workshop
Pleasure poetry workshop
Nelli Ruotsalainen
In this workshop, we will explore our visions of liberation through poetry that is grounded in pleasure. We will write from an understanding of pleasure that can include many things: joy, connection, comfort, care, creativity, intimacy, and erotic pleasure. In this workshop, you can expect to be given writing prompts about pleasure, poetry and combining both. You are welcome to approach them intuitively, in a way that feels right to you.
Please note: In this workshop, we pay special attention to care, respect, tenderness, consent, and boundaries. You will not be required to share your poetry, but you are more than welcome to if you feel drawn to do so.
The workshop is intended for people 16 years and older.
You can register by filling this form: https://forms.gle/CByJChrVsN6dXN2Y7
Nelli Ruotsalainen (she/they) who is a Finnish-American interdisciplinary artist whose work has been described as intimate, bold, shamelessly autobiographical, and sensual. Through writing, performance, and analog photography they explore the spaces where queer feminist theories and lived experiences meet.
Performances
- Date & time
- Location
- Duration
- Language
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Saturday 29.08 12:30—14:30
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Workshop space
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2h 0min
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English
performance
Lumière brute
Axelle Munezero
Lumière brute is a choreographic research project born from the tension between darkness and the desire for light. It explores the body as a site of passage, memory, and healing. Here, creating beauty becomes an act of survival, a way to endure, transform, and express what cannot always be spoken.
Through raw, vibrant, and grounded movement, Lumière brute reveals what persists: the flicker of light, however fragile, within inner chaos. The body emerges as a territory of resilience and illumination, even when battered or trembling,a body that dances, struggles, and transforms pain into living material.
Rooted in a movement language that draws from whacking, punking, Burundian traditional dances, and contemporary dance, the work weaves together different embodied histories and modes of expression. These influences meet in a sensory and deeply personal approach, where aesthetics arise from truth, lived experience, and vulnerability.
Beauty is not an escape from pain but a way through it. In Lumière brute, beauty is alive: it trembles, resists, and heals.
This work has received support from the Canada Council for the Arts.
Axelle “Ebony” Munezero is a professional dancer, choreographer, and movement storyteller who stands out for her authenticity and passion. Born in Burundi, she was raised and artistically established in Montréal, Canada, and is now based in Finland. Internationally recognized for her mastery of whacking, she has traveled extensively to share her practice ; teaching, judging, and performing across the globe, including in Japan, South Korea, France, Italy, the United States, Greece, Germany, Vietnam, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Indonesia, and Switzerland. She graduated from contemporary dance at Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM) and trained in street dance (whacking, punking, house, and hip-hop) with renowned pioneers in North America. Her artistic versatility has led her to collaborate across disciplines and industries: In the theatre scene, she has worked with companies including Rubberband Dance Group, Ebnflōh, Gadfly, Juxtapose, and Trans Théâtre.
Her work has received both national and international recognition. Deeply committed to community building, Axelle co-founded the Montréal-based non-profit 100Lux, dedicated to supporting street dance professionals.With over 15 years as a professional artist, she continues to shine on stage and through diverse projects, dedicated to inspiring people to move, connect, and dance.
Axelle’s photo: Valérian Mazataud Le Devoir
Performances
- Date & time
- Location
- Duration
- Language
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Saturday 29.08 17:45—18:15
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Theatre hall
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30min
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No dialogue
performance
Mark / Markka
Snowdrop Àine-Fae Belmont & Monia Leo Kimara Penttinen
Mark / Markka – Corporeal journey into sexual labour
The realities of s3x workers and artists often overlap. In the capitalist system the intimate becomes a service – a commodity. How to survive with the alienation? How to use, embrace and find joy in alienation?
This performance Mark / Markka is a movement-based research and a demo trying to embody and visualize crumbles of experiences of precarity and never ending hustle for survival and art.
Snowdrop Àine-Fae Belmont is a multimedia artist currently available for hire. In 2024, they got accepted into the bachelor’s and master’s Fine Art degree of the Academy of Fine Arts Helsinki. With their art they seek to create immersive physical or mental landscapes that induce bodily experiences for the audience. They have exhibited at The Academy of Fine Arts, Helsinki (2024), Amos Rex (2026), Maa-Tila gallery in Helsinki (202), and performed at queer spaces such as the Attic.
Monia Leo Kimara Penttinen is a dance and performance artist based in Helsinki. They are drawn to exposure, transparency, autofiction and playing with the questions of realness and fakeness. They see the role of an artist as a pre-thinker, proposer and experimenter. They use filming and returning to the filmed material as a tool to reflect. Currently they study in Live Art and Performance Studies MA in Theatre Academy of Helsinki.
Performances
- Date & time
- Location
- Duration
- Language
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Saturday 29.08 16:00—16:20
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Gym
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20min
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No dialogue
performance
ramparuohodemo 2.0 – kuunneltava esitys
Isa Hukka & Sami Kekäläinen
Welcome to listen together to writer Isa Hukka and sound designer Sami Kekäläinen testing out their material. The starting point of the demo performance is a crip mythological text written by Hukka which inspired Kekäläinen’s soundscapes.
The main character of the performance, “ramparuoho”, is a plant called twin flower (Latin: linnaea borealis) that has many names, healing histories, and meanings in Finland. The performance is part of Hukka’s longer crip literary project, funded by Kone Foundation.
This is a 2.0 version of ramparuohodemo. It is based on the first version that Hukka and Kekäläinen made in the Spring of 2020, as part of the Taiteilijan taikasauva -project by The Cultural Association Finland’s Eucrea, funded by Kone Foundation.
We are writer Isa Hukka and sound designer Sami Kekäläinen. We started our artistic collaboration in the Spring of 2026. We have both worked in the field of disability arts and dance in different roles. Now we bring together our unique approaches to text and sound art in the form of “ramparuohodemo” performance.
Isa Hukka works with poetry and art. Hukka’s background is in performing arts, and their translations and award-winning texts have been published by several magazines. Currently Hukka lives in Helsinki and works on local crip writing, with the support of Kone Foundation.
Sami Kekäläinen is a Helsinki-based musician, singer and a member of the inclusive dance group Kaaos Company. They have a wide experience in sound design and in other roles, especially in the Finnish disability arts field. Kekäläinen has composed music for dance pieces, and makes rap music under the name MC Zen. Kekäläinen has performed with their band in various events, such as the DiDa Festival, Outsider Art Festival and Decompression.
Performances
- Date & time
- Location
- Duration
- Language
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Thursday 27.08 18:30—19:30
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Music hall
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60min
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Finnish
performance
The Traces of Your Skin (demo)
Amanda 007 and Lydia Ofi Teresia
Sisterhood is not given. It emerges in a gaze that recognizes. In a touch that lingers. In the decision to stay close to another, again and again, even when presence is never uncomplicated.
The Traces of Your Skin is a contemporary dance piece about sisterhood between two trans women. It examines chosen family as a relationship that comes into being through action: through touching, holding, and seeing. Sisterhood is not based on a shared childhood, but on shared experiences, identification, and the decision to exist for one another.
At UrbanApa x Stoa, a 15-minute demo of the work will be presented. The full-length premiere will take place in December at Cultural Centre Caisa. On stage, bodies touch, guide, hold on, and let go. Femininity is allowed to rest without external definition, settling into an embrace and gentle closeness.
The choreographers and performers of the work, Amanda 007 and Lydia Ofi Teresia, have worked together for over 15 years as friends, sisters, and artistic partners in the Amanda & Lydia duo. The piece moves at the intersection of contemporary dance, performativity, and influences from ballroom, but is built above all on the relationship between the performers.
Amanda & Lydia is a contemporary dance and performance art duo that has been active since 2015. Their artistic work combines contemporary dance, voguing, and drag aesthetics, with a focus on exploring the intersections of movement, gender, and identity.
The duo’s members, Amanda 007, and Lydia Ofi Teresia, are among the pioneers of Finnish Ballroom culture and have been active within the Ballroom community for over 15 years. Their background in voguing is reflected in their movement practice, which ranges from challenging gender boundaries to exploring intimate vulnerability.
Their performances have traveled from underground clubs and queer spaces to contemporary art institutions such as Kiasma, the National Theatre of Finland, Dance House Helsinki, and Zodiak. In 2020, the Student Union of the University of the Arts Helsinki awarded them the Academic Fine Arts Award in recognition of their significant contribution to the field of Finnish queer art.
Amanda & Lydia’s practice is characterized by intersectionality, queer dramaturgy, and rituality. Their aim is to create stages where queer and trans bodies are not marginal, but central.
Performances
- Date & time
- Location
- Duration
- Language
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Friday 28.08 21:10—21:30
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Theatre hall
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20min
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No dialogue
performance
Paincare
Raphaël Beau & Noia "sky" Kekoni-Kattelus
Paincare is a dance-performance-play(game) duet exploring long term connection building in friendship and within community. It brings forward the questions of autonomy, frictions, possible harm and repair, always returning to passion and patience to connect. The performers have been familiarizing themselves with the Stoa public space by playing there beforehand.
They serve the performance as a meal with four parts;
- Choosing the table: the performers open their mouths and set the game.
- Appetizer: they give verbal instructions to each other. They hold tension between passion and patience, encouraging to reveal what’s burning under their skin and in Stoa’s space right now.
- Main dish: They expand the game from semi-public to public space. They take the instruSURPRISEctions into a constant negotiation of their play between each other and with their surroundings.
- Dessert and the bill: they offer repair for each other if needed and close the game.
In Paincare-practise the performers build containers, contexts, limits, patience to stay and sink in. Welcome to watch them play & fully struggle <3
Raphaël Beau (they/them), also known as l’apharé, is a gender-fluid, able-bodied performance artist and movement workshop facilitator. Over the past five years, Raphaël has developed two main art practices: HERE FOR A MOMENT which explores through performance the potential for collective action that arises from being together in a particular place at a specific time ; and PLAY AND ACT FROM WHAT IS HERE – OPEN PRACTICE a method of facilitating collective thinking through movement. They organise and participate in various actions alongside social justice movements with other activists.
Noia “sky” Kekoni-Kattelus (she/they) helsinki born n raised, queerly gazing and exploring community club creature, with white agile able body, sharing their fleshy care and presence into collective liberation. She has been organizing around civic activism, dancefloor as a healing place, community conflict/repair gatherings, performance collectives-facilitation, alternative schools. ie: shadowworld.club ;°) She makes space for accountable repair, safety and trust of shared future together ~ so that we can dare to be ourselves co-existing even with a risk of making mistakes.
Both of us share a common interest and commitment for public space performance, as well as embodied political action.
Performances
- Date & time
- Location
- Duration
- Language
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Friday 28.08 20:40—21:05
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Theatre hall
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25min
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No dialogue
performance
sine sole sileo
Sophia Mitiku
Sophia Mitiku presents ‘sine sole sileo’, a work in progress that weaves together field recordings, sketches, and compositions of a speculative sun dial. Through this sonic collage, the performance invites audiences into a contemplative space where light, rest, and the rhythms of irregular clocks unfold through listening. In this landscape ‘sine sole silea’ offers a meditation on cycles of illumination and stillness, encouraging moments of quiet reflection and attunement to the subtle temporalities that shape our lives.
This work has received support from Koneen säätiö.
Sophia Mitiku is a singer and artist whose practice engages music and sound as a method for ecological, cultural, and embodied inquiry. Working across electroacoustic compositions and expanded sonic forms, she creates immersive landscapes that migrate through porous borders of memory, place, and perception. Drawing from terrestrial and metaphysical cosmologies, Mitiku’s work examines the tensions and continuities between nostalgia and futurisms.
Performances
- Date & time
- Location
- Duration
- Language
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Saturday 29.08 19:10—19:40
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Theatre hall
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30min
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English
dance performance
Shift
NEXT STEP
This group has come together and met during the spring at UrbanApa’s NEXT STEPS platform, which is a development platform for street- and club dancers. The central question throughout the platform has been, how can we build a sustainable future for the street and club dance scene and create more connections and collaboration across the different styles and generations. So now it’s the time to put these questions into practice!
Shift can refer to a shift of balance, attention or focus. It creates space for a transition or change. By creating this performance we want to tune into fun, playful and low-threshold space and collective ways of making. Therefore the base of the performance is inspired by games, plays and social dances. The dancers will interpret the tasks given by the game with their own styles, like hip hop, breaking, punking, whacking and house, in different constellations of an ensemble, solos and duets.
Performers: Pinja Turunen, Kaarne Fedriksson, Emmi Mikkilä, Jérémy Gaudibert, Jesse Vaskela, Ira Wuolle
Sound design: Sebastian Kurten
NEXT STEP is a platform for street and club dancers launched by UrbanApa and Stoa in the spring of 2026. The aim of this platform is to provide support and tools for working with the stage and to facilitate the creation of new networks and collaborations. Throughout the spring, a group of 9 dancers has gathered for workshops and worked on their creative processes.
The working group members in this demo are Sebastian Kurten, Pinja Turunen, Kaarne Fredriksson, Emmi Mikkilä, Jesse Vaskela, Jérémy Gaudibert, and Ira Wuolle.
Performances
- Date & time
- Location
- Duration
- Language
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Saturday 29.08 20:00—20:30
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30min
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No dialogue
performance
Syvänne III
Jenni Honkamaa, Katja Mustonen & Katariina Vähäkallio
Syvänne III is a movement installation and demo performance by three dance artists from different generations, in which dance emerges in the moment through instant composition practices. Multidisciplinary dance artist Jenni Honkamaa brings together long-time dance artists Katariina Vähäkallio and Katja Mustonen in a shared movement practice, where embodied history, listening and presence form the foundation of the work.
The materials, textures, colours, sounds and atmospheres of the Syvänne series create an aesthetic landscape in which movement takes shape in relation to the other performers, the space and the sound.
The performers share an embodied history rooted in their studies at the Outokumpu Dance Programme. Syvänne III makes visible how knowledge, experience and movement practices are transmitted from one generation to another, while revealing how collective and individual movement thinking coexist.
In the midst of today’s constant flow of information, being fully present in the moment is a radical act. Syvänne IIIproposes moving together, listening and sensing one another as acts of connection and resistance.
Jenni Honkamaa is a dance artist, performer, choreographer, and dance teacher based in Finland. Her multidisciplinary practice moves between dance, digital media, materials, visual art, sound, and installation, creating immersive performance environments. Honkamaa’s artistic work explores transformation, coexistence, and humanity through embodied and sensory experiences. Alongside her own artistic practice, she works as a dancer and performer in various productions and collaborations and facilitates collaborative and community-based projects through the Tiloissa concept.
Katja Mustonen is a dancer, choreographer, and dance teacher. Over the past two decades, her work in dance has taken her around the world, most recently bringing her to Kuopio, where she performs with Dance Theatre Minimi. In dance, she is particularly interested in fully embodied performance, where strong physicality is intertwined with lived experience, emotional and energetic work, and imagination. Within contemporary dance, her special expertise and greatest passion lie in improvisation, partnering, and contact improvisation. However, her practice spans a wide range of dance contexts, adapting to the needs of each project.
Katariina Vähäkallio is a dancer, choreographer, and dance pedagogue who has been active in Finland since the early 1990s, following her dance studies in Amsterdam. She is currently based in Outokumpu, where, alongside her teaching practice, she has worked actively with various organizations and practitioners to strengthen the operating conditions of the independent dance field in Eastern Finland. As a dancer, choreographer, and performer, Vähäkallio is interested in both long-term choreographic processes and spontaneous improvisational performances.
Performances
- Date & time
- Location
- Duration
- Language
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Wednesday 26.08 17:30—18:00
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Stoa square
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30min
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No dialogue
performance
Waters
Ama Kyei
Waters is a prayer for the water inside all of us. Water takes different forms and shapes according to what it observes, Waters is a dance and a chant to restore harmony.
This work has received support from Jenny and Antti Wihuri Foundation.
Ama Kyei is a dancer, choreographer and dance pedagog whose heart beats for finding moments of freedom through dance, for children and for nature. Ama’s dance roots are in street dance and in recent years she has studied with traditional West African dance traditions, mainly in her second homeland, Ghana.
Performances
- Date & time
- Location
- Duration
- Language
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Friday 28.08 21:45—22:30
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Theatre hall
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45min
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English
participatory performance
Sammankomst (Assembly)
Maria Naidu
Sammankomst – Swedish for gathering, coming together, assembly – begins with a simple question: what happens when strangers start moving together?At the center of the work is the 18-step American line dance, The Electric Slide. It’s a dance that has travelled far – from Black American social dance culture through clubs, weddings, family reunions, and funerals, across the African diaspora and far beyond. Chances are, someone you know knows it. Chances are, you’ve seen it without knowing what you were seeing.In Sammankomst, it becomes something more: a repeated choreographic device, a social technology, an act of collective authorship. And an invitation.There is no stage. There is no audience. There are dancers, and there are people passing by, and gradually – through presence, demonstration, eye contact, the body itself as open gesture – the two become indistinguishable. The dancers guide entirely through non-verbal communication. No one is told what to do. The instruction is the movement, offered and repeated until it becomes shared. Each cycle accumulates new bodies, new rhythms, new weight. People arrive, fold in, drift away. The dance continues.No prior experience is needed. No performance is expected. What is needed, and what the work creates, is a willingness to move alongside someone you don’t know … yet.
Please register before-hand to Maria’s workshop lecture on Thursday 27th August: https://forms.gle/JvB8YM9SSQnnLycq5
Maria Naidu’s works move between the stage and public space, inviting both observation and participation. Movement is central, often placed in dialogue with music, text and theatrical detail. Her work is marked by physical clarity, textural richness and a subtle, disarming humour.At the centre of her artistic practice is the simple conviction that dance can be inclusive while remaining artistically rigorous.Naidu creates works in which professional dance, social choreography and the audience’s own physical experience meet through simple, shared movement structures and repetition.Based in Malmö since 2001, Naidu has worked with dance internationally for nearly four decades. She trained at Balettakademien in Gothenburg, Sweden, and later at the Alvin Ailey American Dance Center in New York. From 1991 to 1998, she was a full-time soloist with Jennifer Muller/THE WORKS in New York City. Her choreographic works have been presented in 14 countries across five continents.
Performances
- Date & time
- Location
- Duration
- Language
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Wednesday 26.08 18:00—18:30
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Stoa square
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30min
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English
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Thursday 27.08 16:00—16:40
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Workshop space
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40min
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English
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Thursday 27.08 17:00—17:45
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Stoa square
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45min
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English
dance performance
roots in motion
Gatoty / Gato
Roots in Motion is a powerful solo performance exploring migration, identity, memory, and the search for belonging.
Drawing from the language of breaking, rocking, and contemporary movement, Carlos David Catún Quintana (Gato) takes the audience on a physical and emotional journey through memories of displacement, cultural roots, and resilience.
The body becomes a place where personal history and cultural identity meet. Through rhythm, movement, and silence, the performance explores what it means to leave home, carry your roots with you, and rebuild a sense of belonging somewhere else.
Rooted in hip-hop culture and shaped by a personal journey between Guatemala and Europe, Roots in Motion transforms movement into a language of memory, resistance, and hope.
Roots in Motion was developed with the support of Soul Sessions Encounters.
Carlos David Catún Quintana, also known as Gatoty / Gato, is a Guatemalan dancer, choreographer, actor, and movement artist based in Oslo, Norway. With over 20 years of experience in hip-hop culture, particularly breaking, rocking, stage performance, and contemporary theatre, he has developed a distinctive artistic practice rooted in movement, cultural identity, migration, memory, and resilience.
Carlos has performed and created work across Europe, Latin America, and the United States, collaborating with institutions and companies including Hålogaland Teater, Riksscenen, Sámi National Theatre Beaivváš, Absence Crew, Issas Dance Company, López Kunst & Produksjoner, and Safemuse. His work has been presented at festivals and cultural institutions such as Riddu Riđđu, Showbox, and the Northern Lights Festival.
He is the main character of the documentary Bboy for Life (2011) and has received several recognitions for his artistic work, including the Hedda Award (2016) and the Critics’ Award (2016), as well as prizes from international breaking competitions. He was also nominated for the Gullsekken Award (2021) and the Gulljerven Award (2022) for the production Bboy for Life – Historias.
Alongside his work as a performer and choreographer, Carlos is an experienced dance instructor, workshop facilitator, and project leader, working with young people, professional artists, festivals, and educational programs. His practice combines the foundations and energy of hip-hop culture with contemporary performance, creating spaces where movement becomes a tool for storytelling, connection, and cultural expression.
Today, Carlos continues to develop his artistic practice in Norway and internationally, creating performances and collaborative projects that explore identity, migration, cultural roots, memory, and resilience through dance and movement.
Performances
- Date & time
- Location
- Duration
- Language
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Friday 28.08 19:30—20:00
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Theatre hall
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30min
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No dialogue
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Saturday 29.08 17:15—17:45
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Theatre hall
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30min
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No dialogue
open mic
POC 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. 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 26.08 18:30—21:00
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Music hall
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2h 30min
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English, other languages welcome
performance
Cordial Cardio
Vilma Mankonen, Julia Mäkelä & Io Pettersson
Cordial Cardio is a special workout and performance. It takes the audience along with repetitive movements patterns inspired by the ghosts of aerobics, zumba, body combat, and body step. Not everyone has to participate in the same way. Cordial Cardio runs on its own even if you choose to watch others moving or aren’t following exactly what’s happening. Every bodymind is present in its own way. Your version and the instructor’s version are both versions. Cordial Cardio creates a space for social connection where we move together simply because we can. Body is not a project it is home! Wear comfortable clothes and bring a water bottle!
Cordial Cardio working group consists of dancers Julia Mäkelä and Vilma Mankonen, along with sound designer and musician Io Pettersson. In this work they channel their anarchic, masterful aerobics energy drawing from sports and commercial workout cultures, playing in a band, and the romantic poetry of pop music. The artists work in the fields of dance and performance art, as well as music and sound art.
Performances
- Date & time
- Location
- Duration
- Language
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Saturday 29.08 18:30—19:00
-
-
30min
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No dialogue
staged reading
DESPOJO or the Stripping
Kharissa Newbill Adames
Part ritual, part testament, “DESPOJO or the Stripping” is a staged reading about two self-proclaimed brujas brought together by a shared goal: to curse the man who sexually assaulted them. As their ritual unfolds, so does a deeper conflict over what justice means—and who has the right to enact it. When the systems meant to protect survivors fail them, how far can they go to reclaim power for themselves
Kharissa Newbill Adames (she/they) is a Panamanian multidisciplinary artist working across theatre, literature, and performance. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Theatre Arts from Loyola University New Orleans and is currently pursuing a Master’s degree in Theatre Directing at the University of the Arts Helsinki in Finland.As a director, writer, and queer performer, her work explores the relationship between the real and the fantastical, with a strong influence from magical realism and Latin American mythologies. Her recent theatre projects include Posh, which she directed in Panama in 2022, and El mito de la gravedad, presented at the International Performing Arts Festival organized by MiCultura, where she worked as an assistant director, also in 2022. In Finland, she premiered Liberade, a play she wrote and directed, in 2025. In 2026, she created and directed two versions of The Enchanted Girl of Code 24, one presented in Finland and a second iteration developed and presented in Panama.She currently works between Panama and Finland, creating works that explore identity, cultural memory, and the experiences that shape and affect Latinx, queer, and other intersectional communities.
Performances
- Date & time
- Location
- Duration
- Language
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Saturday 29.08 15:00—15:30
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Music hall
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30min
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English
screening
FILM NIGHT
UBUNTU FILM CLUB
This screening consists of multiple films curated in collaboration by the Ubuntu Film Club and UrbanApa.
FILMS
Bodies of Water
Julischka Stengele
13 min 42 sec
Bodies of Water is an experimental performance short film about the relationship between human and nature, especially queer, fat, overflowing fluid bodies and water. Movement, voice, text, video, photography and sound are combined into collage, addressing constructions of (un)naturalness and separation, as well as questions of connectedness, belonging and kinship. A poetic encounter of different life forms and materialities forming currents and making waves together.
La Rivière parle Créole
Maeva Belloiseau
8 min
A river winds its way through the mountains of Basse-Terre, in Guadeloupe. The river down the street. The river of dry-tap days. The river of forbidden access.The Monrose’s granddaughter is visiting. She improvises dances and camera work as she comes into contact with the river’s health, history, and the inherited forces that shape both her gaze and the river’s present.Out of this embodied improvisational practice emerges an intertwined documentary and performance film.
French audio with English subtitles.
Film music by Dhavantri Dub Looprana remix.
All the Love in My Body
Carmen Baltzar
14 min 27 sec
All the Love in My Body enters a touristic beach in Greece from the point of view of Nadia and Samara, two young Romani sisters selling wooden objects. The girls navigate the beach with wit, boredom, joy and frustration, interacting with a varied cast of sunbathers. Samara is focused on sales, while her younger sister Nadia gets caught up in people gazing and daydreams. Their day takes a jarring turn before the sun goes down.
All the Love in My Body is a fictional re-telling of true events. In 2008, two young Romani sisters, Cristina and Violetta Djeordsevic, drowned on a beach in Torregaveta, Italy, after selling wooden objects to beachgoers. After Cristina’s and Violetta’s lifeless bodies were carried back to the shore and covered with beach towels, people continued sunbathing around them indifferently. Photos of the event surfaced in Italian media afterwards.
Cristina’s and Violetta’s grandmother Vera Carig cursed the beachgoers with all the love in her body. ‘I don’t curse them with the strength of their hatred, but with the strength of my love for my girls’.
Becoming Water
Iida Valmé
16 min 38 sec
Becoming Water invites the energy of the ancestors and of Mami Wata, exploring what it means to become
to surrender
to shift form
to inherit spirit.
To become whole again.
This work is supported by Anita Snellman foundation.
Q5; The Quintessentials
Sarada Sarita
72 min
Q5 is inspired by the energy, feeling and expressiveness of W*acking; also known as Whacking/Waacking originally Punking > Posing & Whacking. A dance form that was created as an expression out of oppression in the multicultural underground gay clubs of Los Angeles in the seventies. Celebrating all!
Through the sounds & movement language of W*acking, the 5 performers dive into the 5th dimension. Traveling through and exploring different colors, portals, perspectives, and worlds within worlds. All in search of the essence of the essence: The Quintessentials!
From Dance Theater to Dance Film The original live dance theater tour of 2021 was canceled due to covid and transformed into Q5 The Movie (Series). 5 Dance theater scenes with added content behind and beyond the whack, where you get to know the performers, their mission statements and the history of the dance culture and community.
Q5 is an unique experience capturing culture, dance, music and personal stories taking you on a multidimensional colorful journey, Celebrating ALL!
Ubuntu Film Club, a helsinki based film club, dedicated to expanding narratives, with a twist of fun, one film at a time.
Carmen Baltzar (Helsinki/Lisbon) is an author, director, and artist. Her work traverses cultural and metaphysical realities, using the body as an anchor between worlds.
Iida Valmé (all pronouns) is a Haitian-Finnish-American queer multidisciplinary artist. Their artistic practice is international, and love is at its center. Valmé’s existence and expression is a direct homage to their ancestors, a declaration of love to those whose ancestor they will one day be. Their work and creative process draw power from their community, nature, intuition, and the spiritual realm.
Sarada Sarita is an award winning professional dancer, choreographer & theater/film maker.
Sarita started w*acking (also known as punking ~ posing & whacking/ later evolved in waacking) in 2009 falling deeply in love with this free form of expression. She studied in NYC and travelled the world learning and sharing her love for this style, culture and community. As a result she has earned many Waacking Titles on her name and is invited as a judge for events and workshops internationally. As one of the first in her country; the Netherlands she takes her role as trailblazer/pioneer to heart protecting and preserving it in the best way possible. Sarada Sarita also started combining her theaterwork and artist creations with her love for waacking. In 2020 she created the first ever W”acking theater performance turned into an award winning movie that got released in 2024, now screening across the world named Q5; The Quintessentials!
Performances
- Date & time
- Location
- Duration
- Language
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Friday 28.08 16:15—19:10
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Music hall
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2h 55min
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Different languages
dance performance
Joyyy
URBANAPA LIFT
“Joyyy” is a collaboration among seven dance artists. This demo is the culmination of two weeks of work exploring the themes of joy, play and community. “Joyyy” highlights the idea of play in all its multifacetedness, its hazy memories, and its sense of incompleteness.
This work is supported by UrbanApa, Indictus, Cultural Centre Stoa, Cultural Center Sähinä, Tanssikoulu DCA, friends, colleagues and close ones.
UrbanApa LIFT is a mentoring programme for emerging dance artists. The group started in February 2026 and has been coming together through workshops and residencies, shared working spaces for individual work, to support, share, develop and create space, art, movement, sweet treats, teamwork and creating a demo “Joyyy”. The working group members in this demo are Tia Aura, Sofia Keto-Tokoi, Nella Matleena, Christa Ropponen, Jade Rosenbom, Kai Soumah and Pinja Turunen.
Performances
- Date & time
- Location
- Duration
- Language
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Friday 28.08 20:00—20:20
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Theatre hall
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20min
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No dialogue
online conversation
UA TALKS
Sonya Lindfors & Kaisa Nieminen
Festival curators Sonya Lindfors and Kaisa Nieminen discuss the festival and it’s theme, movements and currents. Tune in via UrbanApa’s Instagram!
Performances
- Date & time
- Location
- Duration
- Language
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Tuesday 25.08 12:00—12:20
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Instagram
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20min
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Finnish
listening session
In the currents: A Collective Listening Session
Onur Tayranoglu, Ella Rautiainen & Kolar Aparna
A reading event bringing together artists, writers, and communities invited by the festival to share texts that speak to the movements and currents of the present moment. Together, we listen to texts that have moved, challenged, or inspired their readers—and reflect on what they might reveal to us right now.
Performances
- Date & time
- Location
- Duration
- Language
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Tuesday 25.08 17:30—19:00
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Library
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1h 30min
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English
online conversation
UA TALKS
Vita Matiyas & Carmen Baltzar
A discussion on the undercurrents and practices of art that do not always come to the surface. Tune in via UrbanApa’s Instagram!
Vita Matiyas is a performer, cultural worker and Karelian language activist based in Helsinki, hailing from the Republic of Karelia. Her artistic work focuses on performance art practice, both solo and as part of the noise & spoken word duo vitamiinu & iulianiyaaa.
For the last few years, Vita has been working with the Karelian language. Karelian language activism is a central part of all their/her current work — the Karelian language doesn’t have official recognition in either Finland nor Russia. The total absence of legal acknowledgment of the language is devastating and tied up with a long history of oppression by both states. Vita finds the reclaiming of the language a mandatory part of her ongoing process of self-decolonisation, as well as an act of language preservation and revitalization. Humor is a central part of Vita’s practice. She attempts to find it in vulnerable place. Laughter is a direct means of resolving tensions in the uncomfortable situations that Vita puts both herself and the audience in as part of her performance actions.
carmen baltzar (Helsinki / Lisbon) is a storyteller working across film, writing and visual arts. Her debut novel, carmen (Kosmos, 2026), is currently available in Finnish. She co-adapted it into the short opera love is a rebellious bird which premiered at the Finnish National Opera in 2026. Her short film all the love in my body premiered in the international competition at Krakow Film Festival, and will go on to screen at Sarajevo International Film Festival, Helsinki Film Festival, Nordisk Panorama, and others. She is a member of the European Film Academy and Romani Filmmakers Network (RFN).
Performances
- Date & time
- Location
- Duration
- Language
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Wednesday 26.08 12:00—12:40
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Instagram
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40min
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English
workshop
Body awareness workshop
Camilla Tellefsen
How can we shift our attention away from the mind and towards the body?
Body Awareness is a mindfully guided movement session designed especially for dancers and dance enthusiasts. The workshop is open to participants from all dance backgrounds and levels.
Through movement exercises with and without music, participants will explore bodily awareness, texture, gravity, space and rhythm. The workshop invites dancers to slow down, listen to the body and discover new qualities within familiar and unfamiliar movements.
Drawing on her background in Popping and street dance, Camilla Tellefsen approaches somatic practices in a way that is particularly relevant and accessible to street dancers. No previous experience with somatic practices is needed.
Please wear comfortable clothes that allow you to move freely. This workshop has a capacity of 25 people.
Please register via this form: https://forms.gle/apdJDMdMEuKoWoRn9
Camilla Tellefsen is a Norwegian dancer, choreographer and entrepreneur whose artistic foundation lies in street dance, particularly Popping. She is the co-founder of Subsdans and Soul Sessions Oslo and the Artistic Director of Encounters Festival, a platform exploring the intersections between street and club dance and the performing arts.
Tellefsen has extensive experience as a dancer and choreographer across theatre, television and live performance. Her work has been presented at venues including Dansens Hus, Riksscenen and Bærum Kulturhus. She is currently working as a choreographer for b16 iN motion alongside Mounia Nassangar and Oulouy.
Performances
- Date & time
- Location
- Duration
- Language
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Friday 28.08 12:00—13:30
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Music Hall
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1h 30min
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English
music
Backyard party
DJ Etosa
Backyard party with a live DJ set! Everyone is welcome to dance to the soulful, groovy tunes provided by DJ Etosa.
Etosa heard hip-hop for the first time at home, while listening to her older brother’s CDs as a kid. It took some years for her to come back to hip-hop, but since 2011 she has been a central part of the Finnish street and club dance scene. Her many roles include being a dancer, a teacher, a choreographer, and one of the most active organizers in the country.
Etosa’s taste in music has been shaped by her immersion in the dance culture. She has traveled around the world to study street and club dances under the guidance of pioneers and to experience the culture in authentic environments. New York and the park parties and clubs of Brooklyn and the Bronx in particular have had a huge impact on her as a dancer and a music lover.
She loves digging for new sounds and tunes, and time traveling between different eras in her sets. Etosa is mostly focused on deep, soulful house with hints of afrohouse, broken beats, and tech house. As an emerging house DJ, she has played in many dance events in Finland, and in Kaiku in the Houseful Soul night and in DURH besides household names like Roberto Rodrigues and Ocean people. As a hip-hop DJ, she has warmed up for Stepa & Evil Stöö, Jambo, and F. She’s invested in highlighting the women of hiphop, blending hard hitting rhymes with soul, funk, and r’n’b.
Performances
- Date & time
- Location
- Duration
- Language
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Saturday 29.08 20:30—21:30
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Theatre hall
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60min
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no dialogue
