Annika Tudeer, founder and artistic director of Oblivia, celebrates her 60th birthday with her most personal work yet: Turn Turtle Turn – the lecture performance, a solo on life, death and dodos.
Through text, sound and fragmented dance delivered with great poetic force, Annika narrates the uniqueness and vulnerability of her life, drawing volatile timelines from dinosaurs to Greek mythology and on to today, all the while shedding light on the great dichotomies of living – birth and loss, unwanted and chosen parenthood, childhood and age. During the course of the evening, her personal story shifts more and more towards a universal reflection, that life-long search for belonging that we all share.
An intimate epic about mothers, daughters, ancient histories and everything in between, Turn Turtle Turn – the lecture performance is created within the frame of Oblivia’s ongoing series on the Anthropocene, and includes musical elements from Yiran Zhao’s highly praised compositions from the music theatre performance Turn Turtle Turn, which premiered at Munich Biennale in June 2024.
“Time is such a strange construct. Billions of years since life began on earth, thousands since there have been humans. Constant life, constant death, but Earth is not impressed at all and keeps on turning – and always it is just our own life, that speck of sand within eternity’s sandstorm, that lies in the centre of how we perceive time.” – Annika Tudeer
Oblivia has been creating performances out of movement, dance, language, sound, light and gesture for over twenty years. Known for their minimalist approach to the great subject matters which define mankind, Olivia’s works are playful yet poignant, creating cosmoses out of fragments and worlds out of words.
Annika Tudeer is a performance artist, artistic director and one of the founders of Oblivia and Mad House Helsinki. During her career she has also worked as a dancer, choreographer and dance critic. Currently, Tudeer is interested in the possibilities of new music theatre, how to communicate and how to create a better and more enjoyable world.