Set around a sculptural installation, Lemmings - A Rehearsal for a Revolution explores everyday strategies of resistance, focusing on the human body as a tool to challenge systems of oppression and structures of power.
When the human body is under constant surveillance and regulation, it becomes a site of oppression. Inevitably, small choices around one’s clothing, public appearance, or bodily gestures can become revolutionary acts of rebellion and the body assumes a central role in resistance and political efforts.
Inspired by the ongoing, female-led “Women, Life, Freedom” revolution in Iran, as well as other global echoes of bodily resistance, Lemmings draws from both the raw physicality of public demonstrations, and the symbolic gestures of everyday defiance. The performers channel both the physical persistence of protesters and the haunting repetition of the 90s video game called Lemmings. In the 1990s classic, digital lemmings march en masse toward uncertain futures — and often toward mass destruction unless directed with care.
Are we passively following or actively shaping our own movement?
Like the game’s characters – and like real lemmings in nature, which migrate in vast groups across perilous terrains – Razavi’s piece explores the tension between collective movement and individual agency.
Drawing from lived experience, Lemmings marks Razavi’s first dance based performance and the second part of her latest body of work on the topic of strategies for resistance.
What does resistance look like when bodies move together — towards change or towards the edge? When the human body becomes a site of oppression, bodily gestures or even simple personal choices regarding one’s appearance become revolutionary acts of rebellion and resistance. Do we use our bodies to uphold systems of oppression, or to defy them?
Bita Razavi is a multidisciplinary artist known for her autofictional practice centered around socio-political observations of everyday situations. While working as a cleaner in Helsinki, Razavi photographed design objects in Finnish homes, observing them as a manifestation of national identity. She married her schoolmate in her studio at the Finnish Academy of Fine Arts to address Finnish immigration policies and spent four years renovating two houses in Estonia to study the Soviet renovation practices through years of changing economic and political situations.
Razavi’s works have been extensively exhibited worldwide. She represented Estonia at the 59th Venice Biennale and received the Oskar Öflund’s grand prix in 2017 and the Fine Arts Academy of Finland Foundation Prize in 2025.
The performers of Lemmings – A Rehearsal for a Revolution hail from a wide range of dance and performance backgrounds. Based largely in Helsinki, their professional pathways span experimental performance programs, critically acclaimed classical ballet institutions, interdisciplinary movement practices, and self-initiated artistic explorations. Individually, they carry varied experiences from international companies, festivals, and collaborations across Europe, North America, and Asia.
What unites the ensemble is a commitment to exploring movement as a collaborative language. With each artist contributing their unique identities and perspectives to the choreography of the piece, they mirror the multiplicity of society itself and showcase what it could mean to rehearse revolution not as soloists, but as many coming together and moving as one.
Concept, direction: Bita Razavi
Performers: A-P, Dash Che, Samuli Emery, Maija Karhunen, David Kozma, Keithy Kuuspu, Olli Lautiola, Paria Mohajerani, Gesa Piper, Rosa Rantanen, Sofia Ruija, Alina Sakko, Elke Schroeder, Yuko Takeda, Anette Toiviainen, Katerina Torp
Dramaturgy: Bita Razavi & Dash Che
Choreography: The ensemble
Sound design: Saku Kämäräinen & Tapio Viitasaari
Music composition: Tapio Viitasaari & Saku Kämäräinen
Light design: Pietu Pietiäinen
Set and visual design: Bita Razavi
Producers: Saskia Suominen & Haiyun Yu
Advisers on accessibility and diversity: Maija Karhunen & David Kozma
Adviser on costumes: Kirsi Gum
Movement coaches: Elke Schroeder and Mikko Rinnevuori
Produced by Post Theatre Collective. Presented as part of the Baltic Circle Festival 2025, with communications support from the festival. Supported by Kone Foundation, Arts Promotion Centre Finland, and City of Helsinki.