Baltic Take Over
10-12 April 2025
Turku, Finland
Performing arts festival Baltic Take Over 2025 will take place from 10th to 12th April in Turku, Finland. This year’s program includes six performances, tied together with talks, discussions, and gatherings in various venues across Turku.
The program of Baltic Take Over proposes a variety of explorations of one’s own being in relation to something else—lost memories, houseplants, aggression, the stories of those we don’t know, rubber gloves filled with water, and bodies made of plastic.
Hanna Kritten Tangsoo and Sigrid Savi open the festival with existentialist humor, believing in a moment where everything will be just fine. COWBODY/Oh wow, it’s you! presents a hotpot of dance, sculpture, music, and fitness trampolines, with a strong undertaste of Nordic awkwardness.
The performance Me / Her by Anita Kremm presents a score of poses that explore the relationship between two bodies — “me” and “the other.” The young artist opens up possibilities for finding new routes to experiencing empathy.
Further scores of poses are explored in Agnietė Lisičkinaitė’s work Hands Up, which is situated somewhere between a performance and a political intervention. Moving through the city space, the artist invites the audience to participate in viewing dance as a tool for social activism, a powerful way to trigger thoughts and questions.
The love for choral singing that all three Baltic countries share is represented by the feminist opera Monstera Deliciosa. This performance by Barbara Lehtna, Līva Blūma, and Linda Krūmiņa brings together four women from different generations to tell their own stories while singing the stories of other women — from the worries of a public toilet attendant to the concerns of a young ecofeminist.
Intimate stories also intertwine in Greta Grinevičiūtė’s performance A Dance for Washing Machine and a Mother. In this performance, a choreographer and dancer raises a question that at first glance might seem banal: “What is the first memory of your mother?” In this world where mothers are either goddesses or monsters from hell, not to have any picture of a mother at all is hard to imagine. How does one live without a portrait of their mother?
With the project Queer Tango Club, Katrīna Dūka forms a temporary collective of people who come together to learn and dance the Argentine tango. The temporary collective is an opportunity for envisioning queer futurities and social structures that transcend current norms and limitations related to gender, sexuality, and identity. The audience is invited to a showing on the last day of the festival.
Baltic Take Over is a performing arts festival co-curated by the New Theatre Institute of Latvia, Kanuti Gildi SAAL (Estonia), and Lithuanian Dance Information Centre, this time in collaboration with Tehdas Teatteri and the New Performance Turku Biennale. Presenting performances by artists mainly working in Baltic countries, the festival serves as the destination of a road trip through Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia. In dialogue with local partners, the festival seeks moments of connection with local scenes, artists, and audiences.
Baltic Take Over thinks of taking over as a way of shifting habitual structures that cultural work often follows. Taking over is gently negotiated and possible only thanks to a warm invitation. Baltic Take Over is presented in collaboration with Tehdas Teatteri, New Performance Turku Biennale, Ehkä-production, Barker-Teatteri, Viinatehdas, Performing Arts Centre Finland (ESKUS), and Aurinkobaletti. The 2025 edition is supported by the Baltic Culture Fund, Nordic-Baltic Mobility Grant for Culture, the Embassy of Estonia in Helsinki, and the Estonian Ministry of Culture.
Contacts:
Central project management & curation: Heneliis Notton / heneliis@saal.ee
Project management & curation (Kanuti Gildi SAAL): Kaie Küünal / kyynal@saal.ee
Project management & curation (NTIL): Ieva Briede / ieva@theatre.lv & Santa Remere / santa@theatre.lv
Project management & curation (LDIC): Ieva Pranckūnaitė / ieva@dance.lt
Project management & curation (Tehdas Teatteri): Venla Luoma / venla.luoma@tehdasteatteri.fi
Press & communication: Mesike Tõrv / mesike@saal.ee