Spring Roll 2026 Anna Torkkel & the working group: Bliss

Anna Torkkel and the working group’s dance piece, Bliss, had its premiere at Kiasma Theatre in Helsinki in the autumn of 2025. In May 2026, the performance will be shown as part of Ehkä-production’s annual Spring Roll 2026 -contemporary art festival in the Turku City Theatre! Check out the full festival program from Ehkä’s website.

Bliss highlights the playful essence of dance and its fearless, illogical nature, allowing it to shimmer. In it, dance is a pathway to a profoundly experienced being and its enchantment.

Bliss is a performance in which dance, music, material, and light merge into one. The piece weaves together birth, growth, transitions, and fading, bringing forth both dance’s capacity to express continuous change and the dancer’s skill in navigating between these states. The work is performed by three finely attuned dancers, Mira Kautto, Tuija Lappalainen, and Marika Peura. The performance continues the collaboration between Torkkel and the designers – Kristian Palmu, Johanna Porola, and Piia Rinne – whose most recent joint creation is the solo piece Ray of light (2023). In Bliss, dancing to music and the dialogue between different elements proposed by Torkkel’s practice evolve into group choreography.

Anna Torkkel’s choreographic practice draws from focusing on the present moment and from dancing to music. Since the work Heart piece (2012), she has developed a practice that enables and supports the dancer to surrender to the music and disregard evaluating themselves and the movement that emerges. In her practice, dance does not arise from the dancer’s subjective choices, reasoning, or pursuit of excellence, but rather through remaining sensitive and letting go. In the process of Bliss, the practice expands to include working with touch and voice.

Bliss premiered in October 2025 as part of the Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma’s Rock, Paper, Scissors exhibition programme at Kiasma Theatre in Helsinki. In spring 2026, the piece will be performed at the Turku City Theatre. Additionally, a new work, Kultasiipi (Goldwing), has also emerged from the performance process. A draft of it was presented as part of the Love Harvest contemporary art festival at the Frantsila Organic Herb Farm in August 2025.

On Ehkä-production’s website, you can read two texts written (in Finnish) by Heidi Horila, Ehkä’s audience engagement person and writer: the preliminary text Tracing the Wonders of Life, and the reflective performance analysis The Brightness and Obscurity of Life’s Spectrum, published after the premiere. In addition, journalist and critic Maria Säkö wrote about Bliss in the Rondo magazine’s article Esitykset ja kuvataide kohtaavat.

Performances at Turku City Theatre’s Little stage (Itäinen Rantakatu 14, Turku) as part of Spring Roll 2026 festival
Fri 15.5.2026 at 18:30 + post-performance discussion with Heidi Horila and Even Minn
Sat 16.5.2026 at 13:30

Tickets: 36/26 €
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The performance is part of Ehkä-productions’ Spring Roll 2026 contemporary art festival, which will take place in Turku from May 7 to 16, 2026. See the full festival program on Ehkä’s website!