Siim Tõniste and Üüve-Lydia Toompere. Are You Performing Yourself?

Tallinn Art Hall will host an innovative social durational performance, the content of which will be created on site in the span of twelve hours. Questions from the audience, topical events and the performance of top choreographers reacting to these intertwine into an unprecedented whole with great music. The performances are produced in cooperation with Tallinn Art Hall and Kanuti Gildi SAAL.

The driving force behind Siim Tõniste and Üüve-Lydia Toompere’s durational performance, Are You Performing Yourself? is dialogue: spectators can ask anything from the performers. Indeed, all questions are allowed!

In the durational performance lasting from noon to midnight, the performers and the audience have an equally important role in shaping the performance experience. The course of the dialogue is unpredictable, at the same time influenced by all participants. Everyone can step into the middle of the circle and put themselves in the position of a performer, while the performer always has the opportunity not to reply. Their movement is a visible commentary and a manifestation of how the questions affect them. This social choreography project weaves the relationships of people present in a single room, along with their decisions, hesitations, actions and omissions, into individual and collective patterns of behaviour.

Besides Tõniste, Toompere and the audience, the project also involves DJs Laura Sinimäe, Tanel Mütt, Harli Jaanimägi & Kevin Park, who will contribute to the sound environment and dialogue that evolves during the performance.

Siim Tõniste and Üüve-Lydia Toompere are freelance performers, directors and choreographers. Their work is based on community research and documentary materials. Their recent collaborations include the social choreography and participatory theatre production supersocial (August 2020) and Plan T (March 2018 with Piret Jaaks, both co-productions of Kanuti Gildi SAAL), dealing with Estonians’ fear of terrorism. Cultural critic Valle-Sten Maiste has called Toompere and Tõniste’s latest project one of the most remarkable productions of the 2020 theatre year and praised their novel approach and the form chosen to treat the subject, which are not based on any well-known patterns. In autumn 2020, they won the residency award of Fast Forward – Europäisches Festival für junge Regie.

The performance lasts for twelve hours. Tickets can be purchased for 60-minute sessions by purchasing one or more visits at a time. Admission from noon every full and half hour, with a fixed number of participants at the gallery at any time. The performance will take place in accordance with the applicable COVID-19 restrictions. More detailed information will be sent to you by e-mail after your ticket purchase.

The Tallinn Art Hall Foundation is a contemporary art establishment that presents exhibitions in three galleries on the central square of Tallinn – at Tallinn Art Hall and nearby at Tallinn City Gallery and the Art Hall Gallery.

Kanuti Gildi SAAL is a centre of contemporary performing arts located in the Old Town of Tallinn, where co-productions are made in partnerships with freelance artists and several organisations in Estonia and abroad.