What if a fox could decide what dance is?
Halla, Sumu, Viima, and Lumi are foxes who have escaped from fur farms and now live at the Tuulispää Animal Sanctuary. Over the course of a year, dancer and choreographer Matilda Aaltonen has visited them and learned to dance with them. She has stepped among the foxes, leaving behind the anthropocentric view of art.
To follow your tail is a leap into the fox’s perspective—one in which understanding the other does not depend on human language. Instead, a new language must be learned: the language of movement, play, and presence. The performance weaves together video art, dance, and poetry. It reveals the many shades of our relationship with other animals and invites us to sense a connection that moves across species boundaries.
Matilda Aaltonen is a dancer, choreographer, and researcher based in Helsinki, working in the fields of dance and performance art. Aaltonen is currently doing artistic doctoral research at the Uniarts Helsinki’s Theatre Academy, focusing on dancers’ practices of performing with nonhuman animals. Over the past year, she has choreographed for the stage, danced in gallery spaces, cried at a supermarket meat section, and explored the possibilities of interspecies performance in various contexts in Finland and internationally.
Jani-Matti Salo is a media artist based in Helsinki. He graduated from Tampere University of Applied Sciences in 2009 and from the Lighting Design programme at the Theatre Academy of the University of the Arts Helsinki in 2015. Since 2007, Salo has worked extensively in the field of contemporary performance, both in Finland and internationally. In recent years, his practice has focused on multidisciplinary installations. In 2024, Salo published his essay collection Reorientations – Steps Towards More Eco-Socially Sustainable New Media Art and Lighting Design in Contemporary Performance.
Pauliina Haasjoki is a poet and essayist who has been working on the medium of poetry books for a long time, her latest work being Valenssi (2024). She is currently writing her second essay book. In recent years, Haasjoki has been interested in combining movement and text both in the moment of writing and when performing with others and by herself. She turns 50 this year and lives in Helsinki.
Jussi Ulkuniemi is a queer artist, photo- and videography professional, dance maker, and educator living in Helsinki. Currently, Ulkuniemi is engaged in long-term work exploring queer intimacies, non-normative embodiments and relationships through the photography project Textures of Queer Intimacy. They are also developing Glimmering, a performance solo performance examining the male body and its relation to femmephobia, with a premiere scheduled in Helsinki in 2027.
Jo Sulalampi is a sculptor of sounds and composer of form, curiously sampling tactile gestures from sound, and modeling contrasts for the living from clay. Their work is open to time and space, moving fluidly across forms of expression.
Joonatan Aaltonen is a composer and multi-instrumentalist from Helsinki. His work reflects a deep familiarity with musical and instrumental traditions from different parts of the world, while embracing experimental and spontaneous improvisation that transcends genre boundaries.