and working in the UK for over a decade. She works as a performer across dance and visual arts, creates solo choreographies and improvised performances, and facilitates creative dance in community settings, most recently with people living with varied stages of dementia. Inari has performed in theatres, galleries, woodlands, urban spaces, and on screen, at venues across the UK such as The Place, Leeds Playhouse, Yorkshire Dance, Chapter Arts Centre, Henry Moore Institute and Site Gallery among others. She is a regular collaborator of choreographers Vanessa Grasse and Lewys Holt and has worked with various artists from the fields of choreography, theatre, performance and poetry. Inari graduated from Northern School of Contemporary Dance in 2016 and further studied at SMASH, a three-month programme in experimental physical performance in Berlin. She is currently completing her MA in Dance Performance at Uniarts Helsinki.

Mathilda Kauppila (they/them) is a dance artist whose works often situate in a social and/or geographical periphery. Their works have mainly taken place in rural locations such as Kangasniemi (Finland), Velling (Denmark) and Vuollerim (Sweden). They are curious about the potential of the lived knowledge of a dancing artist in sensing, observing, designing and facilitating social spaces. They see their artistic work as facilitating space for empathy and togetherness regardless of their working role. To complement their work in the field of dance, Mathilda has also studied social psychology and sociology in which they hold a BA degree (University of Eastern Finland).

Paavali Velinpoika Kärkkäinen is a Finnish dancer artist, performer and choreographer working between Helsinki and Copenhagen. As a dancer he has worked with several Finnish choreographers, including Tuomo Railo, Ismo-Pekka Heikinheimo, Petri Kekoni, Ari Numminen, and Lassi Sairela. Kärkkäinen’s practice spans contemporary dance, performance, and interdisciplinary collaborations, focusing on sensitivity and voice work. His dance practice has gotten a lot of affection and inspiration from Trisha Brown’s movement style which he encountered intensively during his studies at Den Danske Scenekunstskole in Copenhagen. Kärkkäinen is one of the co-founders of Ruoste-collective.

Sonjis Laine is a Helsinki-based dance artist and anthropologist who works as a dancer, performer, facilitator, and maker. She graduated as a dance artist from the Stockholm University of the Arts in 2019 and as an anthropologist from the University of Helsinki in 2022. In her work, Sonjis is interested in imagination, the emotional affective body, sweaty new materialist thinking, and the structures and hierarchies of knowledge. As a dancer, Sonjis has worked with Homa Shokri, Sara Grotenfelt, Sari Palmgren, Chen Nadler, Ellinor Ljungkvist and Stina Nyberg, among others. Her own work has been seen in the programs of e.g. Theatre HIT Helsinki and Circus Maximus, in the Finnish Museum of Photography and at the UrbanApa festival. She is part of the Reality Research Centre artist collective.

Laura Linna is a dancer and dancemaker based between Helsinki and Stockholm. Their work explores questions surrounding perception and being seen, as well as the frictions and slippages that emerge from the performer’s position. As a dancer, they have collaborated with Ofelia Jarl Ortega, Yared Tilahun Cederlund, QUARTO, Goosebumps Scenkonst, and Dance Theatre MD, among others. Laura holds a BFA in Dance Performance from Stockholm University of the Arts (2023) and is currently part of the Master’s Programme in Dance Performance at the University of the Arts Helsinki.

Beatričė Mažintaitė is a contemporary dance artist whose work thrives at the intersection of physical intensity and socio-political inquiry. Holding a Bachelor’s degree in dance education from the Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre, she is currently pursuing an MA in Dance Performance at the University of the Arts Helsinki. As a performer, Beatričė has collaborated with prominent choreographers including Agnietė Lisičkinaitė, Elina Pirinen, and Alban Richard. In her independent artistic research, they dive deep into the choreography of altered experiences—exploring states of exhaustion, trance, and the socio-political landscapes written on the body.

Julia Mäkelä is a dance artist whose passion lies in performing and translating choreographic proposals and invitations into embodied realities. Julia studies in the Master’s Programme in Dance Performance at University of the Arts Helsinki and has graduated as a dancer from Riveria Outokumpu Dance Education (2021).

Venla Niitemaa is a dance artist based between Norway and Finland. After finishing their studies at London Contemporary Dance School, they have worked as performer and co-creator in different projects with choreographers such as Anna Dunlop, Geir Hytten, Maryam Bagheri Nesami and Haugen Produksjoner. Through the residency project ATLAS at ImpulsTanz, they were able to develop their own artistic interests and creation processes. They have shared their own work recently through the festivals Open Out (Tromsø) and DanseRom (Bergen), and the platform Mind the Gap and PRAXIS (Oslo).

Aurora Suhonen is a dance artist and a photographer from Kuopio, Finland. She is interested in emotional, bodily, multispecial, imaginery, and communal dance art, as well as the agency and positionality of a performer creating those spaces. She graduated as a Bachelor of Culture and Arts in 2022 from Savonia UAS and is currently studying in the Master’s Programme of Dance Performance in Uniarts Helsinki’s Theatre Academy. She also visits the world of dancefilms, snowboarding and collecting berries as a side quests.