Performance – Project – Workshops
Upcoming:
2025
WORKSHOP: Self- & Co-regulation through BMC and CI, Helsinki, 17.-18.5.2025
With Kaisa Kukkonen and Lindon Shimizu
WORKSHOP: Leaning and Listening, Helsinki, 12.-13.4.2025
FESTIVAL: Hetki – Festival of Improvisation, Helsinki 24.5.2025
RETREAT: Poetic Touch – Contact Improvisation and Writing Retreat, Ponderosa Stolzenhagen, Germany 1.-5.10.2025.
Organised by Juan Urbina, supported by Christine Mauch. Poetic Touch retreat is an exploration of how movement and writing intertwine. We will relax into different levels of touch and movement together, diving deep and soft into the point of contact, finding ways to create and weave with movement, words and each other.
FESTIVAL: Windberg Contact Festival, Germany, 22.-27.7.2025
I’m teaching an Intensive with the title Leaning and Listening at the Windberg Contact Festival.
Past:
2025
WORKSHOP: Radiating Permission – Radiating Clarity, CI Workshop with Gesine Daniels. Tanzfabrik Berlin, 22.-23.3.2025
WORKSHOP: Consent and Liquid Bodies — a CI Workshop for response-able dancing, La Mimosa, Madrid, 23.2.2025
FESTIVAL: Skiing on Skin Festival, Vierumäki, Finland, 9.-15.2.2025
Two classes on the title Poetic scores for CI with Otto Akkanen, Consent Talk with Petri Taipale, and organising with the group of 15 others.
2024
CI and the Undercurrents of Fascia – with Iiris Raipala and Kaisa Kukkonen
– In this workshop we will dive deeper in the point of contact –
When: Sat 24.- Sun 25.8.2024, 11-16
Where: Humina-tila, Uutiskatu 2, Pasila, Helsinki
22.-27.10.2024 Nordtanz Festival 2024, Hamburg, Germany
I am teaching two workshops at the Nordtanz festival about the basics of Contact Improvisation.
8.-14.8.2024 Contact Festival Freiburg
I will be teaching a class with the title Singing Spines at the oldest and biggest Contact Improvisation festival in Europe.
3.2.2024 Hetki festival, Maunula House, Helsinki
At Hetki I performed and thaught on the topic of Touch in Improvisation Performance
Other workshops and performances were by the amazing Vera Nevanlinna, Liisa Risu and Soile Lahdenperä who all have long careers in dance.
29.3.-1.4.2024 Freiburg OsterJam
I have a Cat intro to the jam, and danced a lot at the Freiburg OsterJam!
27.-28.4.2024 Suostumus kontaktissa – Consent in touch-based practices – workshop, Huminatila, Helsinki
A workshop to support Contact Improvisation and other touch-based practices. We will practice, move, talk and explore together in a small, closed group for the weekend on questions of consent. There are 14 places in the workshop.
10.30-16.30 with a lunch break
Price 130€-250€ (sliding scale according to your financial situation)
registration: kaisa.liisa.kukkonen@gmail.com
5.-9.6.2024 Midnight Sun CI Festival Finland, Karjaa,
Leaning and Listening – CI skills
An intensive by Terhi Rasilo and Kaisa Kukkonen about our favourite ja juiciest basic techniques of Contact Improvisation. Join us if you are at the beginning of your CI exploration or you want to get back to the basics. This intensive is suitable for everybody. Other teachers: Iiris Raipala, Vega Luukkonen, Mirva Mäkinen, Otto Akkanen and more, music jams by Sakari Savola!
23.1.2024 Tämä on luonnos -ilta, Esitystaiteen keskus, Helsinki
Sharing my practice with Hanna Heino on improvisation and words, we call it Poetic Somatics
2023
11.-20.12.2023 Take This Touch Inside Your Body – exhibition and events at Asbestos Art Space, Helsinki.
30.9. klo 11-14, Kissaksi-työpaja, Humina-tila, Helsinki
20.-25.11. Cat Café -projektin residenssi, Dansverkstæđiđ, Reykjavik.
15.-19.11. Kissaksi-työpaja, Reykjavík Dance Festival, osana Apap-verkoston Feminist Futures koulua.
1.6.-31.8. Taiteellinen tutkimusprojekti: Touching with New Words.
1.-6.8. Teaching at Mama Contact Festival, in Am Windberg, Germany
17.-23.7. MA – emptiness, a residency at Impulstanz Festival 2023, as a part of Symposium for Dance and Other Contemporary Practices Lace #1: topographies of Touch
7.-11.6. Teaching at Finnish Contact Festival, Karjaa, Finland
30.1.-27.2. Kosketuksia – Touch Lab – Touch as an Artistic Practice A group to research touch in Helsinki.
2021-22
5., 7., 12. and 14.10. at 9-10. Morning classes About Proximity and Touch at Dansverkstæðið Reykjavik.
August, moving to Iceland to study MFA in Performing Arts with the project About Touch. Workshops, classes and performances.
Working on the project: An artistic exploration on radical intimacy and queer feminist film aesthetics and production methods, with Synes Elischka and Vilma Riitijoki.
2021
Took part in the Future of CI -conference at Earthdance, panel with Penelope Chivas and Adriana Pegorer: Transitioning Towards Connections – How to engage with the practice of touch during and after the pandemic
2020
Received a grant as a part of a working group for a project: An artistic exploration on radical intimacy and queer feminist film aesthetics and production methods, with Synes Elischka and Vilma Riitijoki. Koneen Säätiö
One of three winners of Nuori Voima – debyte as a poet competition.
Teaching 6 single classes of Contact Improvisation in Frankfurt, at Tabeko.
Contact Improvisation Work Week, small festival in Outokumpu, March 2020.
2019-2021
October Moving to Frankfurt to study at MAcODE. Writing thesis with the topic “Noticing Power and Hierarchy in Teaching Touch and Contact Improvisation”, the thesis will be finished in July 2021.
2019
8.8. Teaching a class as a part of Contact Improvisation Sommerserie, Somatische Akademie, Berlin
29.7.-4.8. Contact Meets Contemporary – teaching a class, Göttingen, Germany
22.-15.5. Karelia Contact festival – teaching two classes, Outokumpu, Finland
12.4. 16:00 & 18:00 Maybe I Lay on Your Belly Forever at Performing Love festival, Kiasma, 5th floor. Concept: Diana Thielen, Kaisa Kukkonen. Performers: Kaisa Kukkonen, Sebastian Lopéz–Lehto, Linda Priha, Iiris Raipala, Niko Rantanen, Terhi Rasilo, Iina Taijonlahti, Natalia Castrillón.
11.-14.3. Open classes – Maybe I Lay on Your Belly Forever with Kaisa and Diana Thielen, Sweden.
4.-17.3. SKOG-STAD residency in Sweden, organised by DansPlats Skog and Shake it Collaborations. Maybe I Lay on Your Belly Forever Demo at DansPlats Skog Sat 9.3. 18:00 and Stockholm Sat 16.3. 19:00.
10.-16.2. Skiing on Skin festival, contact improvisation festival, Finland – organising, teaching and facilitating.
2018
Dec – Palamaton kynttilä -festivaali, Maybe I will Lay on Your Belly Forever, workshop
16.-18.11. Hetki, a festival of improvised moments – organising and performing, Helsinki
28.7.-5.8. Contact meets Contemporary festival – teaching a class 1001 ways to roll, Göttingen, Germany
9.4. Maybe I Will Lay On Your Belly Forever #2 – sharing of a continuing progress of a performance with Diana Thielen, Altes Finanzamt, Berlin.
11.4.-9.5. Contact improvisation course: Learning to Jam, Helsinki
13.4. M{IF} Performance Lab II – The Fierce Urgency of Now Demo with Gesa Piper, Helsinki
7.3.-4.4. Contact improvisation course: From the Centre to the Sky, Helsinki
11.-17.2. Skiing On Skin festival – organising and teaching a serie of classes: Negotiating and communicating in CI, Karjaa, Finland
2017
8.12. Improvisaatioillat: TRIOT + Pia Lindy soolo + Atmosfärg trio (Eero Savela, Tapani Varis ja Alf Forsman), Maunula-talo, Metsäpurontie 4, Helsinki, 19-21.
5.12. Improvisaatioillat: TRIOT + Nina Viitamäki soolo – two improvised performances, Forum Box, Helsinki, 19-20.
2.12. Improvisaatioillat: TRIOT – improvisation performance with Heini Nukari and Elina Hauta-Aho, Virgiinia, Helsinki, 14-15.
17.11. Maybe I will lay on your belly forever – sharing of a continuing progress of a performance with Diana Thielen, Altes Finanzamt, Berlin.
14.11. Score Jam – facilitation of a Berlin Score Jam. Score: “I am taking care that everything in the space is serving my dancing body, and I trust that everyone else is doing the same.”, Berlin.
26.8. Two trios – A great collection of performers coming together for an evening of two trios. Trio with Heini Nukari and Elina Hauta-Aho, Forum Box, Helsinki.
11.10.-1.11. Contact improvisation is communication without words – workshop with Terhi Rasilo, Helsinki
6.9.-4.10. Contact improvisation course on basic skills – Leaning and listening, Helsinki
24.-28.5. In Touch Festival Berlin, teaching a class with Nadja Schwarzenbach
26.4-17.5. Contact improvisation course on basic skills, Helsinki
25.2. Silent jam – solo dance, Zodiak Centre for New Dance
18.1-8.2. Contact improvisation course on basic skills, Helsinki
14.1. Music jam with Sergio Castrillon, Zodiak Centre for New Dance
2016
26.11. Silent jam – Attraction, Esitystaiteen Keskus
16.10-6.11. Saa sanoa, art work from Minna Heikinaho, Exhibition Laboratory
22.10. Silent jam – Shared space, own dance, Zodiak Centre for New Dance
10.8. Silent jam, Zodiak Centre for New Dance
26.8. Art Sport Quartet / work in progress / chor. Iiris Raipala / Outokumpu Dance Education
2.-7.8. Movement meditation at the Exhibition / National Museum
30.7. We are Sisters / contact improvisation Demo in the Light hub, Järna
25.6. Tyhjän sykli IV / dance improvisation performance with Katariina Vähäkallio, Raisa Vennamo / Petkeljärvi National Park
11.6. Blind Dance / one to one -performance with Gesa Piper / X Dance Festival – Edges of the Body / Cabel Factory
13.5. Art Sport Quartet Wrong side up – demo and a jam / Theatre school Helsinki