Step into the future of performance with Cyborg, Avatar, Virtual—a bold MA-level workshop at Tampere University (4–13 May 2026) that challenges you to act, imagine, and create with technology as your co-conspirator. Guided by Davide Giovanzana and inspired by Haraway and Xenofeminism, this course invites Nordic-Baltic students to explore new theatrical narratives beyond techno-utopias and human boundaries.

Teaching period: 4-13 May 2026 at Näty, Tampere University, Finland

Teacher: Davide Giovanzana

ECTS: 4

Number of available places for Norteas students: 7

Level: MA

Course description:Relying on Cyborg Manifesto by Dona Haraway and Xenofeminism Manifesto by Laboria Cuboniks, this workshop will explore what is acting with new technologies. But not only—it will not be limited to exploring “acting”, but also to turn, to use and to abuse these technologies to unfold what kind of ideology is hovering above the intrusion of digitalisation in our everyday life and under our skin.

The goal is not to refuse technology but to explore if we can use it to display other forms of narratives than the techno-enthusiastic or the technophobic ones.

As Haraway suggests, with the cyborg (the avatar, the technological monster), there is a possibility to display other types of stories that escape the traditional narratives of a lost paradise to be found again.

The basic questions underlying this course are:

• How to develop new narratives with a cyborg?

• How to act with avatars?

• How to use the virtual world to create theatrical situations?

• How to expand our capacities to act, to imagine, to tell stories, to reconsider ourselves?

• Can we use technology to establish new forms of encountering Otherness?

• Can we go outside our human limitations to explore existence, identity, consciousness, and the nature of reality?

Confront the aesthetics and ethics of staged violence in Sublime Violence, a thought-provoking MA-level workshop at Tampere University (19–29 January 2026), led by Davide Giovanzana and featuring expert guidance from intimacy coordinator Anastasia Trizna. This course invites you to critically and physically engage with violence in performance—its dramaturgy, embodiment, and impact on spectatorship.

Title of course: Sublime Violence

Teaching period: 19-29 January 2026 at Näty, Tampere University, Finland

Teacher: Davide Giovanzana

ECTS: 4

Number of available places for Norteas students: 5

Level: MA

Course description: This course is based on the research: Performing Violence, Limits and Transformative Means in Staged Violence. See publication: https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/oa-mono/10.4324/9781003519881/performing-violence-davide-giovanzana

Participants will have the chance to explore staged violence from three different aspects: from a dramaturgical point of view, from the spectator position and from the performer position. In addition, the intimacy coordinator and stage fight expert Anastasia Trizna will coordinate some of the sessions during the course.

The course will offer a wider understanding of this complex phenomenon. The participants will, at the same time, develop a more critical approach to the phenomenon of staged violence, but also have the possibility to dive completely into the embodiment of it.

Application deadline:

How to apply: Send a motivation letter to teija.huikka@tuni.fi

Venue: Theatre Academy, Uniarts Helsinki

Teaching period: Week 22, Monday - Friday 10-17, TeaK, room 702, 100% percent attendance required

Teacher(s): Satu Palokangas

ECTS: 2

Number of available place for Norteas students: 2

Level: MA

Application deadline: 16.3.2020

How to apply: Send a motivation letter before 16.3.2020 to planning officer Jyri Äärilä: jyri.aarila@uniarts.fi

Course description:

Ecosomatics broadens the concept of somatics from a practice involving your own body towards a communal and social practice. In addition to physical exercises, ecosomatics brings together improvisation, ecology and system-theoretical thinking. It emphasises how corporeal awareness is formed in relation to the environment, nature, place and rhythms. Through ecosomatics we ask what it is to live in this body in this time. How are our bodies and minds affected by the ecological catastrophe happening around us? As in the case of somatic methods, the aim of ecosomatic practice is to offer alternatives to impractical methods of perception and action.

This course reviews e.g. evolutionary and embryological development, observation and perception, biophilic awareness, and the polyrhythmic relationship between the body and nature. We investigate how ecosomatic understanding upholds our other somatic work and how we can introduce ecosomatic practices into our everyday lives. Teaching takes place through movement-based lectures, contact work, anatomical study, improvisation practices and discussions. Some of the course work takes places outdoors.

Venue: Theatre Academy, Uniarts Helsinki

Time: Week 21, daily 10-17, TeaK, room 512, 100% percent attendance required

Teacher: Lehmus Murtomaa

ECTS: 2

Number of available place for Norteas students: 2

Level: BA

Requirments: In order to apply you need to be a degree seeking BA student at a Norteas institution.

Application deadline: 16.3.2020

How to apply: Send a motivation letter before 16.3.2020 to planning officer Jyri Äärilä: jyri.aarila@uniarts.fi

Course description:

This course investigates whiteness, its structures, privileges, responsibilities as well as shame etc. The course also investigates whiteness in public spaces and contemporary art. The course is intended for anyone ready to investigate the topic from their own premises and willing to learn more about it.

Teaching period: Week 21, Monday - Friday 10-17, TeaK, room 511, 100% percent attendance required

Teachers: Anni Klein, Jarkko Partanen

ECTS: 2

Number of available place for Norteas students: 2

Level: MA

Application deadline: 16.3.2020

How to apply: Send a motivation letter before 16.3.2020 to planning officer Jyri Äärilä: jyri.aarila@uniarts.fi

Course description:

Learning outcomes:

Having completed the course, students

-         Have an understanding of the possibilities that dramaturgical thinking offers the performer’s work and are able to utilise dramaturgical thinking in performance

-         Are able to structure their performance with the help of dramaturgical concepts

-         Perceive ways of creating dramaturgy while performing, “from inside”

Content:

Students get to try out how performance dramaturgy can be constructed around various assignments and experiments. The course also discusses the possibilities provided by dramaturgical thinking and concepts and how it gives rise to and orders different methods of performance.

Venue: Theatre Academy, Uniarts Helsinki

Time: Week 21, Monday-Friday from 10am-17pm, 100% percent attendance required

Teachers: Satu Herrala, Eva Neklayeva

ECTS: 2

Number of available places for Norteas students: 2

Level: Bachelor

Requirements: Only degree seeking BA students from Norteas institutions are eligible to apply.

Application deadline: 16.03.2020

How to apply: Send a motivation letter before 16.03.2020 to planning officer Jyri Äärilä: jyri.aarila@uniarts.fi

Course description:

This course is developed as a dialogue between two practicing curators, in response to a need of further reflection and training on curating in performing arts. The course will offer an introduction to curating of festivals, venues, residencies and artistic development centres, as well as some kind of an overview of the current conversations on the international performing arts field. We speak about curating from a very hands-on perspective, weaving together everyday practices and poetics, theoretical approaches and the actual realities of producing complex projects and different site and situation responsive formats; working with limited means, in constantly shifting environments. What is the responsibility and position of a curator today, in the process of de-colonising, queering and feminising art institutions?

This is the first course of its kind in Finland, with a specific focus on curatorial strategies in transdisciplinary performance. We welcome any art students and art practitioners such as curators, artists, producers and researchers who are interested in curatorial processes and practices in performing arts.

Venue: Iceland University of The Arts

Teacher(s):  Dr. Katherine Joyce and Mr. Nathan Curry

ECTS: 4

Number of available place for Norteas students: 2

Level: BA

Requirements: Second and third year BA students in the field of performing arts, dance and theatre only.

Application deadline: 1st of February 2020.

How to apply: Send an motivation letter and informations about home school and field of study to Ingibjörg Huld Haraldsóttir, ingibjorghuld@lhi.is, by 1st of Febryary 2020.

Course description:

The aim of the course is for students of all programs within the Department of Performing Arts to work together under the leadership of Tangled Feet. During the course the students will be introduced to their working methods and artistic vision and get the opportunity to create a performance together.

Tangled Feet are a UK based physical theatre collective that create performances both indoors and outdoors.  Tangled Feet have developed a trademark style of experimental performance, which always begins from a process of physical improvisation and play. The performances they make come from their own experiences, the stories of the people they meet, and the tensions they feel in the world around us. Tangled Feet performances take lots of different forms, driven by the theme, content and the relationship they want to create with their audience and the space.

Tangled Feet vision statment:

• We believe that art has the power to transform lives

• We believe art succeeds most effectively when people are put before profit.

• We believe art must be available and accessible to all

• We believe that collaborative creativity can achieve things that a single artist working alone cannot.

• We believe in shared decision making, in equal creative stake, in fair and equal pay.

• We believe in young people’s potential to change the world and their right to be seen as a significant part of that world

• We believe that sharing stories and narratives in public spaces builds our empathetic connection with each other and brings us closer together.

• We want to entertain, to challenge and to delight; to create lasting memories and to inspire other artistic journeys.

At the end of the course, students should:

• Have an understanding of the artistic methods of the guest artists and be able to reflect on theim in relation to their own methods,

• Have demonstrated skills in creating a performance with a diverce group of artists.

• Have adopted a broad perspective on working methods and cooperation.

• Be able to independently evaluate the methods presented in the course.

From 7-18 January 2019, the Iceland University of the Arts (IUA) is offering 10 available places in 6 different express courses. These places are offered to students in the networks of KUNO, CIRRUS, Norteas, Nordic Academy of Architecture and the networks under the umbrella of Nordplus Music.

There will only be about 1-2 places available for Norteas students.

All courses have a cross disciplinary approach in the sense that these courses are open for students with various background: fine art, design, music and performing arts.

How to apply?
-Each student can apply for maximum 2 courses.
-Follow the link for the course you would like to apply for below, and apply online with a motivation statement.
-Make sure that you have approval of your home school before you submit the application.
-Application deadline: 25 November 2018.
-Make sure that your home school belongs to one of the networks above. If you are not sure, consult your local international coordinator.

Link to list of courses and application

Teaching Period: 3-14 December 2018
ECTS: 2
Number of available study places: 2
Requirements: This is a master level course, open to all artist disciplines.

Application deadline: 1st November 2018
How to apply: Send a short introductory and motivation statement to alexanderroberts@lhi.is

Course Description:

Australian performance duo Pony Express invite participants into their worlds of aesthetic, political and ethical enquiry with a two week lab organised around questions of human activity, it’s impact upon the planet and what art can do about it.

Participants will be introduced to the collaborative working methods of Pony Express, as well as deeply immersed in their field of discourse. With this as the starting point, participants will be invited to develop artistic responses of their own that bring their own practices into conversation with the practices and questions of Pony Express.

www.helloponyexpress.com

This module is pass or fail and based on contribution to the workshop and attendance of 90%. 

Teaching period: 13-17 November 2018
ECTS: 2
Number of available study places: 2
Requirements: This is a master level course, open to all artist disciplines.

Application deadline: 22 October 2018
How to apply: Send a short introduction and motivation statement to alexanderroberts@lhi.is

Course Description:
Five days of experimental doing, making and thinking together.
Running from Wednesday 14th to Friday 16th November, the Performing Arts Department at IUA will be hosting a selection of artists from across Europe and North America that are all presenting work within the frame of Reykjavík’s Every Body’s Spectacular Performing Arts Festival during that week. The symposium will run from 9 am to 4 pm each day, providing participants with talks, short workshops and experimental performances, each designed to create spaces between participants and the artists to reflect upon and think together through the artist’s practice.

In the evenings and over the weekend there will be opportunities to see work at the festival, but attending the festival programme is not an official part of the curriculum.

Contributors:

Jacob Wren (CA), Dana Michel (CA), Andy Field (UK), Sarah Vanhee (BE), Marble Crowd (IS), Superamas (IS), Ásrún Magnúsdóttir (IS), Krista Burane (LV), Styrmir Örn Guðmundsson (IS), Steinunn Ketilsdóttir (IS).

This module is pass or fail and based on contribution to the workshop and attendance of 90%. 

NORDIC BALTIC EXPRESS
Title of course: Singing body – Moving voiceLocation: Tampere University
Number of days excluding travel days: 5
Period: 27/03 – 31/03 2017
Level: BA
Number of ECTS credits: 1
Number of study places: 3 (for incoming NorTeas students) 

Accommodation:
We will provide students with free-of-charge accommodation (visiting students stay with the regular students, at the institution.)

Description
The student practices different presentation techniques shared by singing and dancing and learns how to intertwine in between them. 
Learning Outcome: having completed the course unit the student
- is able to make use of one’s own skills of movement and singing techniques in order to creatively intertwine them together
- understands the potential of movement and sounds in singing and dancing body
- is able to reflect both verbally and in writing the connection between singing and dancing body

Requirements: 
Bachelor level 2nd year up, acting students
Teacher(s): Samuli Nordberg and Sanni Orasmaa

How to apply
Deadline: End of November
How to apply: Send an Email with motivation statement and transcript of records to: samuli.nordberg@uta.fi

NORDIC BALTIC EXPRESS
Title of course:  Body and Space
Where: Aalto University, Helsinki
Number of days, excluding travel days: 5
Period: 20/02/17 - 24/02/17
Level: BA
Number of ECTS credits: 2
Number of study places: 2 (for incoming NorTeas students) 

Description
The aim of the course is to explore the potential of the performer's body in the performance space from a multi-disciplinary perspective through experimentation, testing, and group work. The course builds on principles of visual and spatial composition, looking at the body of the performer in the space and the meanings resulting from a spatial relationship. The starting point is that the actor not only performs through speech but also through physical presence which has a visual and spatial perspective. Through practical creative explorations in a performance environment the course explores the spatial dynamics of bodies in space, and investigates notions of: movement and stillness; posture and position; appearance, disappearance and trace; metamorphosis; extension; proximity and distance; single and multiple; size and proportion. The course is based on workshop exercises undertaken individually and in a group, and is supported by talks and lectures giving theoretical insights on the subject.

How to apply
send a letter of motivation and information on your previous studies to the lecturer of scenography Sampo Pyhälä (sampo.pyhala@aalto.fi) by 3th of February 2017.

NORDIC BALTIC EXPRESS
Title of course: Dialogue
Where: Iceland Academy of the Arts, Reykjavík
Number of days excludingtravel days: 12
Period: 09/01 - 20/01, 2017
Level: BA
Number of ECTS credits: 2
Number of study places: 2 (for incoming NorTeas students) 

Course description
This course is collaboration between all departments teaching at an undergraduate level at the IAA. In the course, students work in mixed groups focusing on one common theme. Over the period of the course each group creates projects or performances with emphasise on integration of different ideas and methods. Special focus is on exploring the possibilities of different art forms when they come together in a dialogue working on one common theme/project. Various artists give lectures during the course. Each group is assigned a supervisor who serves as a facilitator of dialogue within the group on the artistic process and ways of mediating project. 

How to apply
Send your motivation statement by Email to Steinunn Knútsdóttir / steinunnknuts@lhi.is by the end of October 2016.

NORDIC BALTIC EXPRESS
Title of course: Keith Johnstone based improvisation workshop with Frank Totino
Where: National School of Performing Arts, Odense
Number of days excluding travel days: 6
Period: 21 - 26 November 2016
Level: BA
Number of ECTS credits: 2
Number of study places: 2 (for incomingNorTeas students) 

Description
This is a Keith Johnston based improvisation workshop where incoming students will join the 1st and 2nd year students in Odense. The students can expect to gain a stronger understanding of the methods used in Keith Johnstone improvisation technique. The course is for acting students only.

How to apply
Send your motivation statement and CV by email to tida@scenekunstskolen.dk and peda@scenekunstskolen.dk before September 15.

NORDIC BALTIC EXPRESS
Title of course/placement: Local & RDF internship
Where: Iceland Academy of the Arts, Reykjavík
Number of days excludingtravel days: 7
Period: 22/08/16 – 28/08/16
Level: BA
Number of ECTS credits: 2
Number of study places: 2 (for incoming NorTeas students) 

Course description
Internship at LOKAL, the International Theatre Festival  and Reykjavík Dancefestival. The students work closely with the artists of the festival with setups, technical assistance, reception. 

How to apply
Send your motivation statement by Email to Steinunn Knútsdóttir / steinunnknuts@lhi.is by 8th of August.