Programme: When You Reach the Core of Love It Hurts and You Die
Dear audience,
It’s challenging and probing to measure tenderness and love by composition. Because you cannot always explain why something shattered you, or why it didn’t.
In this piece, we gather in an arena of love.
The ambiguity, as you touch the grass with your fingers. The proximity of your breath, skin, and gaze. The sound of your foot kicking into the grass, soon sending us off to memories and affective spaces. The intimacy, when you stop dancing for a second. The question in your eyes.
Here we gather to ponder love, sport and art as potential collective emotional arenas.
Welcome to When You Reach the Core of Love It Hurts and You Die, an immersive experience crashing somewhere between dance, performance, installation and theatre,
with the risk of becoming present together.
Lots of love,
Ellen Krogh Skjølstrup
Working group
- Choreography: Ellen Skjølstrup (Master’s programme in Choreography)
- Performers: Sonjis Laine, Beatriče Mažintaitė (Master’s programme in Dance Performance), Iida Nikander, Aino Aura (Degree programme in Dance)
- Lighting design: Saana Ott (Master’s programme in Lighting Design)
- Sound design: Io Pettersson (Master’s programme in Sound Design)
- Costume design: Emilia Hutri (Aalto ARTS)
- Scenography: Mira Roivainen (Master’s programme in Scenography)
- Dramaturgy: Yamélie Spautz (Master’s programme in Comparative Dramaturgy and Performance Research)
Support services for artistic activities at the Theatre Academy
- Stage manager: Selmeri Saukkonen
- Lighting: Ville Halkonen
- Sound: Heikki Laakso
- Costume: Sirpa Luoma & the Costume department of Theatre Academy
- Props: Maria-Johanna Peura
- AV: Jyrki Oksaharju
- Production coordinator: Rosa Sedita
- Producer: Riikka Lakea
- Promo picture: Ellen Skjølstrup
- Poster: Ellen Skjølstrup
- Photography: Roosa Oksaharju
- Programme: Jaana Forsström
In collaboration with
Master’s Degree Programme in Costume Design: Performing Arts and Film at Aalto ARTS, the School of Arts, Design and Architecture
Supervising teachers
- Kirsi Monni (choreography)
- Jana Unmüssig (choreography)
- Maria Saivosalmi (dance & dance performance)
- Mikko Niemistö (dance & dance performance)
- Luca Sirviö (lighting design)
- Tom Lönnqvist (sound design)
- Elina Lifländer (scenography)
- Siru Kosonen (costume design)
- Emil Santtu Uuttu (dramaturgy)
Cited material, e.g. songs, music, video, text
- Johann Sebastian Bach – Erbarm dich mein, o Herre Gott, BWV 721 (Arr. Fred Thomas)
- Fred Thomas, piano; Aisha Orazbayeva, violin; Lucy Railton, cello
Performance times
- Sat 23.5.2026 at 16:30
- Mon 25.5.2026 at 19:15
- Tue 26.5.2026 at 17:45
- Wed 27.5.2026 at 15:30
- Thu 28.5.2026 at 18:30
Venue
Theatre Academy, Studio 3, Haapaniemenkatu 6, Helsinki
Duration
40 min.
Content notices
There will be haze and smoke during the performance.
Course description
The Artistic Collaboration Projects (ACO) brings together students from seven Uniarts and Aalto University degree programs. Over a period of five weeks, the students have explored and practiced artistic collaboration in performances based on movement and choreography. The process culminates in performances of all five works during the last week of May.
During the artistic collaboration project (ACO) students work primarily within the current framework of contemporary dance and performance, in multidisciplinary artistic working groups.
ACO is a collaborative project involving the Theatre Academy’s master’s programs in choreography, dance, lighting design, sound design, scenography, comparative dramaturgy and performance research, costume design at Aalto University, and second-year bachelor’s students in dance at the Theatre Academy.
The aim of the course is to deepen students’ understanding of the collegial, movement-based artistic process and their ability to work creatively, purposefully, and responsibly in an artistic working group. The course develops an understanding of the specific characteristics and requirements of different areas of the multidisciplinary process, enabling students to develop their artistic work through constructive negotiation and collaboration.