In May, support from the TelepART Mobility Support Platform allocated by the Finnish Cultural Institute for the Benelux goes to:
Milla Koistinen at SPRING Performing Arts Festival in Utrecht, the Netherlands.
Breathe evokes the sensation and memory of collective events, celebratory joy, ecstasy and the individual within a crowd. It is a solo-performance in which Milla Koistinen recreates the images of collective events on an empty field, playing with the distance and absence of surrounding bodies. Repetition, pedestrian elements, gestures, stillness and movement, order and chaos, shifting from real to imagined space, recognisable and everyday to the strange and poetic are central in the work of Milla Koistinen.
Visited by a wide range of professionals and the public alike, SPRING Performing Arts Festival presents Breathe in line with the most interesting, innovative and interdisciplinary performing art works from different countries, alongside numerous workshops and talks.
About the artist
Milla Koistinen studied at the Theatre Academy in Helsinki and obtained an MA in Choreography from the HZT Berlin. She has worked among others with Kristian Smeds, Hiroaki Umeda, Peter Verhelst, Cie Heddy Maalem, Christine Gaigg and Hans van den Broeck. Her creations have been played in radialsystem, Dance House Helsinki, Tanzhaus NRW, HAU Hebbel am Ufer, Mad House Helsinki, Barker-theatre Turku, ARGEKultur Salzburg, Fabriktheater Zürich, Dampfzentrale Bern, Ballhaus Ost and in Uferstudios Berlin.
Koistinen has collaborated with Jochen Arbeit, Solistenensemble Kaleidoskop, director Michael Rauter, directors Jemina Sillanpää and Janne Reinikainen at the Finnish National Theatre and with soundpoet Dirk Huelstrunk.
In the summer 2010 she was one of the danceWEB scholarship recipients in Impulstanz Vienna.
She has worked as a guest teacher at SEAD Salzburg, the Iceland Academy of the Arts, Tanzhaus NRW, Sasha Waltz & Guests, Toula Limnaios Company, Staatstheater Braunschweig, Munich DancePAT, Tanzhaus Zürich, Theatre Academy of Helsinki, the University of Tampere, HZT Berlin, Marameo and DOCK 11 in Berlin, Espace Catastrophe in Brussels and PAC Ramallah. In the spring 2019 Milla Koistinen was invited as a lecturer at the Academy of Fine Arts in Helsinki.
In 2020–2024 Milla Koistinen’s work is supported by apap – FEMINIST FUTURES – a project co-funded by the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union.
Read more on Milla Koistinen’s website.
Follow Milla Koistinen on Instagram.
Practical info
Breathe by Milla Koistinen at SPRING Performing Arts Festival
Utrecht, the Netherlands
25.5.2024 at 18:30 at Stadsschouwburg Zocherpark
26.5.2024 at 15:00 at Football club SC Faja Lobi KDS (on the roof of the IKEA Utrecht)
Get your tickets for the performances!
Photo by Dajana Lothert.