SAAL Biennaal 08/2017
17. international performing arts festival
15.-27. August 2017 Tallinn
SAAL Biennaal is a two-week-long international performing arts festival that takes place 15. - 27. August in Tallinn. SAAL Biennaal is also the predecessor of Tallinn’s oldest contemporary dance festival August DanceFestival. SAAL Biennaal is a possibility not only to see and experience, but also to co-create space and time via 12 and more meetings with artists and their works without a precedent guarantee goal. A chance to notice details that we otherwise would not notice or tend to ignore. Try out something we would not do otherwise. To look beyond the obvious, whether this creates space for something new to appear?
SAAL Biennaal will be present in Kanuti Gildi SAAL, Von Krahl Theatre and Vaba Lava, but also behind Linnahall, in Tallinn University Academy Library, in the basement at MIMStuudio, in the lecture rooms of Estonian Art Academy and in the hall of OMAtsirkus. There are performances that happen at usual time and venues, but also events that take place in the backrooms of a trendy soap shop that has suddenly appeared in Old Town (Julian Hetzel “Schuldfabrik”) or that take real form via the activities executed by the spectator itself at a table in the reading room of a library (Ant Hampton, Tim Etchells “The Quiet Volume”) or events where the stage is filled with physical and virtual trash (Sarah Vanhee “OBLIVION”) or where the performative event itself is hidden into graves (Tania El Khoury “Gardens Speak”) or that last through the whole night from dusk till dawn (Mårten Spångberg “Natten”).
SAAL Biennaal 2017 festival hosts artists that are both well-known and not so known to our audiences: Julian Hetzel (Utrecht), MOTUS (Rimini), Nele Suisalu ja Maarja Tõnisson (Tallinn), Sarah Vanhee (Brussels), Rima Najdi (Berlin), Kadri Noormets ja Asia Baś ja Gabriel da Luz (Tallinn-Cape Town-Belo Horizonte), Tania El Khoury (Beirut), Ant Hampton ja Tim Etchells (Heidelberg-London), Galerie (international), Karl Saks (Tallinn), Iggy Lond Malmborg (Malmö-Tallinn), Mårten Spångberg (Stockholm-Brussels).
In addition to experiencing the works of these artists it is also time to discuss on the topics theatre / wakefulness within the event series of shared thoughts organized in collaboration with Estonian Theatre Agency - if and how are we ready for this reality that is already normalized around us? It is also time to flick through POST-DANCE book, a publication that holds a possibility to imagine the unimaginable or to have in your hands some brand new publications!
SAAL Biennial as a mosaic reflection of ourselves - how to understand that if there are no instructions? What is it, that you take along from a performance, where by following instructions you become from a passive onlooker an active participant? What kind of experience you gain from the performance, where your rational mind retreats before other senses? Could we be more than the borders of our body ordain, how do we manage with the borders? “I have always thought, that if one does not try, one does not know. This is valid when it comes to me as the curator of current edition of SAAL Biennaal, but I believe that it applies to the artists engaged at the festival as well as hope it concerns every possible audience memeber.” Annika Üprus, SAAL Biennaal 2017 curator.
### SAAL Biennaal 2017 supporters and partners: Cultural Ministry of Estonia, Cultural Endowment of Estonia, Gambling Tax Council of Estonia, Tallinn Department of Culture, Baltoscandal Festival / NXSTP - supported by EU Culture programme, URBAN HEAT - supported by EU Culture programme, Flemish Authorities, Goethe-Institut Tallinn, Valmiermuiža, Swedish Art Council / The Swedish Arts Grants Committee, Von Krahl Theatre, Tallinn University Academic Library, Tallinn Linnahall, MIMStuudio, Estonian Theatre Agency, OMAtsirkus, Vaba Lava, Estonian Art Academy Faculty of Architecture, Saku Läte, Hotel Bern, Hotel St. Barbara, Go Hotel Shnelli, Piletilevi, Trumm and others.
[SAAL Biennaal 2017 trailer](https://vimeo.com/229098468)
Kanuti Gildi SAAL bar is open during the entire festival, a good place to meet and talk.