Meet the Artistic Director of the Kuopio Dance Festival!

The Kuopio Dance Festival is the longest-running and most diverse dance festival in the Nordic region. This year, the Kuopio Dance Festival is organising several opportunities for dance creators and companies to meet and connect with the festival’s artistic director, Samuli Emery. The aim of these meetings is to provide dance artists and companies with an opportunity to present their work and ideas in a relaxed setting and to get to know the festival.

This open call is aimed at mid-career artists who have at least seven years’ professional experience as a dance creator and some prior experience of touring their work at festivals. A producer or manager may represent the artist or the company at the meeting. Through this open call, we wish to connect with artists and companies who create:

  • high-quality dance works suitable for touring, created for outdoor and public spaces
  • high-quality dance productions suitable for touring, aimed at young audiences
  • touring, high-quality dance works that use street, club, folk and/or social dance styles as their primary movement language (for example, flamenco, krumping, bharatanatyam, dabke, etc.).

The meetings will take place in various cities and online via Teams throughout the summer and autumn of 2026. Each meeting will last 20 minutes and will be held in either English or Finnish.

The meetings may include presentations of past works, upcoming projects or both. Please bring clear visuals, references and/or video material, as well as some information on the works’ spatial and technical requirements. We would also be delighted to hear your thoughts on how the work relates to dance, art and the world we live in.

The 20-minute meetings can be booked directly via the festival’s website. Registration will open on Monday 13 July 2026 from 13:00 onwards (Finnish Time Zone, Eastern European Summer Time, GMT+3) and places will be allocated on a first-come, first-served basis. There are four meeting slots available each day. Please only book a meeting slot if your work aligns with what we are looking for in this open call.

BOOK YOUR MEETING:

https://kuopiodancefestival.fi/kauppa/

Meeting venues:

*Monday 31 August. STOCKHOLM (in person) 
Dansens Hus,
Barnhusgatan 12–14,
111 24 Stockholm, Sweden

13:00, 13:30, 14:00 & 14:30
(Central European Summer Time, GMT+2)

*Monday 12 October. ONLINE 
Teams video call
13:00, 13:30, 14:00 & 14:30
(Eastern European Summer Time, GMT+3)

The other meetings will take place in Vienna, Lisbon, Helsinki and Kuopio.

Further information about the festival:
https://kuopiodancefestival.fi/en/