A false step

Tempo is a word that Kalle Nio deliberately chose in Italian, playing on its double meaning: it refers both to the passing of time and to musical time, rhythm. He explains it himself: the heart gives rhythm to life, but at the same time it marks its countdown, like a stopwatch. Nio – a magician, visual artist, and Finnish director born in 1982, founder of the WHS group, which has brought his works to more than two hundred theatres in over forty countries – builds the performance around the theatrical magic of the nineteenth century, reusing its devices as tools to explore the human body and the relationships that connect it to others. The choreography is by Fernando Melo, Brazilian-born and established in the European dance scene, who has worked with companies such as GöteborgsOperans Danskompani and Aterballetto.

Together, Nio and Melo stage time as a malleable substance: they accelerate it, slow it down, turn it backwards, until it disappears entirely. The music by Samuli Kosminen combines compositions for metronomes with a text by Harry Salmenniemi on the elasticity of time, and marks the trio’s second collaboration after Nopeussokeus, presented at Helsinki’s Kiasma in 2010 and later performed in twelve theatres across seven countries.
At the centre of the performance lies a tiny, almost ordinary episode, which expands until it fills the entire stage and reveals the fragility of the balance that sustains a life. There are no special effects in the cinematic sense: the illusions are created live, through the body and light, and work precisely because the audience knows it is witnessing a trick and still allows itself to be surprised.
After premiering at the Helsinki Festival in August 2025, Tempo arrives at the Biennale Danza for its Italian premiere, following performances in China, Poland and Slovenia, and will continue its international journey in 2026 with at least ten more countries on its itinerary. A language already fully developed that meets in Venice the theme of this edition: the time that McGregor declares “does not exist”.