In Motion November - Dana Michel: YOU CANNOT CAN

Dana Michel has spent years asking herself why swimming feels so foreign - despite trying to learn again and again. The same question haunts much of her family: they come from an island surrounded by the Atlantic and the Caribbean, yet the water does not feel safe. What does it say about a person if they cannot float in the very substance that makes up so much of their body?

Her new solo work YOU CANNOT CAN is built around a swimming pool. The performance takes place in the spa section of Hotel St. George in Helsinki, with the audience surrounding Michel as she navigates the history of swimming, access to safe water, and the socioeconomic realities woven through these themes. The work is part of the In Motion November festival (5-15 November 2026). Michel's previous solo works shown at the festival include YELLOW TOWEL (2014), MERCURIAL GEORGE (2016), CUTLASS SPRING (2019), and MIKE (2023).

During the festival, Michel will discuss her work with a local artist in an open Soup Talks session on 11 November at 12:00 at Caisa.

Michel is a Montreal-based performance artist whose practice weaves together improvisation, choreography, sculpture, comedy, hip-hop, film, techno, poetry, psychology, dub, and social critique. Before earning her dance degree from Concordia University, she worked as a marketing director and competed as a runner and footballer. Her awards span decades: the ImPulsTanz Award (Vienna, 2014), the Silver Lion for dance innovation at the Venice Biennale (2017), the ANTI Festival International Prize for Live Art (2019), the Jacqueline Lemieux Prize from the Canada Council for the Arts (2022), and the Prix de la danse de Montréal for international work as selected by CINARS (2024). In 2014, the New York Times named her one of the year's most important female choreographers, and in 2018 she became the National Arts Centre of Canada's first dance artist in residence.