Residency artists and researchers Dance Maija Nurmio & Saskia Oidtmann Dance artists The Saari Residence is the second part of a personal and (trans-) cultural exchange between dance artists Maija Nurmio and Saskia Oidtmann, based in Helsinki and respectively Berlin. Our collaboration forms a series of meetings, intensive rehearsal periods, residencies and performances that develop over the next two years. Our first two-week working process took place in Berlin in November 2013, resulting in Sideways Elephant-performances. “Our physical presence and movement is coined by the society, the cultural and geographical background we grow into. We aim to investigate our physical backgrounds in motion. Starting with a historical exploration, we investigate the areas we live in; the points of contact between our countries and the histories that coincide in our bodies. We look into how much our moving is influenced by external parameters, such as skin colour or gender. We are interested in the physical presence of different identities beyond communication of body language; in the unwritten laws of moving existing in all societies.” Sideways Elephant is an attempt to look at us as individuals within different societies. One basic element of our friendship is the awareness of a common language we share: movement. Thus we are looking for new ways of communication across different cultural contexts that can broaden the understanding of one another. Is it possible to develop a model that can be used in different cultural contexts? Can we work with movement as a medium of expression that is not located within the spoken word but a more holistic and extensive viewpoint?