Learning beyond the classroom

26.5.2025 0 Tykkää 0 kommenttia

Graduating choreography student Giorgia Lolli shares the highlights of her learning curve as an MA student.

As my time in Uniarts is coming to an end, I look back at some moments that I consider landmarks of the two years I spent in the Choreography MA. This blogpost is a compilation of highlights of my learning curve as a student.

All NCP courses, but especially Helsinki

Nordic Choreographic Platform gives all MA Choreography students of Oslo, Stockholm, Copenhagen and Helsinki the chance to gather for one week a semester in one of the cities. Prior to this, I have never been in a room with 30 choreographers: it is quite an experience. I cherish the findings and the disagreements, and the conversations that had to continue on a distance once the “in person” week was over.

Seeing Florentina Holzinger’s TANZ in Side Step Festival 2024

I have never thought I would see two dancers climb on hanged motorcycles… Holzinger’s work, which I would not have come across live in my home country, is the kind of work that uses the excellency and opulence of the theater machine to say “YES!”. As a maker, and a ballet lover, I found this piece so much of an inspiration I ended up writing about it in my Master thesis. And, I could see her new work,  SANCTA, as part of Berlin’s Theater Treffen 2025, which I visited through a course from YOK Center for Joint Studies.

Lecture with nora chipaumire

Sometimes gathering energy in the long Finnish winter is hard. nora chipaumire presenting her work felt like a breath of fresh energy. The kind that makes you want to go to the studio and dance. It made me think of how our presence and how we carry ourselves already opens something in people around us. As a maker: from which posture I decide to hold space?

Meetings with Kerstin Schroth, director of Moving in November Festival

As an artist, connecting to other artists is often quite natural. The discussion with curators is not always so accessible and straight-forward. As part of our production course, however, Kerstin opened up about entering to direct Moving in November, how decision processes are handled and the responsibility she takes in her work. It also made me think of the proximity between Festival curating and choreography: if I ever will direct a Festival, what could I bring to this role through my toolbox as a choreographer?

Seeing all the graduation performances

 Premiering my thesis work has been a blast of emotions. However, it is nothing to be compared with being an audience in the performances that my fellow cohort members created. There is something really unique about witnessing the realization of the vision of a friend, and someone that you shared so much with over the past two years. It is the feeling of being present, at the right moment, at the right time. Through them, my biggest learning leaps have happened – and will continue to happen after our graduation.

These, very much like postcards, really are just “the best of”, the tip of the iceberg of my two years in TEAK. They contribute to building a landscape of learning, one that bleeds out of classroom, out of the studio, into everyday life.

To future students and applicants I wish to be receptive, hungry, brave, and to take advantage of the many opportunities that the university can offer to support their leaning processes beyond the charted pathways.

Written by Giorgia Lolli