Interviewing three Master’s in Choreography alumni

13.11.2026 0 Like 0 kommenttia

Three alumni of the Master’s Programme in Choreography share their artistic journeys, how they found their way into the programme, and what their professional lives have looked like since graduation.

Sara Grotenfelt

Tell me about yourself and how you ended up studying in the MA programme in Choreography at Uniarts Helsinki.

I’m Sara Grotenfelt, I’m from Helsinki and am still living here currently. I have been dancing since I was three years old, and from when I was seven till when I was twelve I did an intensive ballet education. After stopping that, I still continued dancing and eventually I ended up doing my bachelor studies in contemporary dance at the Danish National School of Performing Arts for four years. After my graduation I felt that I wanted to deepen my choreographic thinking and also study theory around dance, art and choreography, and that is when I applied for the Master’s programme in Choreography at Teak. I also wanted to familiarise myself with the process of making choreography from the perspective of someone on the outside rather than performing myself. I started my studies in 2019 and graduated in 2022.

How did studying in the programme shape your practice and what did you take away from it?

My studies were a very intense two and a half years. It really developed my critical thinking in relation to choreography and art, but also towards myself – which can be a very good thing, though sometimes also limiting. I also got to practice my collaborative skills, working with other people in different roles. This was also sometimes uncomfortable for me, to take on the role of the leader in a project. It was great practice for me, since this was something that was not familiar to me before my master’s studies.

My artistic thinking was going in several different directions during my studies, and after finishing my studies I realised more the direction that I want to go as a choreographer. It required some distance and reflection since the studies are so intense, but they ultimately affected my direction a lot. Studying during the pandemic also had an effect on my studies of course, on the one hand there was anxiety about the future and on the other also some unexpected opportunities came up, like funding sources.

What has your professional path been like after graduation and what are you currently busy with?

Since graduating I have been working as a choreographer in my own projects, mostly in the role of choreographer-performer creating solos and smaller group pieces. I have also been performing in other people’s projects. I would describe my work as being broadly in the field of performing arts, sometimes closer to performance art or even theatre. Right after graduation I created a solo work called Last Hurrah, and I am still performing this piece, for example at Moving in November festival now in 2026.

Lately, I have become a mother and my priorities in life and work have somewhat shifted. I have also started studying visual arts education to broaden the spectrum of work I can get involved with, and have been combining the artistic side of my practice with the pedagogical side. I am thinking of pedagogy also in broader terms, in terms of audience engagement for example. I’m currently working at Forum Box gallery organising and facilitating workshops for different groups from children to seniors and I’m also continuing my other artistic work and studying. I’m curious about going deeper with combining visual art with dance, bodily practices and pedagogical thinking in my work in the future.

Ryan Mason

Tell us about yourself and how you ended up studying in the MA programme in Choreography at Uniarts Helsinki.

I’m a dancer and choreographer originally from the US, and I’ve been working professionally in the performing arts for over twenty years. I studied at CalArts, performed with the Limón Dance Company in New York, and later spent several years in Germany working with choreographer Johannes Wieland. Those years were hugely formative. Johannes’s work moved freely between dance, text, and vivid theatrical situations, and being inside that world expanded my sense of what choreography could be. Eventually, I landed in Finland, where I continued performing and making work before entering the MA in Choreography at Uniarts Helsinki.

By then I had already been working for many years, but I didn’t necessarily have a clear language for what I was doing. I have a limited memory, which makes tracing a clean line through my own development somewhat difficult. For example, I can sometimes look at a finished work and have the strange sensation that I didn’t entirely make it. Of course I know I did, or at least was part of making it, but the decisions, accidents, conversations and discoveries that got us there have already begun to fold into one another. I seem to understand things best while I’m inside them. Coming to the MA was partly a chance to interrupt the momentum of professional work and look more closely at what I had been doing instinctively all that time.

How did studying in the programme shape your practice and what did you take away from it?

I think one of the most valuable things the MA gave me was simply the chance to sit with questions for a long time, even when I wasn’t entirely sure what the question was. Spending two years inside an environment of critical thinking, making, talking, reading and trying things through different projects meant that inevitably some of it got under my skin. It gave me time to think deeply around dance, choreography and artistic practices. And to encounter all the language and jargon that comes along with those things and figure out my own relationship to it. For someone who tends to understand things while doing them, that sustained attention was significant.

My thesis brought some of this into conversation with neurodivergence, perception and materiality, and with the slippery, sometimes gooey territory between thinking and doing, intention and action, bodies and the things surrounding them. I also became increasingly interested in choreography as something that doesn’t reside exclusively in dancing. It might be found in sound, an object, a shift of tension, scenography, or in the movement contained inside stillness. I didn’t necessarily find a clearer definition of choreography. If anything, it became something more porous, something with more potential for discovery, research and expression. I probably left with more questions than I entered with, but also with considerably more trust in what can happen when you stay around a question long enough.

What has your professional path been like after graduation and what are you currently busy with?

Since graduating, I’ve continued performing, teaching and making work, much of it through Thar Be Dragons with my partner, Annamari Keskinen. We’ve been working together since before the MA, and it’s difficult for me to separate my artistic development from that collaboration. Annamari’s creative vision has been a huge part of the company’s development. She also does an enormous amount of the relatively invisible labour that allows our work to exist, and I think it’s important to name that. Our recent works include DREAMER, created for the Helsinki City Theater dance company, and the Finnish-Lithuanian co-production SUPERTHING, which premiered at the New Baltic Festival in Lithuania in 2026 and later this year in Erkko hall, Tanssin Talo.

For our next project, Annamari and I have been commissioned by Uniarts Helsinki to create a new work with the third-year Bachelor’s dance students, premiering in April. That feels significant. There’s something moving, and slightly strange, about returning to the Theatre Academy this way: to be invited back with Annamari, bringing a practice we’ve spent years developing together, and to make something with a new generation of dancers in the place where I was given so much time to question my own practice. I’m looking forward to the process and spending time there again.

Lydia Touliatou

Tell us about yourself and how you ended up studying in the MA programme in Choreography at Uniarts Helsinki.

Before moving to Finland, I lived in London, where I completed my Bachelor studies in Contemporary Dance at Trinity Laban and began my professional career. During my graduate studies, I realised my affinity for choreographic making and decided early on to pursue a Master’s degree in Choreography. I learned about the Theatre Academy through my Finnish classmates, who spoke highly of the school’s level and quality. My decision about where to apply for a Master’s degree was shaped by the political climate at the time (Brexit) and my desire for tuition-free study, better work-life balance, and connection with the scenes and discourses of mainland Europe. Visiting Helsinki as a tourist helped me visualise myself living there for (at least) the study period, which encouraged me to make the move.

How did studying in the programme shape your practice and what did you take away from it?

When I think of my studies at Uniarts, I picture my arrival as a tangled, knotted yarn and my departure as an open-ended thread woven in ever-changing intricate patterns. I walked out with clarity and methods for approaching, analysing, and developing my artistic questions into practice. They were two transformative years for my understanding of what ‘choreography’ and ‘ choreographic practice ’ are. Coming from an educational background of large cohorts and limited tutoring time, I was drawn to the Finnish pedagogical approach that shines through this programme, emphasising care, individuality, and critical thinking. As the transformative aspects can begin in the first year, I found the reflexes and expertise of Kirsi Monni and Jana Unmüssig critical to how I carried myself through challenges that arose during my studies. I was part of a close-knit, three-person cohort of very different practitioners (holla at Laura and Ryan!) whose journeys informed mine and with whom I continue my exchange to this day. 

What has your professional path been like after graduation and what are you currently busy with?

After graduation, I joined the “Terra Performing” research project as an assistant researcher, investigating the intersection between Artificial Intelligence, Extractivism, and performance practices. The research project is funded by the Research Council of Finland and is based at Uniarts. In this role, I have explored themes such as the organisation of movement as data, bodily knowledge in the training of robotics, and the ethics of choreographic authorship in the digital era. Meanwhile, I continue my artistic work, with my most recent premiere being ATROPOS (2025) at Zodiak Centre for New Dance. I am currently in the production phase of a new piece, developing my solo choreographic methods for a group of performers. In addition to research and artistic work, I have been working as a production assistant for the Moving in November festival for three years and counting.