ABOUT

Hi! My name is ANNELI KANNINEN (she/they), and I was born in 1982 in Estonia. I’m an actor and a dancer based in Helsinki, Finland. Currently I'm focusing on my own work, a multicultural queer stage performance "S2" about the themes of otherness, thresholds and the layered identities we exist in. In wider context, my vision is to create a multicultural queer performance platform for original work created and performed by people with multicultural and queer identities.

 

I studied acting in Stella Adler Studio of Acting summer conservatory in 2017 and 2018 in New York City and am continuing my acting studies in the University of the Arts Helsinki open university acting programme in 2021-2022. As an actor I work in commercials and short films, most recently in documentary feature Rogue Reporters (Pesänlikaajat – erään kirjakohun anatomia), that premiered in September 2021.

 

Dance was introduced to me early in my life and I spent my teen years performing with a Russian-speaking youth dance theater. Having studied ballet and contemporary dance, I moved to learning hip hop and house, and in 2010 to voguing, walking runway, new way and later also drag king and best dressed categories. As a dancer I’ve worked in TV and stage productions, with artists, and taught workshops in Finland and abroad.

 

I’m fluent in Finnish, English (US/UK) and Russian, and speak Estonian, Swedish and German, too.