Choreography+

CHOREOGRAPHY+ is a space and time where choreography breathes wider than dance. It is a place where movement meets language, sound touches the body, light draws the rhythm and a thought dances into the unknown. 

This space asks in a whisper, can choreography be independent and exist in its own gravity? Or does it still need other worlds around it to grow, expand and create new horizons?

CHOREOGRAPHY+ is a promise to discover new fields of tension: between movement and stillness, structure and freedom. It is an invitation for the audience to witness the possibilities of choreography. Chaos, rhythm and form will lead the way.

CHOREOGRAPHY+ is an evening of performances, where choreographers have chosen an artist from another field to cooperate with on the stage. Together they have created a short performance to experience the possibilities of choreography.

Juulius Vaiksoo + Hirvo Surva
“Song and Dance Celebration”
Voice: Anu Lamp
Thanks: Eik Erik Sikk

Juulius is a dancer, Hirvo is a conductor. Juulius cannot understand what Hirvo’s profession is all about and what makes it such a valued profession. Both professions are physical and can be perceived as choreography. During this joint process, they learn about each other’s professions and try to find a common vocabulary in order to combine their strengths for the stage. Juulius dances according to Hirvo’s baton. Hirvo conducts something completely new for him. How does a conductor affect a dancer’s performance? How to conduct silence and body language?

Juulius Vaiksoo is an Estonian dancer who graduated from the Icelandic University of the Arts in 2024 with a degree in contemporary dance. After that, he has continued his freelance life both in Estonia and abroad – constantly improving himself in Berlin and Brussels and giving performances in Finland, Sweden and Scotland. He mainly classifies himself as a dancer, but he is also involved in organizing and teaching dance events.

Hirvo Surva is an Estonian choir director. He studied at the Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre under Ants Üleoja. He has been a conductor for several choirs – the Kalev Boys’ Choir, the Revalia Chamber Male Choir, the Estonian National Broadcasting Mixed Choir and the Male Choir of the Academy of Sciences. Since 2001, he has been the principal conductor of the Estonia Boys’ Choir. In addition, he has been constantly active as a conductor, member or artistic director at the Song Festival (1997, 2002, 2014).

Rebecca Green + Maret Lüllman
“Body of Work”

“Body of Work” explores both physical and invisible labor, maneuvering through gender roles, expectations, and power dynamics within the traditionally male-dominated field of construction. Dripping sweat, grunts and groans accompany the repeated lifting of heavy objects from place to place. What is the choreography of a catcall?

Civil engineer Maret Lüllman will act as stage designer in collaboration with Rebecca Green, who will direct and choreograph. As a civil engineer and builder, Maret Lüllman has worked for many years in strongly male-dominated fields. Her unique observations around respect, behavior, and power dynamics are both insightful and informative in the work. Rebecca Green has long explored the themes of entanglement, emotional labor, femininity, sexuality, and power structures in human relationships, and she continues to investigate these topics through movement and the body in this latest collaboration.

Rebecca Green is an Estonia based artist creating work at the intersection of dance, theater and performance art. Holding a deep fascination with the body, Rebecca is endlessly researching the expressive potential of humans through movement. With a background in photography, Rebecca often utilizes potent imagery as a key component of her work. Recently Rebecca has been exploring what it means to play the character of the self on stage and is engaging with new modes of audience participation. Rebecca is a graduate of both California Institute of the Arts and the Master of Arts (MA) – Contemporary Physical Performance Making (CPPM) cohort.

Maret Lüllman works in the construction industry and is a site engineer at a construction site. She studied building design and construction management at the Tartu College of Tallinn University of Technology.

Mark Monak + Kärt Hammer
“My House”

Family. Or just close people. One common space where we belong. The contact, collision and separation of the physical and spiritual. The complexity and self-evidentness of feelings, their obviousness and complete incomprehensibility. Being and the endless search for existence. How to be, how one must be? How to find the way to oneself and from there to others? Having reached another person, having loved, sooner or later grief comes into play. Grief is like a terrible reminder of the depth of love. Grief brings us together with the deeper essence of things. Pain is a transformative tool through which re-creation takes place. From this new energy can be born, new life and a previously unknown deeper joy. Because everything has changed.

Step by step, “My House” creates an experimental space for this risky expedition. Feelings are supported by beauty, life is amplified by death. Something always shines in the darkness. We need to talk about it so that we can understand it.

Mark Monak began his dance journey in 2003 at the WAF Dance dance school, where he studied various dance styles under the guidance of various teachers for 15 years: hip-hop, modern and show dance, and contemporary dance. Over the years, he has improved his skills at many Estonian dance schools and studios and collaborated with choreographers both in Estonia and abroad. Mark’s dance style has developed through the interweaving of different dance styles and their essence. Therefore, he does not categorize himself under any specific dance style, but tries to find harmony in movement and creation in the combination of different styles.

Kärt Hammer has studied philosophy (BA) and cultural theory (MA) at Tallinn University and has worked with the paradox of the possibility and impossibility of interpreting a work of art in his work. Hammer is an interdisciplinary artist who mainly focuses on purely aesthetic and intuitive abstraction in their work, avoiding excessive textuality. They are searching for silence in chaos, playing with emptiness and noise, pure line and form in their work. The darker aspects of human nature, the contact between the divine and the human, the metaphorical sexuality that permeates everywhere are cast in a minimalist, precise form.