Residencies

TSC residencies are designed for artists working in the independent field of performing arts to support the creation process of new work, creative risk-taking, and multidisciplinary collaboration. TSC Studio Residency is designed especially for creating movement material and for developing or rehearsing a production for the stage. In TSC sound residency, artists have access to the studio’s immersive sound system, enabling versatile artistic and technical work with sound.

About TSC residencies

Through our residency programme, we want to offer TSC Studio as a space for performing artists working across disciplines with embodied expression, who need a space for the creation of a stage work. The residency takes place at TSC Studio – Tero Saarinen Company’s bright, well-equipped rehearsal space of nearly 200 square metres, located at the Cable Factory in Helsinki. You can read more about the space here.

TSC Studio provides a setting for two different residency periods with distinct focuses. Movement based work is possible in TSC Studio Residency. During TSC Sound Residency, the studio transforms into an environment equipped for demanding sound-based artistic and technical work.

TSC Studio Residency is particularly suited, for example, to the creation and rehearsal of stage works as well as the development of new choreographic material. TSC Studio offers a space for focused, movement-based work, as well as an unhurried environment that nurtures the research and development process of a piece.

In TSC Sound Residency the studio turns into a high-end sound laboratory, where artists can fully access and utilise to the studio’s exceptional immersive sound system. The focus of the residency is in sound-based artistic and technical work, exploring the relationship of sound and movement. In the selection process we highlight interest in stage work; the residency period is particularly suited to creating or exploring sound material of a piece as part of the creation process. To take part in TSC Sound Residency, at least one team member should have expertise in sound technology. The sound residency is made possible with the support of Genelec, who has provided the studio’s immersive sound setup.

In addition to artistic work, the residencies also offer the opportunity to receive artistic and production mentoring from TSC’s staff.

Application process

Each year, we offer 1–4 week residency periods in for 2–4 artists, groups or collectives. Artists are chosen to take part in through an open application process or through an invite. The next open call for residencies will be held in 2026. We will communicate about the open calls on this website and on our social media channels.

Amos Rex Generation 2026 residency collaboration

Amos Rex’s Generation, held every three years, brings together the voices of a new generation of artists and a wide range of artistic forms. The triennial presents artists aged 15–23 and also includes performance art. Since 2023, TSC has acted as the exhibition's residency partner, supporting artists whose work is driven by an interest in movement. The aim of the Generation residency collaboration is to support emerging artists in the field of performing arts.

Among Generation 2026 exhibition’s artists, four movement-based artists or working groups were chosen for a week long residency period at TSC Studio. Artists Aura Tiira, Elli Roth and Leo Terävä took part in TSC Studio residency. Aarni Pieski and working group were chosen to TSC Sound Residency, offering a chance for artistic exploration diving into sound and movement. The residencies, held in the end of 2025/the beginning of 2026, included also a possibility to get artistic mentoring from TSC’s artists and staff.

The residency collaboration with Amos Rex started in spring 2023, when the triennial’s artists Anette Toiviainen and Iiris Puustinen participated in TSC Studio Residency.

“An extremely sharp sound image is traced out in TSC Studio, where even the smallest details in accents and dynamics of the sound can be heard. Even when applying the strongest sound pressures, the sound is pure, and the system functions optimally both in design work and in performance. There is no system quite like it in Finland – and even globally it is unparalleled with the most similar being in the depths of great opera houses.

What most interests me in the potential offered by TSC Studio is working with non-directional sound: when sound has no distinctive direction of source, that the listener can perceive, it can feel as if the experience happens inside the listener, getting under their skin in quite special way.” – Tuomas Norvio

Feedback on the residencies

“TSC Studio and its immersive sound system provided a lot of freedom for the layering of sounds, to which all members of the collective contributed with personal inputs. Creating the sound collectively gave it the most central role, which was further demonstrated by placing the sound station in the center of the space. Thanks to the amount of speakers, sounds could be layered and spread out quickly and effortlessly, which was super beneficial for the workflow. The sound system also guarantees that one can feel the sound in every square of the room.”

Sebastian Kurtén (Yumi Collective) TSC Sound Residency Artist
7 / 2022

”The residency acted as the starting point – and as a free playground – for the creation process of our new work. The space was wonderful and truly functional: the heated studio floor was really inviting and offered just enough traction and smoothness for our movement work, while the immersive audio system made the sound move together with the dancers.”

Sanni Giordani, Mostly Mass working group
TSC Studio Residency 3/2021

”We took a deep dive into the relationship between sound and movement, creating new sound material while also examining the shape of our new performance. The studio’s immersive audio system enables totally new auditory perspectives that might not even cross one’s mind in any other space. As young artists we are truly grateful to have had the opportunity to work in an environment that encourages you to dream big!”

Iida Hägglund and Maija Viipuri,
TSC Sound Residency 7/2021

Previous TSC Sound Residency working groups

We invited multidisciplinary arts collective WAUHAUS to TSC Sound Residency 2025, where they worked on their new stage production PETER LIVED IN A HOUSE – a dolphin from dot to dot. The piece, based on playwright Pipsa Lonka’s play of the same name, ruminates on one of the most bizarre experiments in scientific history, where a dolphin named Peter is taught English. At the heart of the work lies the paradox of love in the relationship of humans and animals. The ultimate protagonist is language, including the power entangled in the fables of our culture.

As an aim to create a performance that shakes up all the senses, the working group wanted to use sound design as a scenographic element. At TSC Sound Residency WAUHAUS explored how the studio’s immersive sound system could support experiences of a space, from vast to claustrophobic. The collective also worked with the spatial arrangement of the music within the sound system, sparking inspiration for the ongoing composition work of the performance.

In 2024 Summer Sound Residency, the moving body acts as an instrument for music and composition. Charo Calvo, composer of electroacoustic music and former dancer, has just finished a research of two years about physical movement and sound spatial movement. At TSC Studio, Calvo is joined by sound designer Christophe Albertini and choreographer-dancer Bahar Temiz. The sound material generated by the movement will create a multi-channel composition incorporating acoustic and electronic materials.

Musician-composers Maija Kauhanen and Hugh Sheehan form an artistic duo that uses the Finnish traditional instrument kantele together with electronics, home-made instruments, and human-computer interfaces. Their work explores the internal characteristics of sound, and experimental improvisation and performance processes. During their Sound Residency in summer 2023, Kauhanen and Sheehan conducted experiments in both the audience’s, and performers’ position, movement and gesture. Utilising TSC Studio’s immersive audio system, they explored the characteristics of spatial audio as thematic and motivic origin. Their aim was to devise material as a basis for future performances and recordings.

In summer 2022, choreographer Suvi Kemppainen, composer Walter Sallinen and dramaturg Klaus Maunuksela worked towards their new stage work From a great height: a choreographic sonic ceremony that examines subsidence, transgression and love for grief. It is an eerie invitation into an underwater world of the hidden depths and transgressing powers, playing with the emancipatory potentials of lamentation.

In the second sound residency in July 2022, the multi-disciplinary Yumi Collective (Sebastian Kurten, Simeoni Juoperi, Antti Uimonen andHamis Zzy) worked on their first staged work at TSC Studio. Inspired by the ‘Gömböc’ shape, their creation will examine balance and its reciprocative nature through sound and movement.

Previous TSC Studio Residency working groups

During its residency at TSC Studio, MP Collective will work on the third part of its Framing series, where dance, video, film, and sound art create immersive worlds. The group deepens its exploration of physical, sonic, and video artistry. They examine the interplay of movement, live projection, and video mapping, as well as the role of sound design as an interactive and participatory element in room.

The working group consists of Miikkael Kukkula, Olli Lautiola, Suvi Nieminen, and Ilona Salonen. Aimed at children and families, the piece will premiere in 2026 in Turku.

Project Afterlife by Jenni Kivelä & Kiltit ihmiset seeks ways to connect with the dead and asks whether it is possible to find a space where one can still be in contact with a late someone.

In addition to choreographer Jenni Kivelä, the creative team also includes dance artists Ninu Lindfors and Linda Holma, lighting and video designer Teo Lanerva, costume designer Liisa Pesonen, producer Inari Pesonen and sound designer Joonas Outakoski.

In January 2023 Dennis Nylund, Antti Uimonen and Anniina Tikka worked on their new project Post Breakers’ Revenge. During their Studio Residency they initiated their movement-based research to study the identity and movement language of aging breakdancers. Within the research group, they wanted to create more space in the breaking culture for people whose interests and values might vary through aging and changing life conditions.

In January 2022 artist and choreographer Tiia Kasurinen worked on a new staged work SURFACE, together with a team. Kasurinen’s dance performance is a crooked fairytale and an antithesis for children’s stories; a humoristic, yet harrowing perspective on existing under the gaze. SURFACE will premiered in Kuopio City Theatre on 24 November, 2022.

In April 2022 contemporary circus artist and founder of Nuua Company, Olli Vuorinen, was developing an upcoming solo piece Blueberry Burdock, directed by Thomas Monckton. With the “curiosity of a juggler”, Vuorinen’s aim was to study new means of object manipulation and expressions of bodily movement.

Collaborations

TSC began a new collaboration with Kiasma Theatre’s annual street art and culture festival URB, and Nordic Hiphop to the Stage, an international project funded by Nordisk kulturfund and Nordisk kulturkontakt, that aims to build an institutionally backed network for collaborations in the sphere of street culture and performance arts. In March TSC provided an artistic residency at TSC Studio for dancers Hamis Zzy and Siiri Korkeamäki. During their two-week residency, Hamis and Siiri created movement material for their new solos that are part of URB’s EU funded Be Part project. Their works are to be seen on 7–9 June at URB’s programme at Stoa Helsinki, as a part of a full evening performance, created by the French Art Move Concept and Nordic Hiphop to the Stage. Photo: Kansallisgalleria / Petri Virtanen

Carita Weissenfelt
Head of Production and Touring

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