Theatre, dance and circus around the world
The Main Theme of the Festival 2019 is “Emotions as a medicine for the soul”
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TUESDAY 4.6
15.00 ROC-IT SHOW, Roc (Germany)
Walking Street Koskenparras, 45 min
Come see The Man With The Iron Hand aka The Human Blockhead, The Least Flexible Contortionist, Kenny – The Fire Eating Chicken, The World’s Only Inflatable Boy as well as many more dangerous and hilarious stunts. This is a show for all ages that you will never forget, performed by your friendly neighbourhood freak: ROC ROC IT.
17.00 ROBUST LAND – Beautiful Xiuzhou, Excellent Life.
Modern Civilian Art Exhibition of Xiuzhou. Opening of the exhibition (China),
Imatra Art Museum
18.00 The Acro-Polka Show, The Kalashnikov Band, (Germany)
Walking Street Koskenparras ( 40 min)
The Acro-Polka Show – The Kalashnikov Band Kabaret Kalashnikovin bändi esittää räiskähtävän variaation balkanilaisia rytmejä maustettuna parhailla akrobaattinäytteillä katushowssaan, joka on pala täyspitkästä esityksestä ja toimii täydellisenä maistiaisena – sillä tulet haluamaan sitä lisää!
19.00 PIEDRA, Cielo rasO Dance Company (Spain)
Opening of the festival,
Theatre Imatra
Tickets 23€ / 18€ Buy tickets
”Stone is proposed for three dancers, as a way to explore resistance, conquest and failure. The cruel hardness of the body and the moment of fracture that surprises as something unexpected. It is almost certain that at some point in the process something will split, and cause us to continue leaving behind, part of what we were and that we are no longer, and something that soon, we will no longer be.”
Director: Igor Calonge
Performers: Ainhoa Usandizaga Estarloa, Emma Riba Santuré, Víctor Fernández Durán Assistant Director: Gabriel F.
Lighting Design: Sergio García
Costume Design: Amalia Elorza
Production and Distribution: Igor Calonge Sculpture: Beatriz Churruca
WEDNESDAY 5.6
15.00 EL DJABOLO, Djuggledy, (Germany),
Walking Street Koskenparras (40 min)
Jan Manske is DJuggledy, a virtuoso diabolo juggler with a unique style and Berlin tongue to boot!
With the experience from various shows and projects since 2000, as well as participation in international festivals and events in more than 35 countries, the entertainer, juggler & showman from Berlin (Germany) presents his award-winning streetshow El Diabolo – an energy packed show with banging tunes, comedy and artistic talent!
17.00 THE ACRO-POLKA SHOW, The Kalashnikov Band (Germany)
Walking Street Koskenparras (40 min)
19.00 The Trials of John Demjanjuk. A Holocaust Cabaret (Russia)
Independent project of Ilya Moschitskiy
Theatre Imatra
Duration: 110 min (no interval)
Tickets 18€ / 25€ Buy tickets
With English subtitles
Canadian dramaturge John Garfinkel has created a play based on a real forensic process at the heart lasting for 30 years. John Demjanjuk, who is the citizen of USA and Ukrainian born, is blamed and found guilty in murdering 28 060 prisoners in the Nazi death camp. It was believed, that in actual circumstances Demjanjuk was “Ivan the Terrible” who resembles a proverb of the cruellest executioner in the history of Majdanek, Sobibor and Flossenburg. Long and dramatic peripeteias of his life, which are reaching the absurd, remained the conditions as a base for the performance – sentence of death and denials, subsequent sentence of 5 years. Ilya Moshitskiy presents the play as a satiric show and it refers us to the epic Berthold Brecht`s Theatre.
Real life story of John Demjanjuk is determined with an interesting fact – court sessions were held in a theatre and the process was broadcasted as a reality show.
The play was on in USA and Germany, the premiere in Russia was in the end of April 2017.
The performance is a laureate of Saint-Petersburg`s awards “Breakthrough” in nominations “Best director” and “Best artist”.
Author: Jonathan Garfinkel
Director: Ilya Moshitskiy
Composer: Dmitriy Saratskiy
Cast: Iosif Koshelevich, Philipp Mogilnitskiy, Andrey Kondratyev, Anastasiya Balueva, Anastasia Kipina, Alisher Umarov
Musicians: Muusikot: Piano – Jaroslav Obraztsov, Rummut – Stepan Vasilyev, Basso – Anna Zavorina, Trumpetti – Aleksandr Shcherbakov
THURSDAYI 6.6
17.00 MYSTERY, Giraffe Royal (Estonia)
Walking Street Koskenparras (45 min)
”Giraffe Royal” theatre is unique in their own and unlike anything else, but their work has a common basis, rooted in the mystical tradition of the carnival, which gives incredible inner freedom.
”Giraffe Royal” has been working in the genre of visual theatre for more than quarter century. At the heart of the troupe’s creative method is in-depth study of clowning, folklore, pantomime, ritual dance, technical mastery of brandishing swords, street theatre – those rare genres which, embody the profession essence. The combined mastery of this skills together with state of the art modern stage production is the secret of their amazingly strong impact on the public.
Actors: Stanislav Warkki, Larissa Lebedeva, Anna Warkki
19.00 KABARET KALASHNIKOV (GERMANY)
A wild Vodka Variety Show
”THE WEDDING SHOW”
Theatre Imatra
Duration: 70 min
Tickets 18€ / 25€ Buy tickets
High class circus acts, Live-Music and Comedy, performed by international street and circus performers, melt together in a turbulent show unlike any other.
A night in the little town of Hoodlivnitz, somewhere in the east, far, far away. This is the place where they dance tango and polka, where they fight and make love and where the night lasts as long as there is vodka…and vodka there is!
Everything else is unpredictable: Russian acrobatics collide with New York freak-show, Berlin manners embrace British humour, and French improvisation gets tangled up with Polish contortionism – or vice versa?
The shows are anarchic, packed with exciting acts, abstract surprises and banging balkan beats, which never let the audience off the hook. This fantastic mixture comes straight out of the Berlin underground!
FRIDAY 7.6
14.00 ROC IT SHOW, Roc, (Germany),
Walking Street Koskenparras (45 min)
16.00 CRAZY CREW, Mr Pejo’s Wandering Dolls (Russia),
Walking Koskenparras (40 min)
A team of cheerful cameramen shooting film about everything and everyone. In an attempt to make a blockbuster, they find the main characters among the public. Everyone feels like a star under the sights of the cameras.
17.00 IMBALANCE, Andy Snatch, (Germany),
Walking Street Koskenparras (45 min)
As one of Europe’s best comedy jugglers, Andy Snatch manipulates balls, clubs, devilsticks, juggles hot and sharp objects, plays with the audience’s attention, and performs precarious balance acts to round things up.
Determined to prove to the world that he is capable of all the heights of artistic choreography and juggling precision, he will of course achieve the seemingly impossible.
This show will leave the crowd’s ribs aching – Imbalance is side-splitting fun!
19.00 TRAD ATTACK! (Estonia)
”SHIMMER GOLD” TOUR
Culture House Virta, Karelia Hall
Duration: 75 min
Tickets 20€ / 30€ Buy Tickets
Trad.Attack! has really turned Estonian music scene upside down by bringing traditional music to the big stages, building modern world around its archaic sounds. It is often said that the band with its three members sounds so big that you would think there’s much more people on the stage.
They take traditional songs – sometimes starting with scratchy recordings of long vanished village voices – and build pulsating rhythmic structures, creating an impressively big sound from acoustic 12-string guitar, drums and an array of whistles, bagpipes and jew’s harps.
All three band members grew up with music around them and each had been active on the Estonian music scene for more than 15 years before they started Trad.Attack! in 2014. In the beginning it was meant to be just simple, fun and experimental. Surprisingly for the band, their first tune “Kooreke” became a hit in Estonia… Since then the band has received 21 Music Awards in Estonia, released their debut album ”AH!” recognized internationally and toured in 37 countries from China to Canada, including significant showcase festivals as WOMEX, Eurosonic and Transmusicales.
SATURDAY 8.6.2019
9.00 VALON VUOKSI – Kulttuurikävely Imatralla.
Lähtö Koskenpartaalta.
10-16 KUNINKAAN PIDOT. Koko perheen fantastinen keskiaikatapahtuma,
Hiljan Piha
13.00 DOLLS AND CLOWNS, E. Demmeni Marionette Theatre (Russia)
Walking Street Koskenparras (50 min)
“Dolls and clowns” – musical act, in which classical marionettes play out a circus performance. Prototype of this performance was first presented almost 100 years back by the founder of the theater – Evgeniy Demmeni. Today’s version contains modern and historical acts alike. Spectacle presents all the variety of acts of Russian circus – trained bears, tightrope walker, air gymnasts, jugglers, acrobats, clowns, characters from the “Swan Lake” and lyrical Piero. In the performances, modern dolls are used, as well as unique dolls handmade back in 20th century by famous Russian theatrical artists. Acts amaze by their virtuosity and purity of technical performance.
15.00 IMBALANCE, Andy Snatch (Germany),
Walking Street Koskenparras (45 min)
17.00 CRAZY CREW, Mr Pejo’s Wandering Dolls (Russia),
Walking Street Koskenparras (45 min)
18.00 RAPIDS SHOW, Imatrankoski
19.00 SUSANNA LEINONEN COMPANY (Finland)
NASTY
Culture House Virta, Karelia Hall
Duration: 60 min
Tickets 23,50€ / 30€ Buy Tickets
Nasty is a strikingly topical work that centers on the expectations, limitations and attacks targeted at our bodies. The piece presents an unvarnished vision of our world, where evil hides in the structures of the society but also in ourselves: we pass along the injustice and cruelty we have experienced.
Susanna Leinonen Company’s works are known for their extremely skillful and demanding movement. This time choreographer Susanna Leinonen and her ensemble have chosen to examine our bodily limits , as well as how constantly being looked at and under conflicting demands and expectations shape the female body and experience. In the center of the work are dancers and their bodies as tools of artistic work. In Nasty, the highly trained physique becomes a machine that stretches, bends and creaks to fulfill its full potential. But the question remains: who gets to define that potential?
Leinonen’s choreography doesn’t revel in violence and corporality, but rather spells out the everyday viciousness we direct at ourselves and at others. Harsh words take their place on the surfaces of the space and on the skin of the dancers as an unstoppable stream of information and opinions. Estonian composer Arvo Pärt’s delicate and expressive music contrast and completes this stark vision the world.
Choreography Susanna Leinonen
Music Arvo Pärt, Max Richter, Jóhann Jóhansson, Hildur Gudnadóttir & Robert Aiki Aubrey, Teemu Korpipää
Sound design Teemu Korpipää
Costumes Sari Nuttunen
Lighting design Harri Peltonen
Video projections Ville Seppänen
Dancers Emmi Hakala, Tiia Huuskonen, Maria Nurmela, Elisa Tuovila, Tatiana Urteva