13.08.2026
Oblivia’s Dreaming Turtles heads to Basel after Copenhagen premiere
After premiering its new work Dreaming Turtles in Copenhagen, Finnish performance collective Oblivia heads to Basel in November for two performances developed in collaboration with Swiss new-music ensemble KlangLab. The final work in Oblivia’s Turn Turtle Turn trilogy imagines a post-human world inhabited by turtles—and uses music, movement and playful theatricality to ask what other futures might look like.
Helsinki-based performance collective Oblivia will take its new work Dreaming Turtles to Basel in November, continuing an international collaboration that brings experimental music theatre, performance and new music together.
The work premiered on 8 June 2026 at Copenhagen’s Klang Festival, where Oblivia performed with the Swiss new-music ensemble KlangLab. The production will return to the Swiss ensemble’s home city for two performances at Gare du Nord Basel on 5 and 6 November at 8 p.m.
Dreaming Turtles is the third and final work in Oblivia’s Turn Turtle Turn cycle, an ambitious series that explores the Anthropocene across a timespan of some 400 million years. The cycle began with a work premiered at the Münchener Biennale in 2024 and continued with Reality Bang, which premiered at Sommerszene Salzburg in 2025.
The new piece imagines a world in which humanity has disappeared and turtles have inherited the planet. Four performers become “dreaming, floating, dancing and singing turtles”, using movement, words, songs and rhythm to construct an alternative world. The work combines this playful premise with questions about humanity’s relationship with the planet and the possibility of imagining other futures.
Music is central to the production. Composer Yiran Zhao has created the music together with KlangLab, while the performance combines voice, percussion and electronics with movement, stage action, light and costumes. The result is a deliberately hybrid form in which experimental music and performance are developed side by side rather than treated as separate elements.
For Oblivia’s artistic director and founder Annika Tudeer, the Basel performances are part of a longer-term approach to international collaboration. In a May 2026 interview with the TINFO, Tudeer said that the collective’s move towards experimental music theatre had brought new partners and audiences. She also stressed the importance of building lasting relationships rather than relying on individual international engagements.
The partnership with KlangLab reflects that approach. The two groups are already discussing a multi-year project that would explore how two or more artistic groups can create work together on an equal footing—and what collaboration can mean beyond simply combining artistic resources.
That emphasis on collaboration is also built into Dreaming Turtles. Oblivia and KlangLab have developed the work as a co-creation, exploring how music and physical action can shape a shared universe on stage. Alongside Zhao and the performers, the production brings together artists working in sound, lighting, set and costume design.
The move from Copenhagen to Basel therefore marks more than the next stop on a tour. It extends a creative relationship between a Finnish performance collective and a Swiss new-music ensemble, while giving Dreaming Turtles a second international setting in which to test its vision of a post-human world.
And despite its apocalyptic premise, Oblivia describes the work as far from bleak. The turtles’ imagined existence points instead towards serenity, playfulness, community and kindness—suggesting that even a story about humanity’s disappearance can leave room for hope.
TINFO 13 August 2026
Photo: Alexander Banck-Petersen