Rebel Bodies PT II

REBEL BODIES PT II is a collaborative performance project, sonic installation, and sauna experience created by dance and sound artist KM Taavitsainen (FIN) and multidisciplinary performance entity, slowdanger (anna thompson/taylor knight US) exploring the acoustic ecology of the Pirunvaara Forest and Arjansaari Island. Through this work the artistic team co-devise queer ecological imagination, alternative embodied futurities and the potentiality of harnessing kinesthetic resonance to activate interspecies and environmental empathy.

taylor knight and anna thompson are co-founding artistic directors of slowdanger, a multidisciplinary performance organism founded in Pittsburgh, PA in 2013. slowdanger uses systematic approaches to movement, technology, sound, queer world building and ontological examination to produce performance work, utilizing process based practice to delve into circular life patterning including effort, transformation, and death. From engaging a multi-channel sound installation to teaching dance at a queer rave in the woods, they transform their shape to adapt to a variety of different containers. slowdanger has performed across North America and Europe in venues ranging from proscenium theater and gallery to nightclub and dive bar. The name, slowdanger, was inspired by the Pittsburgh road construction signs that signify a demolition of old surfaces to build upon the remnants. They return to this overarching concept cyclically in performance creation; rebuilding, slowing down to examine the remains and re-imagine new futures. Recently, slowdanger was awarded a NPN Creation Fund, New Music USA’s New Music Organization Fund, the inaugural Texas A&M New Work Development Artist in Residence, and Jacob’s Pillow Pillow Lab for the creation of STORY BALLET that will premier in fall 2026. In 2026, slowdanger’s performance methods chapter “Embodying the Apocalypse: spectral strategies for creating performance at the end of the world” will be published in the Routledge Handbook for Health and Environment Humanities.

KM Taavitsainen (they/them) is a Finnish multidisciplinary artist, filmmaker, choreographer, somatic sorcerer, actor, writer and composer. Originally from Kajaani, Finland they now work mainly in Kainuu, Los Angeles, New York and Berlin. They’ve studied dance and choreography in the Theater Academy of Helsinki (2010) and later did complimentary studies in film in the New York Film Academy, in NYC (2018). They’ve worked almost two decades articulating and clarifying their artistic practice with the body and its surroundings through movement, film, sound, writing and curating/facilitating workshops with their artistic practice in all over the world including Helsinki, Berlin, Bangkok, Singapore, Bolzano, Pittsburgh, New York and Los Angeles. Their work is deeply rooted in the somatic intelligence, kinetic empathy and its endless multitudes manifesting in human beings and their relations. As a non-binary creator their work is in a deep discourse with intersectional queer theory, queer ecology as well as intersectional ecofeminism and environmentalism. Their work is multidisciplinary in its essence and through organically creating hybrids from different mediums and media and the queer body they challenge the "norm", the status quo, the default - peeling the hierarchy and layers of patriarchal cis-heteronormativity. 

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