Before heading off for the summer holidays, Kanuti Gildi SAAL invities you to the last residency showings of the season and to celebrate the end of our 24th season.
18:00 - Showing of Sport by Erik Valentin Berg and Marie Ursin
19:00 - Showing of Swedish Asshole by Johanna Karlberg
After: celebration!
Sport is a project that dwells in the relationship between sport and performance art through choreography. It departs from the incredible fact that sports exist and the unfathomable effect it has had on our bodies and ways to relate to each other, through the concepts of competition, training and talent sports promotes. The showing consists of excerpts from three different works in different stages of finalization. We will show a set of psycho-somatic and physical practices set in a mental no-mans-land between sports and dance. The practices points to the social and emotional affects of competition and the way they shape our perception of achievement.
Erik Valentin Berg is a choreographer and performer. His work is a consistent exploration of the potential in the encounter between artwork, audience and context. The pieces, clad in a distinct, dark and palpable aesthetic aim to uncover and underline ideology in social contracts. He has a B.A. in aesthetics from Södertörn University and an M.A. in choreography from Stockholm University of the Arts, his work has been shown nationally and internationally for the past 15 years.
Marie Ursin works with dance, choreography, curation and organization that are always based on collaborative processes and hybrid formats. She is interested in the unique logic of the performer, oversized projects that take on their own character and creating different spaces for togetherness.
Swedish Asshole is a performance dealing with audacity, provocation and power. It is a parody that explores the deprecation and inferiority complex present in Finnish society that arises from the perceived superiority of the Swedish-speaking Finns and Swedish culture.
We are inspired by various cultural phenomena such as the Swedish stand-up and sketch culture, schlager and show culture as well as Swedish reality shows.
The work was initiated by Helsinki based dance artist Johanna Karlberg and is an artistic collaboration with actor Antonia Atarah and dance artist Alen Nsambu. In addition to Karlberg, Atarah and Nsambu, the working group consists of sound designer and musician Nicolas “Leissi” Rehn, dramaturge Even Minn, scenographer Mikko Salminen, costume designer Mirjam Yeboah and lighting designer Kristian Palmu.
Johanna Karlberg (b. 1993, she/her) is a Swedish-speaking Finn dance artist based in Helsinki. Karlberg graduated from the Master programme in Dance Performance from Theatre Academy of the University of the Arts in Helsinki in 2022. She is a founding member of the art collective Lesbo Erotics. During 2025-2026 Karlberg works on an erotic lesbian DIY musical trilogy funded by the Kone foundation. Her work in general deals with social structures, identity and with how to stay open to the possibility of multiple realities and narratives simultaneously.