Baltic Take Over
7.–10.6.2023
, Helsinki
Baltic Take Over sounds like the beginning of an anecdote – Estonian, Latvian, and Lithuanian enter a theater. Is this an attempt to find Baltic identity or to export Baltic performing arts? A geopolitical lecture? Well, Baltic Take Over is a festival, a radical experiment, a crash course on Baltic arts, and the destination of a road trip from Lithuania to Helsinki. Curators from each country have invited artists from all three countries to take over the city of Helsinki.
Johhan Rosenberg is an Estonian choreographer and artist working in the fields of dance and performance art. With a background of dance and music studies, he studied choreography in School for New Dance Development. Currently working as a freelance artist between Tallinn and Berlin, he studies Traditional Chinese Medicine in Amsterdam.
Work “traps“ finds itself between the wet walls, inhabited by an unknown identity that seeks to make eye contact with the surrounding. It constantly (re)creates us by adopting different fictions. “traps“ falls into the captured within estrangement and dares to gaze back to reflect its own sociality.
Karolin Poska is a Tallinn based choreographer, performance artist and dancer. Through her creative activities she tries to understand what it is like to be alive nowadays. She likes to play with objects, transform reality and mess with the audience’s expectations. Poska recently completed her contemporary art studies at the Estonian Academy of Arts, where she received the Young Artist Award for her final work. Her recent performance “For your nirvana” was nominated for the Dance Awards of Estonia in 2020.
In her new performance Karolin Poska is a self-proclaimed anthropologist who investigates the world around her and her own hunger for supernatural forces. Life can be quite terrifying and people would do anything to avoid hidden threats. Do crystals help to take care of the family’s health, an astrologer to reveal self-image, tarot cards to warn about the future, does getting out of bed with the right foot manifest a better day or knocking three times on the wood create an apparent sense of security?
Liisa Saaremäel is a performance artist from Tallinn, Estonia. After earning a BA in acting from the Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre (EAMT), she joined the Estonian Drama Theatre, where she worked in 2016-2020 as a member of the ensemble. In 2021 she obtained a master degree in Contemporary Physical Performance Making (CPPM) at the Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre with a thesis and final production focusing on the relation between site-specific and gender.
SCREAM BOX is a performance that focuses on tiny vocal cords and big screams. Down the throat, there is a second pair of luscious lips. That might remind of third.
Kuva: Vojtech Brtnicky