The TADaCollective | An Evening of Performance in Three Parts

...like crazy

In Concert

Ones Loved and lost now just white.

TADACollective is formed by the students of the Master’s Degree Programme in Dance Performance at the Theatre Academy of the University of the Arts Helsinki. In their final year five of the students have worked collectively towards a joint artistic thesis project together with lighting, sound and costume designers. An evening of performance in three parts is a triptych in which each part can exist as a stand alone work but together they produce a whole – which touches, tastes, feels, hears, and sees the world in a particular way.

The triptych had its premiere in January at the Theatre Academy of the University of the Arts Helsinki and will be touring in Finland before the performance in Tallinn.

Sonja Karoliina Aaltonen (she/they) is a dance maker and dancer-performer currently based in Helsinki, Finland. She holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Dance Performance from Stockholm University of the Arts (former DOCH, 2021) and has graduated as professional dancer from Tampere Conservatoire (2019). Sonja is a part of the international collective Rhizome Dance Collective. Previously, she has enjoyed dancing with Amanda Piña, DACE - Dance Art Critical Ecology, Cristina Caprioli, Isabel Lewis, and Salva Sanchis. Through a feminist gaze, Sonja works with dance and performance practices parallel to artivism. Lately, they have been interested in observing sustainability and care in coexistence both in everyday life and in their artistic work.

Jacqueline Aylward is a dancer, dance maker and pedagog from Naarm (Melbourne), Australia who is based in Tapanila, Helsinki. Jacqueline studied a Bachelor of Fine Arts (Contemporary Dance) at The Victorian College of the Arts in 2014 - 2016, a Bachelor of Arts (History and English/Theater studies) at The University of Melbourne in 2009 - 2014, and Classical Ballet at The Australian Conservatoire of Ballet 2012 - 2013. She has enjoyed working in the dance field with Leah Landau, Lee Searle, Arabella Frahn-Srarkie, Veronika Klaus, Victoria Hunt, Emily Johnson and Kathleen Hermensdorf (Fake Company).
Iris Blauberg is a Helsinki-born dancer, performance artist. Also known as multitasker, visualizer, dreamer and a soft seeker . They are sensitive to listening to feelings and states of mind, occasionally they also connect things to each other based on intuition. They have almost completed the five-year Dance performance degree at Theatre Academy.

Arttu Halmetoja is a Helsinki-based dance artist and studies in the Dance Performance Master Programme in University of The Arts Helsinki. Currently in his art making Halmetoja is interested in intuition, love and abandoning rational thinking. For him, dance at its best is an uninhibited self-expression emerged in the moment and enjoying it. Halmetoja wants to use his art to approach these topics that are important and interesting to him and share his experiences of them in the form of performances.

Lauri Hietala is a lighting designer who is interested in personal differences in how light is perceived and how to pay attention to these differences in the lighting design process. He has also experimented with translating his designs to a verbal form. Is lighting design primarily a visual activity? Can there be also non-visual elements in lighting design?

Maja Kalafatić is a dancer, dance maker, pedagogue, and yoga teacher from Slovenia/Serbia who is currently based in Helsinki. She holds a bachelor’s degree from Salzburg Experimental Academy of Dance and master’s degree from The Cologne University of Music and Dance. While studying at Theatre Academy University of the Arts Helsinki she is trying to finalize her PhD studies at Faculty of Media and Communications in Serbia. She is very much interested in the relation of movement and sound, and she wishes to distribute dance outside of theatre context and share it with locality.

Kasia Zofia Gorniak is a fashion designer based in Helsinki, Finland, originally from Melbourne, Australia. She completed a Master of Arts at Aalto University and a Bachelor of Design at RMIT University. Kasia’s main practice is the knitwear label, ‘talking through our bodies’, with garments formed through collaborative and performative design processes. She also works as a freelancer on on-going research projects which focus on innovations in sustainable textiles.

Performers: Sonja Karoliina Aaltonen, Jacqueline Aylward, Iris Blauberg, Arttu Halmetoja, Maja Kalafatić (all MA in Dance Performance)

Lighting Design: Lauri Hietala (MA in Lighting Design) 

Costume designer: Kasia Gorniak (guest) 

Sound designer: Lauri Kallio (guest) 

Supporting teachers: Simo Kellokumpu (performers) Jani-Matti Salo (light design) 

Tour technician: Rita Löytty
Production by the staff of the Theatre Academy of the University of the Arts Helsinki 

Producer: Salli Berghäll 
Tour production: Nina Numminen

Photo by Katri Naukkarinen

Duration approx. 2h

More info HERE.