This year, Moving in November festival dives into a dialogue about the relationship between the local dance scene in Helsinki, its entanglements with the international sphere, and the higher education of dance artists in Finland. Artistic Director Kerstin Schroth and choreographer Simo Kellokumpu, lecturer from the MA in Dance Performance program at the Theatre Academy, University of the Arts Helsinki, have been engaging in continuous discussions on this topic over the past few months. They now invite the audience to join this dialogue in the form of a Soup Talk panel discussion on November 15th, from 12:00 to 13:30, at the Caisa Cultural Centre.
Simo: Hello Kerstin, I’m glad that we have been having the discussion going on around the relations between higher education of dance artists, local scenes and international events such as Moving in November. Thank you for finding the time to share your thoughts with me. Let me start by asking, how do you understand something we might call ‘the local scene’? From my perspective as an artist and an educator in the MA in Dance performance -program, one of the ever-evolving core questions is, where do the highly-educated dance artists go when it comes to the ‘local’ and/or ‘international’? What do we need to include into the curriculums to offer them the best possible conditions to understand, process, step into, and contribute to the professional fields? I use plural intentionally to acknowledge the simultaneity of diverse local-international scenes. Also, we can question here the binary ‘local-international’ and recognize realities and perspectives of hybridization. What do you think? Why is it important for you to reach out as an artistic director of an international festival in Helsinki?
Kerstin: Hello Simo, it is great to discuss and think along with you, and to highlight these shared thoughts and concerns in this year’s festival.
When I speak about ‘the local scene’, I am referring to locally working artists, more precisely artists from the performing arts scene, who are working independently or have formed a company. These artists are not embedded in the structure and payroll system of a bigger venue, but have to apply for project funding, if they want to realize their own artistic projects. Often, they also work as collaborators with various other artists on their performances and may also work as teachers or in other jobs to maintain a living. Thinking of hybridization, aren’t artists always responding to and are mostly entangled in the locally operating logics of cultural politics, and are dependent on them?
I like to think of the local scene as the local landscape–a landscape that shapes and nourishes artistic development and thoughts, and potentially raises questions within a society.
I can’t imagine an international festival situated within a city context detached from this local landscape. Although it’s not my obligation to present performances from locally working artists in my program, I am naturally interested in the artistic discourse of that scene–what artists are working on and discussing, and what they are wishing and hoping for. It’s also important to understand what is missing and what I can add to this landscape, the different discourse through my program and initiatives. After all, the artists are also forming a big part of the Moving in November audience. Specifically, in Helsinki/Finland, I am looking at a performing arts landscape situated at the European periphery. One does not easily pass by Helsinki and being up North; one does not easily jump on a train to another country to see performances and meet fellow colleagues. In my opinion, an international festival has the ability to shine light on the local working artists and to build bridges between an international and a local scene. For me, it’s important to create space for these connections and encounters, and initiate conversations within the festival context, to nourish both sides. This is one strategy to bring the local landscape into focus and create visibility and opportunities for a scene.
Simo, I am curious–when you think about designing a curriculum for the university, what are your strategies for preparing the students to step out of the university and be prepared for a professional local and/or international landscape?
Simo: Yes, I understand, good points indeed. When it comes to the MA program, many students have already worked in the professional field when entering the program. In that sense, they already carry with themselves local and international experiences. The program offers a structured place to deepen one’s views and thinking through a curriculum in which local and international guests are in an important artistic-pedagogical role. As part of focusing on the studies and simultaneously to get in touch with manifold methodologies, this is a way to get new connections of course. The program tries to sustain a possibility for the cohort to visit one international platform somewhere else than in Finland during the studies. This year the cohort will participate to Oktoberdans -festival in Bergen. The initiative with Moving in November is an important one for the program in sustaining and developing such connections in Helsinki. There’re also good connections with other programs in the Uniarts, e.g with MA in Choreography, and the teams are in active dialogue with each other. Working together institutionally is necessary in supporting artist-students futures, I think.
The other thing that I wanted to address here as kind of a warm-up for the Soup Talk Panel is that in this MA-program, our team aims to offer for the young professionals educational support, tools and orientation for sustainable artistic career in the current challenging times. One might even talk about the survival kit nowadays in Finland’s cultural-economical and political settings. My personal motivation to support young professionals’ processes deepening their artistic thinking and practices in the program, stems from believing that focused and dialogic learning processes with peers can introduce the artist-students the art-making orientation which couples them to the society durationally more than momentarily, kind of as long-distance runners instead of sprinters, if I may playfully here describe the career choice or mode of making art like that. Once you focus on your artistic interests in supportive and connected learning environment with invited guest-artists and experts, the working – and maybe also future funding – possibilities beyond local can be opened. Does this make sense to you? From the perspective of curating an international program in Finland, what is your experience on this?
Kerstin: This makes absolutely sense to me and links very much to my thoughts on connections I like to foster between the international traveling artists who come to Moving in November and the local artistic scene. I believe in encounters, conversations, and in shared interests. I also believe in the small seeds we can plant and small changes we can make that make a difference, helping to grow and inspire an artistic career or flourish an entire scene. We learn from others, and the more we think together and gather in the actual cultural-political landscape and economic situation, the better.
For this year’s festival, we very much considered this approach: what happens when we (local working artists, collaborating institutions and Moving in November) gather resources (spaces, time, communication resources, funding) and bring together all that we have to create a program called: Focus on the Local Landscape. It will be a bit like a picnic – when everybody contributes something else, we get a whole complete meal.
I really resonate with the idea of the long-distance runner versus the sprinter, especially from my experience in the performing arts scene and as a manager of a choreographer for 13 years. It’s a good metaphor. I have learned that many things don’t happen immediately; they need time and development. When advising students, I always emphasize not reaching for the stars immediately, such as aiming for an international tour right away. Instead, I encourage them to look around at what they have and to build slowly from there. It’s crucial not to let artistic ideas being eaten up by overly high and short-term expectations, but indeed, to rather learn to be a long-distance runner. Working in this field demands a lot of patience, stamina and ultimately strong, solid collaborations that develop over time.
What do you think about that?
Simo: I do agree, also from my own experience. There’s no rush anywhere. From one viewpoint I see art-making as sustaining and shaping cultural sediments and spheres on/in which one lives or will live. But I also understand that it’s easy to say such thing and in diverse life-situations to face the economic situation for arts is another. Bringing this back to the MA program, it takes time to recognize and clarify the elements that constitute one’s practice. Time to explore those not-yet-seen elements, or starting points for them, is also one aspect that the MA program can offer for already working artists. This means to introduce the research-orientation towards the making as well, and the collective invention of alternative ecosystems and commons that respond to constant societal changes and recurrent patterns of exclusion. That can be one way to support the durational orientation towards the relations between art and life.
This all is very interesting and I’m looking forward to sharing more soon in our Soup Talk Panel. Should we now invite the audience to continue thinking together in the festival and talk about this further in the panel discussion, here in Helsinki?
Kerstin: Yes, let’s do that! I am very much looking forward to this Soup Talk panel and to closely discuss and think about a “What Now?”: how do we continue from here? How to imagine new strategies for our performing arts landscape to continue working, researching and presenting under the given cultural-political circumstances?
Last but not least, I am especially glad about the panelists who will share their perspectives with us.
Simo & Kerstin: Welcome everyone, see you in the festival and the Soup Talk -series!