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.

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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. 

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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.​​