Dates:
- Tue, 25 Aug 2026, 19:00–20:00
- Wed, 26 Aug 2026, 19:00–20:00
- Fri, 28 Aug 2026, 19:00–20:00
- Sat, 29 Aug 2026, 18:00–19:00
- Sun, 30 Aug 2026, 15:00–16:00
OLEMA is a contemporary circus performance exploring and attuning itself to the experience of connection and the undoing of anthropocentrism.
The piece takes its inspiration from the story of an extinct bird, whose solitary song ends in silence. On the stage, acrobatics, dance, music and visual art meld together. The performance asks, what is left after a loss, and if what has been lost can still be found in the body, voice, and movement.
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Circus offers a singular context for this inquiry: its history is entwined with the thresholds between the human and the more-than-human – from the serpent-like contortionists (käärmeihminen, ‘snake-human’ in Finnish), to beast tamers, and legacies of bodily dehumanisation.
The dramaturgical core of the work grows from the extinction story of the Kauaʻi ʻōʻō bird species. The last male of the species continued to sing its duet-form mating call even after the last female had disappeared in a hurricane in 1982. In the 1987 recording by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, heard during the performance, ever-lengthening silences open within the song – spaces for another voice to enter, a voice that no longer answers.
On stage, the circus artists move at the thresholds of acrobatics, dance, balance, and a corporeality that reaches toward the more-than-human. The electroacoustic music brings forth the pulse of the living and the finality of extinction. The work of costume desig...
Cost: 20 / 7 €
Bookings: Booking information is available from the event source.
Categories: Musiikki, Tanssi, Teatteri ja sirkus, Caisa, Suomi, Ruotsi, Englanti, dance (performing arts), theatre (art forms), son mexicano, dances
More information: http://www.caisa.fi/en/events/event/26072EA705D313E11BEDE60688B08C79/OLEMA
Source: Event information supplied by City of Helsinki Linked Events.
