MOVING CITIES: residency and performance project for choreographic interventions in public space

MOVING CITIES: residency and performance project for choreographic interventions in public space
Tartu 2024 + Bodø 2024

Moving Cities is a residency and performance project organised by Sõltumatu Tantsu Lava (STL) and Davvi – Center for the Performing Arts. It is a collaboration project for 4 Estonian artists and 4 Norwegian artists to find choreographic interventions on the topics of public space. 

In the context of Tartu and Bodø being both the European Capitals of Culture for the year 2024 the project invites artists to research public space and its community habits using the techniques of choreography and performing arts. Moving Cities brings together professionals in choreography and urbanism to ask questions and look critically at the public space infrastructure in Tartu and Bodø.

The project consists of 3 parts: 2-week research residency in Tartu in August 2023; 3-week research residency with a public presentation in Bodø in June 2024; 3-week residency and rehearsal period with 3 public performances in Tartu in July 2024. 

The artistic team of 8 people – 4 from Estonia and 4 from Norway will create a collaborative choreographic intervention and performances in the two cities of Tartu and Bodø.

THE SELECTED ARTISTS FOR THE RESIDENCY

4 professional artists from Estonia and 4 from Norway with a background in choreography, performing arts, urbanism, architecture or fields dealing with public space were selected for the project. 

Maya Mi Samuelsen works as a dance artist, is a choreographer, performer and producer. She is also an activist both personally and artistically. Samuelsen use movement, text, sounds, tubas, music, singing and eagle feathers in her work. Where Samuelsen comes from (small town in Norway) and have her roots affects her as an artist and activist. Her work lately has been motivated by the many changes that has been made in the nature in her local society. She is using her art to fight for our right to a sustainable earth and future. In recent years, among other things, Samuelsen has worked on a Barents´ collaboration OUT OF URGENCY on behalf of Stellaris DansTeater (Solveig Hermo), together with Dansinitiativet (Luleå), TaikaBox (Oulu) and artists from Arkhangelsk. She has also worked as a performer in Nordting, for Elle Sofe Sara and this autumn she was a performer in de Naive / Roza Moshtagis work HOOP.

Hanna Junti’s artistic practice floats between the worlds of theatre and dance, and unfolds under many different labels – I am a performer / director / choreographer / movement director / teacher. I am an Estonian native, but trained in the UK, at Goldsmiths College (BA Drama and Theatre Arts) and Royal Central School of Speech and Drama (MFA Movement Directing and Teaching). My work is influenced by the multicultural velocity of my former hometown London, is inspired by paradoxes, gray areas, and fuelled by a desire to understand what moves us humans.

Karsten Lunde is an architect and a dancer, with education from AHO and HFDK. In 2020 he co-founded the architecture practice Atelier Particular, which works with small scale architecture, transformation, installation and communication. In his dance practise he works with creative dance and improvisation and focus on the themes perception, moving space and performance in public space. Karsten is fascinated in how the two professional fields, architecture and dance, influence each other, both structuring bodies in space and time relating to the environment and culture. 

Margaret Tilk is novice artist-researcher with current interests in social construction of the body in the streets, body politics and art-based qualitative research methods. Currently she is obtaining an MA of cultural sociology from KU Leuven, Belgium and is curating the cultural programme for Opinion Festival in Paide, Estonia.

Maria K. Landmark is a north Norwegian choreographer and dance teacher. She has her education from Spin Off, University of Stavanger, University of Tromsø and the Norwegian Academy of Music. Living and working in a small town has led her to be interested in working with a wide range of performers and sites. Sometimes due to a lack of the obvious performer or stage, but also as a way of engaging and rooting the project into the local environment. Her work is sensitive to space, but also claiming it, offering a new perspective and trying to push it forward. She works with a wide range of performers, always searching for movement form within the performer and for a deep connection with the surroundings.

Nele Tiidelepp is an artist and writer whose practice is driven by spontaneous reactions to the environment and materials. Her work is situated on an axis, at either end of which are media of contradictory natures: sculpture and text. Somewhere in between, in the middle between static and unweighted imagination, performance emerges, reversing the material and revealing the multiplicity of pasts. Tiidelepp has published texts in various cultural publications and participated in exhibitions and cultural events in Estonia, Belgium, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, Portugal, Finland, and Lithuania.

Oda Holmvik Bredvold is a scenographer (Norwegian Theater Academy 2019-2022) and clown facilitator (through Nose to Nose 2019-2023). She is the artistic director of Helgeland International Theater, a nomadic youth- and children’s theater that explores the possibilities of the arts in dialogue with the landscape of the Helgeland coast. In her artistic practice Oda works on giving room to the nonverbal and absurd, and inviting consciousness and reflection through sensorial and spatial experiences, thereby opening up what the world can be and exist of.

Sigrid Savi is a choreographer and performance artist based in Berlin and Tallinn. Her work has been characterize as socio-critical, melancholic, absurd and entertaining. She has shown her performances from theaters, clubs, a rooftop to galleries. Besides doing solo works she recently started to create together with other choreographers, visual artists and composers.

TIMELINE OF THE RESIDENCIES

14-27 August 2023 2-week residency in Tartu, including participating at UIT festival (16-19 Aug)

3–21 June 2024 3-week residency in Bodø, including public presentation on 22nd June 2024

July 2024 3-week residency, rehearsals and 3 public performances

Moving Cities is a part of the European Capital of Culture Tartu 2024 main programme,
project by Sõltumatu Tantsu Lava (STL), Estonia,
Davvi – Center for the Performing Arts, Norway
and in collaboration with UIT festival, Tartu, Estonia.
Supported by Tartu 2024 and Bodø2024