Svenska folkskolans vänner, or SFV, has awarded Carl Knif with one of their biggest awards, Kulturpriset (‘the Culture Award’), which is awarded from the Signe and Ane Gyllenberg Fund. The award is worth 15,000 euros. It is awarded “for services rendered to Finnish-Swedish culture”.
The motivations are as follow:
“Dancer and choreographer Carl Knif has brought dance into new contexts and made it more accessible in his impressive artistic work. He has established himself as one of Finland’s foremost choreographers and has also achieved international success with his uniquely reflective productions, often with humour as a liberating element. With the dance company he founded, Carl Knif Company, he has both created and participated in unconventional, successful collaborations with, among others, DuvTeatern and Blaue Frau.
In his endeavour to open the doors to dance to a wider public, he has also created workshops. Innovatively and with unfailing sensitivity to the authors’ intentions, he has recreated literary classics by Kafka, Strindberg and Mann as performing arts. In one of his latest works, the autobiographical solo performance I Address You, Carl Knif portrays difficult subjects with sensitivity and touching sincerity, and as the superb dancer and storyteller he is, transcends both artistic and linguistic boundaries.”
