Selection committee
Subcase 2021 selection committee is made up by representatives of organizations from the Nordic and Baltic countries.
At the time that the selection was made, we still thought that these companies would be presented in person on stage at the live event. 60 projects applied. The committee was happy to discover so much artistic work from the region, and so many upcoming projects. Seeing the creativity, high artistic level and strong driving force of Nordic and Baltic circus has been inspirational and has infused us with hope.
Making a selection is always a difficult task, but this time it was especially hard, knowing how the pandemic has impacted all artists. The focus of the committee has been on presenting a diverse range of artistic work in terms of aesthetics, genres, target audiences, scales, indoor/outdoor modes, adaptability to contexts and venues, circus disciplines and multidisciplinarity. An important aspect has been to include companies from the whole region, thereby aiming to put a representative cross section of Nordic and Baltic contemporary circus forward for a wide range of Nordic and Baltic presenters.
Bek Berger is the newly appointed artistic director of New Theatre Institute of Latvia, which organizes International Festival of Contemporary Theatre Homo Novus - the largest performing arts platform in Latvia. NTIL also produces and presents projects and long term collaboration programmes, strongly believing in the necessity to explore the contemporary performing arts field together with artists and audiences.
Gildas Aleksa is a theatre director from Lithuania. He is the head of the organisation Teatronas, which founded the contemporary circus festival Cirkuliacija and recently opened the first contemporary circus centre in the country Cirko Sapiens.
Geir Lindahl is an adviser at Performing Arts Hub Norway (PAHN), where he manages small and large industry initiatives. PAH is a national competence centre promoting professional performing arts nationally and internationally. He works to strengthen the producer environment by offering support programs, capacity building, facilitation of networking arenas and counselling for the performing arts.
Kiki Muukkonen is artistic director of the circus department of Subtopia, where she has developed its activities since 2008. She manages national and international programming, international relations and support programs for artists. In 2009, she founded the Nordic circus showcase Subcase, which has taken place in ten editions. In 2017, she founded the Stockholm regional festival CirkusMania.
Lotta Nevalainen is head of international development at CircusInfo Finland, an expert organization on circus funded by the Ministry of Education and Culture. She manages international relations and promotion, artistic development projects, seminars and offers advice to artists on their projects. She acts as expert for circus arts at the National Council for the Performing Arts at Arts Promotion Centre Finland.
Karen Toftegaard has been a cultural entrepreneur in Copenhagen for more than 20 years, developing cultural events, festivals and an award-winning outdoor gallery. She is founding director of the PR and promotion company Wildtopia. Since 2017 she produces the international days at CPH STAGE, Denmark`s annual festival for performing arts. In 2018 she initiated the first Nordic collaboration at EdFringe.