In Motion November - Dana Michel: YOU CANNOT CAN

Dana Michel's new solo work YOU CANNOT CAN begins with a personal question: why, despite numerous attempts, can she not feel calm in water? And why can most of her family - though they come from an island surrounded by the Atlantic and the Caribbean - not swim? The piece explores what safety actually means in a world where even the human body consists mostly of liquid.

The performance is built in a swimming pool and presented at Hotel St. George's spa facility next to Old Church Square. Surrounded by the audience, Michel moves through the historical and socioeconomic layers of swimming and water relations, guided by kaleidoscopic curiosity.

Michel has performed at the Liikkeellä marraskuussa festival before: her solo works YELLOW TOWEL (2014), MERCURIAL GEORGE (2016), CUTLASS SPRING (2019), and MIKE (2023) all had their Helsinki premieres or performances through the festival. YOU CANNOT CAN is part of the festival's programme 5.-15.11.2026.

During the festival, Michel discusses with a local artist at an open Soup Talks event on 10.11. at 12:00 at Caisa.

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Dana Michel is a Montreal-based performance artist whose work weaves together improvisation, choreography, sculpture, comedy, hip-hop, film art, techno, poetry, psychology, dub, and social critique. Before earning her bachelor's degree in dance from Concordia University, she worked as a marketing director and competed as a sprinter and footballer.

She has received numerous awards: ImPulsTanz Award (Vienna, 2014), the Venice Biennale's Silver Lion for dance innovation (2017), ANTI Festival International Prize for Live Art (2019), the Jaqueline-Lemieux Prize from Canada Council of the Arts (2022), and Prix de la danse de Montréal for international work selected by CINARS (2024). In 2014, New York Times named her one of the year's most important female choreographers, and in 2018 she became Canada's National Arts Centre