Program announced for Tallinn performing arts festival Saal Biennaal

This August, the 21st edition of the international performing arts festival "Saal Bienaal is set to take place in Tallinn. This year's main program features 12 productions, with a mix of international and Estonian-created performances.
The 2025 Saal Biennaal program features the following performances:
Harald Beharie's return with "Undersang" – a vibrating and rhythmic performance ritual based on dissonance, raising questions about belonging and cultural fictions.
Creating a site of experience, Xenia Koghilaki's" Slamming" transforms mosh pit practices on stage, reconstituting a collective ritual that lurks behind an ostensible rage.
Blending club dances, drag technique, and somatic work, Sepideh Khodarahmi's performance "The Erotic Clown" plays a game of seduction and destruction which ultimately ends with sitting in a cake.
Ramona Nagabczyńska's performance "Silenzio!" uses opera to tell us about female voices, drawing upon the political aspect of the human voice.
In "The Teenage Songbook of Love and Sex" by Ásrún Magnúsdóttir and Alexander Roberts young people take the stage to form narratives about the youth, singing songs based on their own romantic and sexual experiences.
Mart Kangro's "Pantheon" presents a story of interruptions and continuities, of being together and diverging, presented by three generations.
Netti Nüganen's Estonian premiere of "Ash, horizon, riding a house" is a continuation from the previous SAAL Biennaal, where Netti presented her work "Myth: last day." In her new work Netti Nüganen, KISLING and Pire Sova open up an ice-manufacturing enterprise, navigating between perspectives on locality and looking at the influences of dominant cultures.
Gob Squad brings "News From Beyond," acting as mediums who wander between two worlds in order to establish contact and break through to the other side.
In "All Together," Michikazu Matsune, Elizabeth Ward and Franz Poelstra share stories of people who have been important to them, but for some reason cannot be here with us at this moment. The performance connects what is present to what is absent, reminding us that: "No matter if we love or hate one another, as a matter of fact, fortunately or unfortunately, whether you are here or not, we all belong together."
The festival's fiber program also brings together various thinkers, creating moments of sharing knowledge and practices with each other.
Sepideh Khodarahmi leads a workshop, exploring choreographies of erotica through the lenses of destruction, sensuality, comedy and disgust.
Michikazu Matsune's story-sharing workshop focuses on dreams and nightmares, Marta Keil and Satu Herrala invite people to imagine a loving relationship between artists and institutions.
Organized together with the Contemporary Art Museum of Estonia (EKKM), a workshop by Max Hannus proposes ways of using tools of ethical non-monogamy in collegial relationships, followed by a public talk on personal relationships and professional choices.
Kristina Birk-Vellemaa, an anthropologist and sex educator, will discuss "The Teenage Songbook of Love and Sex" with the participating teenagers.
In "5 GESTURES TOWARDS… "two artists open the studio to the public after 10 days of working together for the first time. For the in-between moments, the wood-heated Logi sauna offers flashes of warmth with the possibility of a cold dip in the sea.
Marto Mägi and Siim Pojeng will give a concert at the Von Krahl theater before the festival ends with a party at EKKM.
The 2025 Saal Biennaal takes place from August 21-30 in Tallinn.
More information, including the full program, can be found here.
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Editor: Michael Cole, Rasmus Kuningas