About Me.
Joni Österlund is a performance artist and theater specialist who explores the expressive potential of dance and movement. Educated at the Finnish National Opera Ballet School and the Hungarian Dance Academy, he worked as a company artist at the Gárdonyi Géza Theater in Eger, Hungary, from 2016 to 2019, with between 135 and 155 performances per season. Joni has vast experience in various performance styles, including contemporary, ballet, jazz, stage fighting, physical theater, and speaking roles. Since 2019, Joni has continued to collaborate as a freelance artist on stages, theaters, and festivals of various sizes, as well as multiple roles behind the stage.
Joni continues to be interested in interdisciplinary collaboration. He has recently choreographed for Marie-Eve Signeyrole's Roméo et Juliette in the Theater an der Wien and served as a choreographic assistant in the Community-Dance project of the Festspiel St. Pölten and the Tales of Time in Albanian Dance Theater, Tirana.
Additionally, Joni has gathered further knowledge through the "Pyörre" education program at the Helsinki Arts University in leadership and project management for the independent arts sector while continuing to develop his tools of creative business to co-generate sustainable and accessible cultural structures and events in the European cultural field.
During the summer of 2024, Joni is taking part in the first edition of the Wiener Opernsommer Belvedere as a dancer in the open-air stage production of Don Giovanni.
season 2024/2025:
Up-Coming Performances
Magic Flute in Volksoper Wien.
Salome and Ostrobothnias in Finnish National Opera and Ballet.
Solstices from Georg Friedrich Haas in Weingarten, Germany with Walktanztheater and Ensemble Plus.
Happy Hunting with Company Flying Elephant in Linz, Austria, and Machinenhaus Essen, Germany.
Norma in Vienna State Opera
Tannhäuser in Vienna State Opera
... and more!
Publishing an updated reel
We have been busy: Plenty of material (physical and performative, moving and talking) is to be put together to be documented from works such as Imre & Marne Van Opstal's Heart Drive, Susanna Leinonen's Trickle Green Oak, and Company Flying Elephant's Happy Hunting among others.
Publishing a secondary reel
Expansion and learning aren't chained to stage; I have been personally involved in taking many roles behind the stage, as a choreographer, and dramaturg all the while enrolling in arts management and direction studies where I have gained tools in the areas of project management, leadership, copyrights, negotiation, development, communication, and service design as well.
Along the years support has been granted by the following operators and institutions:
