sound installation
Moment
Moe Mustafa
Imagine a moment of dusk, just before the night takes over.
The room is dim, lit only by the soft blue hue cast from the outside.
A body performs the evening ritual of washing dishes by hand; an act inherited from the mother.
The gentle click-clack of cutlery and porcelain echoes through the space,
inviting the mind to drift through tangled strings of memories.
In this domestic gesture lives, something deeper:
a form of embodied tradition, passed through generations.
The rhythm of care, the texture of repetition, the sound of staying alive.
Every ritual is a refusal to vanish.
This installation holds space for the mundane as sacred,
and for softness as a form of resistance.
As the ritual concludes, the light fades completely.
Only for a new day to rise,
and the ritual to begin again.
Moe Mustafa’s work has been supported by Arts Promotion Centre Finland.
Moe Mustafa is a Palestinian-Jordanian artist, writer, and performer based in Helsinki. With an MA in Art and Media from Aalto University, Moe’s interdisciplinary practice moves across sound, text, and performance, often focusing on themes of queer identity, longing, displacement, and memory. His works navigate intimate geographies shaped by geopolitics, desire, and diasporic experience.
Moe has staged performances and sound-based installations at venues including Kiasma Theatre, Telakka Theatre, Oulu Theatre, and The National theatre. Moreover, he created radio monologues (Audio paper) in collaboration with Yle ääniversum. Moe’s recent work, The Floating Body of a Cloud (to be published in Aug 2025), explores the politics of sound and environment through the lens of Arab-queer diaspora, and Fragmented Geography performance as part of Urb Festival 25.
Performances
- Date & time
- Location
- Duration
- Language
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Tuesday 26.08 08:00—20:00
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Stoa lobby
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12h 0min
-
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Wednesday 27.08 08:00—20:00
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Stoa lobby
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12h 0min
-
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Thursday 28.08 08:00—20:00
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Stoa lobby
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12h 0min
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Friday 29.08 08:00—22:30
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Stoa lobby
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14h 30min
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Saturday 30.08 10:00—22:00
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Stoa lobby
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12h 0min
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short film screening & gathering
CRIP ARCHIPELAGO – short films & gathering
Adalmiina Erkkola & Isa Hukka
No man is an island. We invite you to explore the crip archipelago of interdependence with us. Join in a relaxed gathering and screening of crip short films, in which make the event more accessible collectively and with the resources we have.
WHAT? Crip Archipelago is a 2-hour event open for all. The event consists of a short film screening by disabled filmmakers and a guided reflection on the themes of those short films. The event is a relaxed gathering where you are welcome to listen to your needs and ask for assistance if needed.
WHEN AND WHERE? In Stoa, Music Hall, on Tuesday 26 August from 17:30 to 19:30. Please arrive on time. After you’ve arrived, you can take your own breaks, and you are free to leave anytime.
We recommend this event for people over 16 years old.
If possible, we would kindly ask you to please register before-hand. Walk-ins are also welcome! Registration form helps us to estimate the participants number: https://forms.gle/bqX66afewgDPPwd17
Schedule:
17:30 – 17:40 – Arrival and finding a seat (10 min)
17:40 – 17:50 – Introduction by Adalmiina and Isa (10 min)
17:50 – 18:40 – Film screening (50 min)
18:40 – 18:50 – Break (10 min)
18:50 – 19:30 – Guided reflection and writing (40 min)
approximately 19:30 – ending
FILMS
Decoding Sole-Mates, 2025, dir. Jenni-Juulia Wallinheimo-Heimonen, Finland. 10 min, 55 s.
Short documentary explores the possibilities of technology to improve the well-being of disabled people. It examines stress in the lives of Raisa and Reko Valavaara, a couple with intellectual disabilities living in a Validia Housing unit in Turku, Finland. Soft technology, the SentiSocks, was originally designed by Dutch company HUME by Mentech to detect stress in people with dementia. By combining biometric data from the socks with interviews, the aim of the film is to identify the main sources of stress affecting the participants and to encourage assistants to actively reduce it. However, the results reveal a sharp irony: the greatest source of stress is the working culture of the housing unit.
NOORA Dance Film, 2024, dir. Anna Kekkonen, Finland. 7 min, 40 s.
Short dance film about Noora, a dancer, who has congenital bone fragility, Osteogenesis Imperfecta, and who finds the freedom to express herself more widely in the water.
ÁHKUIN, 2023, dir. Radio-JusSunná / Sunná Nousuniemi & Guhtur Niillas Rita Duomis / Tuomas Kumpulainen, Sápmi. 20 min 24 s.
A transcendent and playful documentary journey following three generations of a Sámi family united across time via joik – a distinct Sámi oral tradition that combines song, storytelling and reciprocity.
Resistance Meditation, 2024, dir. Sara Wylie, Canada. 4 min, 58 s.
A meditation on crip time and resistance by a chronically ill filmmaker, shot on Super 8 and eco-processed by hand.
ACCESS? The Stoa Cultural Centre is accessible with mobility aids. The facilities are clearly signposted. The Music Hall has an induction loop. There is a dim theatre-style lighting in the Music Hall, which can be adjusted if necessary. We ask you to kindly avoid using fragrances. The organisers will be using microphones when speaking. The main language of the event is English, Finnish is used when necessary. All short films have English subtitles. Unfortunately there is no sign language interpretation. Bringing interpreters, support persons, personal assistants, and support pets etc. is welcome. After the film screening, the hosts of the event, Isa and Adalmiina, propose tasks involving writing/doodling and discussing/listening. You may participate in ways you choose to.
You may contact the organizers anytime for questions, proposals, and access needs, we are happy to help: producer@urbanapa.fi.
More information of the Music Hall: https://www.stoa.fi/en/music-hall.
More on Stoa’s accessibility: https://www.stoa.fi/en/accessibility.
Adalmiina Erkkola and Isa Hukka are a crip art duo working and playing with questions of prevailing narratives and assumptions. Adalmiina is a short film enthusiast and works as a cultural producer for film events and radio. Isa does facilitation and crip philosophy, doing pioneer work with the local practice of rampauttaminen (‘cripping’). Both live by the Eastern Helsinki archipelago where you may spot them riding the metro on the way to watch films or participate in local queer disabled community building.
Jenni-Juulia Wallinheimo-Heimonen (b. 1974) is an Artist Professor in Multidisciplinary Art (2025-2029) and disability activist. 2024 she was one of three artists representing Finland in the Venice Biennial. In 2019 she received the Finnish State Prize for Multidisciplinary Art and in 2018 her short film about care robotics won the Best Screenplay at Pisa Robotic Film Festival. Wallinheimo-Heimonen´s work spans from textile, sculpture, installation and film to performance and activism within disability politics and policy. In spring 2026, Jenni-Juulia takes part to a six-week E75 Art Bus tour from the Mediterranean Sea to the Arctic Ocean. She holds a BA from Aalto University, School of Arts, Design and Architecture in Helsinki. She has osteogenesis imperfecta as a piquant characteristic.
Anna Kekkonen is a Finnish filmmaker. She graduated with a Master of Arts degree in Audiovisual Media Culture from University of Lapland, Finland. Beside film making, she is a passionate diver and underwater cinematographer, which has taken her around the world for 17 years. The themes of her films are strongly inspired by her own physical sensations underwater. She approaches her films through physicality, movement and senses and reflects on the relationship between the human body and water. What emerges in us when we are surrounded by such an element where we sense and use our body in a different way. Along with filming her own films her biggest filming jobs were two fulldome nature documentaries “Baltic Sea” and “The Embrace of the Ocean”. Her debut film is a short documentary film Surface (2023) and dance film Noora (2024) was born alongside it. Among other festivals Noora dance film has been awarded as the best Nordic dance film at Minimalen short film festival.
Radio-JusSunná / Sunná Nousuniemi (they/them) is a queer Sámi and Finnish audiovisual artist and storyteller. Their debut short documentary Boso mu ruovttoluotta – Breathe Me Back to Life received the Best Short Film Award at Nuuk International Film Festival and The Moving People and Images Award at the Love & Anarchy Film Festival in 2022.
Guhtur Niillas Rita Duomis / Tuomas Kumpulainen is a Sámi artist and storyteller based in Guhtur, Sápmi. Kumpulainen tells stories in various forms, including theatre, singing, songwriting, composing, directing and acting. Currently he is studying traditional Sámi handicrafts, specializing in burl, reindeer antler and bone as the main materials.
Sara Wylie (she/they) is a filmmaker, producer and researcher from the unceded traditional territories of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh First Nations (aka Vancouver, BC). Her work focuses on archives and counter-archives, radical histories, embodied methodologies, disabled ecologies and crip intimacies.
Performances
- Date & time
- Location
- Duration
- Language
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Tuesday 26.08 17:30—19:30
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Music Hall
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2h 0min
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English
workshop
How To Survive 2025 By Writing Gay Fanfiction, Dressing Up, And Singing Love Songs
Vera Boitcova, Yoandy Jimeno & Kharissa Newbill-Adames
As queer migrant artists, we’re done competing in the Suffering Olympics. This 1.5-hour workshop is our collective rebellion against trauma exploitation, tokenism, and bias. Instead, we’ll gather to celebrate queer joy through fandoms, pop culture, and playful self-expression.
Together, we’ll share “How-To”” mini-exercises: How to Queer the Apocalypse with Glitter Makeup, How to Write Gay Fanfiction and Call It Theory, How to Mend Your Broken Heart By Doing Sing-Alongs, and more. Expect live music, sparkly makeovers, and unapologetic pop-culture references.
You’re invited to join in: sing along, laugh, and find small, silly ways to resist despair. For us, escapism is a strategy for survival, care, and queer futurity. This workshop is open to anyone who wants to reconnect with joy as a radical tool: bring your inner child, your best karaoke voice, and your glitter.
Registration via this form: https://forms.gle/UE7GWVBGtQ8Hvits8
Yoandy Jimeno is a trans non-binary queer Cuban-Finnish musician, actor, and performer whose artistic path began in early childhood and now bridges dance, music, and theatre. A 2.5 generation immigrant, Jimeno’s multidimensional practice draws on experiences of migration and queerness to question identity and belonging through sound and performance. Jimeno is currently studying Global Music (Bachelor + Master) at the Sibelius Academy (2024–) and trained in performing arts at Laajasalon Opisto (2021–2023). Jimeno plays with the Cuban quartet Bomba Buena, punk metal band Sugerencia, and works as a performing musician and composer in contemporary theatre projects.
Vera Boitcova is a theatre director, dramaturge, artistic researcher, and queer performance artist. Currently pursuing a Phd at the Uniarts Helsinki with the focus on ‘home’, ‘otherness’, and ‘belonging’ in queer migrant performance dramaturgy. She holds an MA in Comparative Dramaturgy and Performance Research (Goethe University Frankfurt am Main) and an MA in Theatre and Performance (Queen Mary University of London). A long-time nomad, Boitcova has lived, worked, and performed in the UK, China, Germany, Spain, and Finland over the past 12 years. Her work has been featured at such venues and festivals, as: Espoo Cultural Centre, Caisa Art Centre, Svenska Teatern, Vallilan Kansallisteatteri (Finland), Frankfurt LAB, Stadttheater Gießen, Politik im Freien Theater Festival, Wiesbaden Biennale, Favoriten Festival (Germany), Meyerhold Centre, Sovremennik Theatre, Aleksandrinski Theatre (Russia), Camden People’s Theatre, Battersea Arts Centre, Birmingham MAC, People’s Palace (the UK). In recent years, she has also curated and organized the annual Eve’s Ribs Festival of Feminist Art and QueerFest in Russia.
Kharissa Newbill-Adames is a Panamanian director, writer, acting coach, and performing artist graduated from Loyola University New Orleans in 2021 with BA in Theatre Arts. Apart from being an actor both in drama and musical theatre, she is also a burlesque performer, performing under the stage name Carmen Vermouth. With a career focus on directing, Newbill-Adames most resent productions include Part II: Fefu and Her Friends performed at the Lower Depths Theatre in New Orleans, Louisiana USA (2021); Posh performed at the Theatre Guild of Ancon in Panama City, Panama (2022); and as assistant director in Javier Estanciola’s El mito de la gravedad performed in the Teatro Anita Villaz for the Panama Festival of Theatre (2022). As of August 2024, Newbill-Adames has begun her postgraduate studies at the Uniarts Helsinki’s Theatre Academy in their Directing MA program.
Performances
- Date & time
- Location
- Duration
- Language
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Wednesday 27.08 16:30—18:00
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Workshop space
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1h 30min
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English
open mic
POC OPEN MIC
Come join us at PoC Open Mic to sing, joke, recite and rant away at the first open mic created by people of the Global majority for people of the global majority! All are welcome to spectate and enjoy.
Tania Nathan and Arvind Ramachandran host the event and perform shortly also. Adityan G Bharati will be performing a unique acoustic set that includes arrangements and covers in multiple different languages – ranging from rock and metal to folk and ballads. After this, anyone is welcome on stage.
Poc Open mic is a space for those of the Global South to perform and for who wish to support them to come together. You are welcome to perform poetry, spoken word, music, tell stories, in a safer space curated by Arvind and Tania. Welcome!
Performances
- Date & time
- Location
- Duration
- Language
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Wednesday 27.08 18:00—20:30
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Music hall
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2h 30min
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English, Finnish
performance
TEASE AND POWER
TEASE AND POWER
Body diversity on the burlesque stage does not cover everyone! This burlesque, twerk and drag club stage is especially for those who have been excluded from burlesque due to inaccessible spaces and, for example, cramped norms. The Tease & Power club is interpreted into Finnish sign language and also described in Finnish. The club challenges the power structures of society and how disabled people are perceived. Is a disabled person always weak and in a subordinate position, or could they be in a position of power? Could a person from a sexual or gender minority be seen primarily through their art?
Please note you have to book your spot in advance by filling this form.
In case you need an accessible place, please book it by using this form.
The Finnish Cultural Foundation has supported Tease & Power.
Performances
- Date & time
- Location
- Duration
- Language
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Thursday 28.08 18:00—20:00
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Music Hall
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2h 0min
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no dialogue
performance
the Alchemy of Color
Safa Solati
In the Alchemy of Color, the dancer becomes a vessel— moving through a ritual of inner transmutation. Through whirling, the body becomes a crucible for emotion, turning raw states into radiant essence.
The performance unfolds in three elemental layers:
Red: Symbolizes aggression, rage, and unrest. Movements are sharp, forceful, and chaotic, echoing the violence that erupts when spirit is trapped in conflict.
Black: The storm gives way to stillness, sinking into shadow. Here, the dancer enters the realm of pain — heavy, slow, aching. The blackness envelops like mourning, a space of reckoning and surrender.
White : From this darkness, the body begins to dissolve — softening into breath, expanding into light. Whirling becomes effortless, circular, eternal. This is the alchemy — violence turned to wisdom, pain into peace. Liberation is not escape, but integration.
The Alchemy of Color is not a story with an ending, but a cycle — a truth danced into being: that through movement, we can transform what breaks us into what frees us.
Safa Solati is a trained psychologist specializing in music psychotherapy, with a deep passion for dance as a path of healing and spiritual exploration. She has studied Persian dances for many years and, over the past nine years, has devoted herself to the study and practice of Sufi whirling.
After five years in Italy, where she trained with various dance teachers, Safa returned to Finland in 2020 and began offering introductory whirling workshops in Helsinki. In 2023, she hosted Ziya Azazi – a globally renowned whirling artist who deeply inspires her – for an intensive workshop.
Safa’s unique approach centers on the therapeutic and spiritual dimensions of whirling, rather than religious tradition.
Performances
- Date & time
- Location
- Duration
- Language
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Friday 29.08 16:00—16:15
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Stoa square
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15min
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no dialogue
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Saturday 30.08 17:00—17:15
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Stoa square
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15min
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no dialogue
screening
FILM NIGHT
Ubuntu Film Club
This screening consists of multiple films curated in collaboration by the Ubuntu Film Club and UrbanApa.
FILMS
Queenselena – Love, Light, Life
Sara Kovamäki
15 min
Queenselena – Love, Light, Life is an experimental documentary, a video work and portrait constructed through associative visual storytelling, in which the protagonist Queenselena sheds light on her relationship with life, freedom, faith, living between two cultures, and belonging to a gender minority. In the video work, the cycle of nature is intertwined with the themes of life, birth and death, renewal and growth, rest and listening to oneself. Through her personal space and intimate home environment, objects, and paintings, Queenselena conveys stories, joy, sorrow, and the spectrum of life to viewers. The documentary opens up perspectives on the social injustices and challenges that Queenselena has faced, but its aim is to create a message of hope, love, and freedom in the world. The personal expands in the work to the communal and social, where art and dance support, give faith, and empower life.
The work includes mainly spoken Finnish, from which parts are translated to English.
Memories of Reincarnated Imaginings
Nasheeka Nesreal
14 min
What’s in a name, a face, a color, a place, a body, a history, a movement? With every curve, every turn, every swing, our myths reveal themselves as truth. Cartographies of the body etched like memories, generating a becoming as we set flame to fabricated fictions. Tethered to and wrapped in the layers of our being, our textured territories shifting, cracking codes, “unraveling our navels so that we may ingest the sun.” (quote by Saul Williams)
The film has no language and no subtitles; only music. There is no audio description.
Crown
Ima Iduozee
Shot on 65mm film, Crown weaves a compelling narrative around Afro hair and the cultural sanctuary of a distinctive Black barber shop in Helsinki, Finland. The film delves into rich traditions and personal stories, offering an intimate and visually stunning exploration of community, heritage, and the art of hairstyling.
Crown is the third part of Diaspora Mixtapes -the film series.
THE JOY AND SORROW OF TIME
Sara Jordan
4 min
The future is a delicate dance of possibilities, where every choice and every moment shapes the path ahead. The fragility of what’s next reminds us to handle it with care, to nurture our dreams and aspirations, and to believe in the limitless potential of tomorrow. Time is a valuable currency.
English subtitles.
The Fisherman (2024)
Zoey Martinson
1 h 48 min
Ghanaian fisherman teams up with talking fish and companions for adventure to Accra. They chase dream of owning boat while balancing modern world and traditions.
Ubuntu Film Club, a helsinki based film club, dedicated to expanding narratives, with a twist of fun, one film at a time.
Sara Kovamäki is a multidisciplinary artist working at the intersection of dance, visual arts, and performance art. She is drawn to art’s potential to create hope, playfulness, poetry, trust, openness, new meanings, and friendship. Currently, Sara is inspired by coincidences and mistakes, changes of direction, emotions, and transformations. Since 2024, she has been filming a video portrait and experimental documentary about Queenselena Selas, the first version of which will be shown at the UrbanApa x Stoa festival.
Queenselena Selase is an advocate for nature, human rights, and equality, and she has participated in numerous activist groups that defend the environment and human rights and influence through art. She was awarded Queer Activist of the Year at The Queer Gala at Korjaamo in 2025. Her work is driven by energy, a desire to create, make art, enjoy life, dance, and influence the injustices and inequalities that prevail in the world. Selasen’s goal is, above all, to bring people from different backgrounds together and create a world where people can work together through closeness and love for a free and better world.
Nasheeka Nedsreal is a multidisciplinary artist, dancer, and choreographer whose practice spans masking, collage, sound and film. Deeply influenced by her Louisiana upbringing, her work merges performance and visual art using play and glitch to reimagine speculative pasts, presents, and futures. A Black Rock Senegal alum and Ikarus Prize recipient, she is a featured author in Plural Feminisms and a member of the Zurich Dance Ensemble.
Ima Iduozee is a Nigerian-Finnish director and choreographer known for his work in commercials and short films, as well as for his acclaimed choreography. He was named Helsinki’s Artist of the Year in 2023, and his short films have been screened at prestigious festivals such as the Cannes Indies Shorts Festival, the Tokyo International Short Film Festival, and the San Francisco International Film Festival.
As a choreographer, Iduozee has worked with institutions such as the Finnish National Opera, the Finnish National Theatre, the Helsinki and Stockholm City Theatres, the UMK Show, and the first Finnish Netflix series, Dance Brothers.
In spring 2026, his highly anticipated youth series Sneakermania — currently in post-production — will premiere on Yle.
Sara Jordan is a Danish choreographer, director, and cinematographer working at the intersection of movement, image, and identity. Her artistic language is rooted in street dance styles such as hip hop and house, woven with African-American cultural influences and shaped by a minimalist choreographic aesthetic. Through her work, Sara explores the body as a living archive — a space where memory, resistance, and transformation meet. She creates layered, visually striking performances and films that merge choreography, cinematic storytelling, and poetic expression. Whether on stage, on screen, or in urban spaces, her work challenges how we perceive dance — not just as form, but as voice.
Performances
- Date & time
- Location
- Duration
- Language
-
Friday 29.08 16:15—19:00
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Music hall
-
2h 45min
-
English, Finnish
performance
Stillness Through Moving (work-in-progress)
Luusi Kateme
Stillness Through Moving is a solo performance that explores what it means to move through the world as a dark-skin Afro-diasporic woman, navigating systems never built to hold her. Through an intimate, embodied journey, the audience is invited into a space where bodily presence rooted in spiritual truth, intuitive knowing and ancestral wisdom becomes movement and movement becomes a way of listening. This listening unfolds as a liberatory act of reclaiming what dominant systems try to erase – Black embodiment.
Co-created with the spiritual presence of Taata Mukuuta Kisadha-Kybenne Pison Moses, Jajja Eva Namukobe, Jajja Lucia, Jajja Kyankone, and the many other ancestors whose wisdom and energy move through my body. Maipelo Gabang – studio angel and guiding force in my journey as a Black choreographer.
Luusi Kateme is a Stockholm-based choreographer and movement artist of Ugandan heritage. Her artistic practice, Moving Through Stillness (MTS), is rooted in spiritual presence, ancestral knowledge and deep listening. At the heart of her work is a devotion to surrender, allowing intuitive wisdom to guide her and serve as a bridge to the Divine. Through this embodied exploration, she reconnects with her African heritage and affirms sacred truth. This inquiry is something she is currently deepening as the only Black choreographer in the MA program in Choreography at Stockholm University of the Arts.
Performances
- Date & time
- Location
- Duration
- Language
-
Friday 29.08 19:30—19:55
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Theatre Hall
-
25min
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no dialogue
-
Saturday 30.08 18:00—18:25
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Theatre Hall
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25min
-
no dialogue
performance
The fleeting moments of joy
Jenny Silfver
Joy or happiness is seldom constant but rather momentary. What brings us joy, and how can we find it or return to it despite hardship and struggle? Maybe the search for joy is like swimming underwater and aiming to reach the surface to breathe. Sometimes we can breathe freely and keep floating for longer, whereas other times we only get a breath of fresh air before we sink back down again. But to stay alive, we must swim towards the surface to breathe. Is it like that with joy, too? Is joy vital and something we need to fight for? Perhaps joy makes us lighter, brings light, and gives us power even during the darkest hours.
In this work, I want to explore the feeling of joy or, more accurately, the striving to experience or feel joy. It is a personal investigation into the search for joy and how this is translated into physical movement. The movement material will utilize, but is not limited to, the techniques of popping.
Jenny Silfver is a dance artist who specializes in popping. She holds a bachelor’s degree in contemporary dance and actively competes nationally and internationally as a member of her crew, Skitsoflex. Jenny has over 20 years of teaching experience and has significantly contributed to the Finnish popping and street dance scene through her work. Her knowledge and skills in popping were primarily acquired through extensive travels to the United States, Japan, and Europe.
Performances
- Date & time
- Location
- Duration
- Language
-
Friday 29.08 19:55—20:10
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Theatre Hall
-
15min
-
no dialogue
performance
PARTS
PARTS COLLECTIVE
PARTS is an Afro futuristic piece that combines sounds, movement, forms and visuals that will transport the audience to a ritualistic landscape.
PARTS process started in Benin in the Villa Karo residency with a research phase in June 2025. The process continued in Helsinki with the whole artistic team in July and August 2025.
The creation is inspired by communities practicing the vodun tradition. The piece combines traditional sounds, movements, symbols, patterns and rhythms with contemporary elements. PARTS highlights values and beliefs that aim towards a shared direction of human endeavors and existence. Through hope and collective ability of resilience during hard times, communities maintain their functionality on their way towards a common vision of the future.
PARTS will tour the capital area in cultural centers and refugee centers of unaccompanied minors.
This work has been supported by Arts Promotion Centre Finland.
The project working group is united by Njara Rasolomanana and Elina Valtonen who have collaborated extensively for over 5 years on various human rights-driven projects. Fostering diversity and solidarity through art is essential for both Rasolomanana and Valtonen. They work both as choreographers and dancers in the project.
They have had a dream of collaborating with African artists, a project taking place both in Africa and in Finland. Rasolomanana and Valtonen started working with Beninese dance artists Celebre Jean Baptiste and Maurice Bessanh in Villa Karo’s residency Benin in June 2025. They have both worked extensively as dance artists in both Africa and Europe.
Marouf Majidi is a versatile music professional who works as a performing artist, composer and bandleader. He graduated with a Master of Music from the Sibelius Academy and his style draws from Persian and Middle Eastern musical traditions. Marouf has performed in over a thousand concerts and directed workshops around the world.
Viivi “”Viv Magia”” Vierinen is a visual artist (BA) specializing in street art and performance art, who also works as a producer and urban culture consultant. Her works often address the injustices created by social power structures, and draw inspiration from the interaction of cultures.
Performances
- Date & time
- Location
- Duration
- Language
-
Friday 29.08 20:20—20:50
-
Stoa square
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30min
-
no dialogue
performance
Wilting before blooming, sorry I'm late
Kaisa Nieminen
In the demo Wilting before blooming, sorry I’m late, I explore embodied experientialism; sadness and euphoria, pleasure and aggression in relation to one’s queer identity and its formation. The choreographic work has raised issues of power, misogyny, touch and more. Central to my work is the exploration of the holistic nature of dance; dancing out the reality of one’s own body, the expressive brutality and emotionality that comes with it.
Co-produced by Ehkä production/Contemporary Art Space Kutomo. This work is supported by Arts Promotion Centre Finland.
Kaisa Nieminen is a Helsinki-based dancer-choreographer. Her dance background is in street dance, mainly hiphop and punking/whacking. This background is reflected in her artistic work and her relationship to movement. She graduated from the Inter-University for Dance Berlin (HZT) in 2019 with a Master’s degree in choreography. Nieminen is also a member of the rap group Pimeä Hedelmä. Nieminen is interested in the experiential nature of the dancing body; how we dance our own reality out, the emotionality of the body, sexuality, how we are in connection with ourselves and others while dancing. The politics and poetics of the dancing body.
Tiikka Drama is a Helsinki-based nonbinary queer artist, who uses sound as creative medium. Tiikka uses the psycho-physical aspects of sound to combine sensitive soundscapes and dramatic compositions to support desired emotional athmosphere. With over 17 years of experience with producing sound and music, Tiikka is a very talented and experiences sound artist.
Performances
- Date & time
- Location
- Duration
- Language
-
Friday 29.08 21:00—21:20
-
Theatre Hall
-
20min
-
no dialogue
performance
Lines of Joy and Resistance
Ella Effendy & Sophia Wekesa
What can dancing in unison mean in times of crisis?
Lines of Joy and Resistance is a participatory dance action that invites everyone to come together and groove side by side. Through iconic line dance rooted and embraced in Afro-diasporic, African American, and LGBTQ+ disco and club cultures we embody joy as resistance, and repetition as connection.
The 30-minute session begins with a short intro to the cultural history of the dance, followed by a joyful and easy-to-follow teaching of the dance loop. Then we move together, dancing through one full song, not as performers or audience, but as a collective body in rhythm.
Research shows that dancing in synchrony builds solidarity, trust, and even raises our pain threshold. This shared dance is grounded in the theory of participatory sense-making where meaning arises not solely from individual minds, but from embodied interaction. In a world marked by fragmentation, fear, and digital disconnection, dancing together becomes a radical act of making sense with others. We co-create a shared rhythm, a felt connection, and a fleeting moment of solidarity -a gesture of resistance and belonging made not through speech, but through motion.
All bodies and mobilities are welcome. You can join standing, seated, using only the upper or lower body. The spirit is joy and inclusion.
Ella Effendy is a Finnish-Indonesian dance artist, a full-time dance nerd, and a recent graduate in dance anthropology and ethnochoreology. Her practice is deeply informed by a long-term lived experience in club and rave cultures as well as education in street dances and contemporary dance and performance. Effendy views dance not just as art but as a form of social intervention, a way to create communities, challenge structures and build connections without needing words.
DJ Wekesa is a Helsinki-based DJ, dancer, and cultural activist. Their sets are rooted in a bass-driven soundscape that blends dancehall, amapiano, afrobeats, hip-hop, R&B, baile, jersey club, queer anthems, edits, and remixes. Wekesa is known as a socially skillful dj who reads the energy of the dancefloor and weaves unexpected elements into their artistic vision. Regardless of genre, the goal is always to deliver deeply physical sets that invite the audience to surrender to the music. Creating a space of ease and joy is central to Wekesa’s approach—encouraging the crowd to let go of the pressure to be “cool” and simply give in to the rhythm.
Performances
- Date & time
- Location
- Duration
- Language
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Friday 29.08 21:30—22:00
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Theatre Hall
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30min
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no dialogue
performance
Solstice
Ana Gutieszca
Solstice is a sound performance with minimal, brutal and energizing rhythmic superpositions.
The true essence of 21st century techno. The sound resonates with the energy of the solstice, celebrating transformation and rebirth.
Ana Gutieszca is a visual & sound artist born in the dry lands of the northern Mexican plateau. Her music is rough as the desert, combining hypnotic brain-melting noise from self-made analogs and brutal techno beats from drum machines. She is also known for being one of the creative minds behind Äänitaiteen Seura, an artist-run venue in Helsinki dedicated to contemporary sound art.
Performances
- Date & time
- Location
- Duration
- Language
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Friday 29.08 22:00—22:30
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Theatre Hall
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30min
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no dialogue
performance
Home Findings
Minna Kaaronen & Olli Lautiola
Home Findings is a dance performance in which materials found in the performer’s own home are transformed into costumes, music and movement. The characters, dug out of Ikea bags, overwhelm the viewer with their presence and draw them into an imaginative journey of movement.
The performance is meant for families with children, but it is also suitable for anyone who wants to add a touch of lightness and creativity to their everyday life. The show is non-participatory and does not require language skills. Communication happens through movement and chatter. Tsök!
Minna Kaaronen is a freelance dance artist based mainly in Helsinki, who graduated in 2015 from the Master of Arts in Dance at the Theatre Academy of Helsinki. Minna works in the roles of a dancer, choreographer, teacher, curator and facilitator. Home Findings has been one of her practices since remote working during COVID. This year, Minna will delve into making dance art especially for families with children as part of different working groups.
Olli Lautiola is a Helsinki-based dancer, sound designer and dance teacher. Olli graduated from the Stockholm University of the Arts in 2017 and has worked extensively in the field of contemporary dance as a performer and sound designer with many groups and choreographers. As a sound designer, Olli works mainly in theatre, but has also produced sound for installations, film music and commercials. Olli’s style is somewhere between pop, electronic music, cinematic atmospheres and ambient productions. In the process of making Home Findings, Olli has focused on creating sound based on materials found in the home and building rhythmicity around the characters in the work to support their construction and different forms of being.
Performances
- Date & time
- Location
- Duration
- Language
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Saturday 30.08 14:00—14:30
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Music Hall
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30min
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no dialogue
performance
Come
Ondi
I’ve been thinking about bodies. And how bodies are occupied. How I occupy my body. The masculine, the feminine and everything in between and how they take shape within my mind, my life and my body. What role does biology, circumstance, environment, society and conditioning play in how I see myself, my body, the masculine and the feminine and everything in between? Is the body a vessel, or the shape that takes form within it? Both? More? Does this change? ‘Come’ is a multi-layered exploration of identity, connection and the human experience through guitar loops, spoken word, movement, singing and visuals. You are invited to feel, sing, move and explore the many ways a body can be occupied and the friction between how we feel inside and what the world conditions to feel about our minds, lives and bodies.
Ondi is a multi-disciplinary storyteller from Kenya based in Finland using loops, spoken word, guitar, vocals, movement and visuals to explore identity, connection and how to be human in a burning world.
Performances
- Date & time
- Location
- Duration
- Language
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Saturday 30.08 15:00—15:30
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Lobby
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30min
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English
performance
Hirviö puhuu
Aarni Pieski, Klaudia Jokela, Kasper Korpela, Onneli Karppelin & Eeva Airavaara
Hirviö puhuu (“The Monster Speaks”) is a stage essay about how monstrosity is constructed in our society – who is “monsterized”? Case studies are drawn from a wide range of sources, from ancient tragedies to Sámi mythology and pop culture. At the same time, the performance builds a link between monstrosity and sanctity. Perhaps monstrosity and divinity are not so far apart after all.
The stage essay is built by Aarni Pieski as the essay writer and dramaturg, Klaudia Jokela as the director, Kasper Korpela and Onneli Karppelin as performers and Eeva Airavaara as the sound designer.
Aarni Pieski is a Sámi dramaturg, playwright and curator. He is interested in the interconnections and dynamics of humans and other living entities; lost, hidden and preserved histories, and themes of otherworldliness and shifting times from a queer and indigenous perspective. At the moment he is dreaming of a free Palestine.
Klaudia Jokela is a director and art lover studying at the Theatre Academy Helsinki.
Kasper Korpela is an actor and artist originally from Salo. He can be seen, for example, in the second season of Yle’s “Limbo” series and in the autumn in the National Theatre’s play Täällä Pohjantähden alla (Under the North Star). Kasper is currently studying for the fourth year in the Theatre Arts degree programme (Näty) at the University of Tampere and will graduate in spring 2026 with a Master’s degree in Theatre Arts. Kasper also does drag performances and is an aspiring DJ.
Onneli Karppelin is a non-binary actor, dancer and artist originally from Tampere.
Eeva Airavaara is a sound designer who is starting her second year in the bachelor’s + master’s sound design programme at the Theatre Academy Helsinki.
Performances
- Date & time
- Location
- Duration
- Language
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Saturday 30.08 16:00—16:30
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Music Hall
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30min
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Finnish
performance
Kaikki suomen mestarit
Dash Che & Oula Rytkönen
Kaikki suomen mestarit is partly a queer immigrant manifesto, partly a role play, and partly an outlandish secret agent dance piece styled in camp. The work addresses the question of queer representation in adult Finnish language education. It poses the question: Can I belong here too?
Dash Che (they/he) is a trans masculine post-Soviet immigrant performance artist and a performance educator based in Helsinki. They practice as a solo artist as well as in a performance duet called Mean Time Between Failures. In their performance they explore personal histories, contradicting aesthetics, political topics, and conflicting concepts through materiality of the body, objects and humor. Dash studied Live Art and Performance Studies at Theater Academy in Helsinki and completed a 6-month dance intensive at Outokumpu dance school.
Oula Rytkönen (they/them) is a sound designer whose practice is based on playful sampling aiming to create varying energy flows into the space through sound. Oula is especially interested in thinking of sound as a medium which can create responsiveness in audiences by being provocative, fragmented, rhythmic and sometimes even annoying, overwhelming or silent. Oula has worked with Dash for the last three years. In addition they have made sound design for experimental children theater, site responsive performances and social coreography and pop music inspired audio walk pieces. They have worked with dance, installation and contemporary performance works presented by Zodiak the Center for New Dance, Culture Center Caisa, Reality Research Center and working class museum Werstas.
Performances
- Date & time
- Location
- Duration
- Language
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Saturday 30.08 17:30—18:00
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Lobby
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30min
-
English, Finnish
performance
Unscripted moments of joy
BYOS (Bring Your Own Sauce)
Unscripted moments of joy is an interactive dance performance by the street dance collective BYOS (Bring Your Own Sauce). In the performance, the dancers of the collective use a movement language that is strongly characteristic of street dances. The performance consists mainly of improvisational dance, and towards the end of the performance the audience can also participate in the creation of the performance by dancing with the members of the collective.
BYOS, aka Bring Your Own Sauce, is a street dance collective based in Helsinki. The group has been operating in its current form for more than two years. BYOS trains together weekly on an each one teach one basis, where members of the group share their street dance knowledge with each other. The main focus of BYOS’ training is improvisation. In addition to weekly training sessions, the collective’s activities focus on facilitating various dance jams and other events open to all, as well as group projects (video projects, performances). BYOS is a self-financed, self-supporting organisation that aims to commit to the practices and values of hip-hop culture.
Performances
- Date & time
- Location
- Duration
- Language
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Saturday 30.08 18:30—19:00
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Theatre Hall
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30min
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no dialogue
performance
HOPE (work-in-progress)
Heidi Miikki
Vertical dance performance HOPE is Heidi Miikki’s solo work and tells about radical and active hope, daring to dream and to be rebellious. The dance in the harness reaches towards freedom, tries to fly like a ninja, and climbs higher and higher. The project explores through movement the themes of activism, hope and action and the power of the individual and the community. The piece wants to deal with challenging questions of what is meaningful, what is enough and how we can find hope and keep on dreaming towards a better future.
The piece is also a personal story about a hopeful/desperate climate activist artist through honest presence, humour, empathy and care. The piece is inspired by strong women and circus ninjas, it includes full show elements and vulnerable honesty, it is going fully forward or at least towards some direction, even after falling.
This work is supported by Arts Promoting Centre Finland, Nordic Culture Point, the Icelandic-Finnish Cultural Foundation, Cirko – Center for New Circus, Irish Aerial Creation Center.
Heidi Miikki is a circus artist and dancer who works both in Finland and abroad with vertical dance, site-specific art and aerial acrobatics, treeclimbing, tightwire and contemporary dance. She has a dancer’s education from Outokumpu Finland and studied circus both at AFUK in Copenhagen and at Turku Arts Academy in Finland. In her work she combines environmentalism and performing arts, working actively in the core crew of contemporary circus company Acting for Climate with performing, producing, project leading and artistic directing. Heidi sailed the Baltic Sea with the climate circus tour and has been project leading and touring the forest performance BARK in Europe already for five years. She has worked with several groups and companies in Finland and abroad and made her own multidisciplinary work combining circus, dance, film, photography and music, dealing with societal burning issues like deforestation and biodiversity loss or domestic violence. Heidi works a lot with the themes of landscape, human and more-than-human connection, figuring out ways to be part of and belong. She combines the work with vertical dance/harness practice and deepens the exploration of the site-specific work in dialogue with local architecture and environment, e.g. on the building walls or trees. Heidi is an environmentalist to whom empathy, caring and meeting are the core of being.
Performances
- Date & time
- Location
- Duration
- Language
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Saturday 30.08 19:30—20:00
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Theatre Hall
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30min
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no dialogue
performance
Readymade
Kofu
In this performance, Kofu explores how the definition of joy changes, like a chameleon, throughout the different chapters of their life. What does joy look like within a body and mind that knowingly pushes it away? Can creation be hindered by limiting it to a certain point of view, or is the challenge of expanding one’s horizons, outside of expectations, outside of preconceived notions, a gift to the holder? Doesn’t being joyful sometimes feel like pretending? Using sound, vocals, voice recordings and poems, Kofu performs happiness as they know it.
Kofu (b. 1995), artistic alias for Moriamo Ahmed, is a Finnish-born Nigerian multidisciplinary artist and DJ.
Based and raised in Helsinki, they have long explored the inner workings of their mind through music, performance, and poetry. As a producer and singer-songwriter, Kofu’s work incorporates violin, vocals and reverberations of the natural world that live alongside us within their music as recordings. They have performed at Helsinki Music Week, Pixelache’s Dunya-event, Mad House and Turun runoviikko.
Performances
- Date & time
- Location
- Duration
- Language
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Saturday 30.08 20:00—20:30
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Theatre Hall
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30min
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no dialogue
performance
Kingdom Cum
Meiton 2; Ritni Tears; Out of Sync
Kingdom Cum is a celebration of drag kings and their astounding charisma, talent and craft: a love letter to the cheeky chaps, cocky dudes, and sleazy gigolos. Expect bare chests, ferocious lipsyncing and shameless grinding – altogether brilliant entertainment spiced up with a touch of satire and politics.
Kingdom Cum is an all kings drag-club concept initiated by drag duo Meiton 2. For UrbanApa x Stoa the performance is a collaboration of Meiton 2, Ritni Tears and Out of Sync.
Meiton 2 is your wildest music-dude mash-up fantasy and the dazzling duo project of drag kings Mr. Rizz-Oh and Yo-Ni. Taking inspiration from the greatest male duos in pop culture and the Finnish music industry across time, Meiton 2 is an ode to all the cheeky chaps in the show bizz.
Ritni Tears is a Deanu river Sámi drag artist, storyteller, and all-around gay™ superstar, who brings electrifying energy, intense facial expressions, and captivating stories to the stage. Recently spotted at: Indigenous World Pride in Washington D.C. and Nuuk Pride.
Out of Sync is an international sensational drag king- boyband. Through combining dance, drag-art, idol-culture and performance, this groups performances create a sense of large scale stadiums no matter the space. Nico, Peter Cunt’dre, HC Wayne and dj cummyb3ar are here to charm you and make you fall in love with them again and again!
Performances
- Date & time
- Location
- Duration
- Language
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Saturday 30.08 21:00—21:30
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Theatre Hall
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30min
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no dialogue
performance
Layers
Hozan Omar
Layers is Hozan Omar’s solo street dance performance that combines popping with Kurdish music and electronic soundscape. The piece focuses on Omar’s Kurdish roots and identity questions in Finland as well as the challenges of living between two cultures. Through dance, Omar explores feelings like curiousity, pain and confidence. Layers is his first own performance.
Hozan Omar is a Helsinki-based dancer and dance teacher. In 2015, he graduated from the street dance programme of the Swedish Åsa Folkhögskolan. The most important thing in dance for Hozan is to find connection to music and the expression that follows in the form of vibrations and waves.
Performances
- Date & time
- Location
- Duration
- Language
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Saturday 30.08 19:00—19:15
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Theatre Hall
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15min
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no dialogue
performance
Open Gesture / What happens when we spend time together
Chen Nadler, Jacqueline Aylward & Iida Savolainen
Open Gesture / What happens when we spend time together a work in progress by Jaqueline Aylward, Chen Nadler and Iida Savolainen, emerging from a deep curiosity and lived experiences around the complex, ever-shifting tensions that arise when people meet. This work is part of their ongoing practice of connecting to place, self, and each other through dance, music and choreography, while exploring themes of micro-pleasures and tension, repetition, care, otherness, and love. The piece engages with embodied moving histories in dialogue with the present. The artists investigate fleeting pleasures as they arise, staying committed to rhythm, and playing with the (sometimes impossible) task of making peace with oneself or the other. Physically confronting one another, they face, push, drag, love, and accept — examining, touching, and playing with difference, with the heavy weight of histories and stories, and with the joy that simultaneously exists within today’s complex realities.
Chen Nadler is a choreographer and dancer based in Helsinki, integrating community, philosophy, transcultural dialogue through cross-disciplinary approaches. Her work explores transformation through the dancing body, celebrating the knowledge carried and evoked by individuality and collectivity in artistic creation and choreography. She is busy with the dilemma that lies in meeting with the other, the emotional, energetic and political nature that emerges from a human encounter, followed by ethical wonders and responsibilities. Chen creates gatherings, performances, video art projects and presents works in international festivals. Chen holds a professional dance certificate (2013), studied for a B.Ed in Steiner and Social Education (2022), and an MA in Choreography from the Theatre Academy in Helsinki (2025).
Jacqueline Aylward is a dance artist from Naarm (Melbourne) Australia who is currently based in Helsinki, Finland. Her artistic practice cultivates dance and dancing as a space of care, relationships, playfulness, transformation and fiction. Her approach is often interdisciplinary and intuitive. This work is supported and sustained through friendship, love and perseverance. Jacqueline is a core member of Bunch of Scrumps (an experimental dance and music collective based across Finland, Serbia and Slovenia) and a member of the band Moss and Flesh. She also make solo works, group pieces and work as a dancer on other people’s projects.
Iida Savolainen (Finland) is a multi-award-winning musician and music maker who moves smoothly in the worlds of folk music, classical, avant-garde, improvisation and folk punk. Her instruments are usually vocals, viola, violin, jouhikko and electronics. Savolainen works internationally in several projects and bands, the best known of which are ENKEL, Akkajee and BFP (Bergå Folk Project). She has composed, written lyrics and created musical dramaturgy for several stage works and has worked as a theatre musician. Savolainen is currently working on her solo project “Intergalactic Folk Music”. The project has been supported by the SKR Uusimaa Fund and the SKR General Fund.”
Performances
- Date & time
- Location
- Duration
- Language
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Saturday 30.08 12:00—12:30
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Stoa square
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30min
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no dialogue
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Saturday 30.08 13:00—13:30
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Stoa square
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30min
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no dialogue
