 Thank you CC Artslink and Simon and Maxim for inviting me, so I have nothing to do this year with Artslink. I thought, yeah, I did and actually I think one of the reasons why I'm here is that I have done Artslink twice and I'm from Estonia running, oh, I'm the artistic director of Baltoskandal Festival, but that's not my main job. That's more the foreigners, no I do. Actually I'm running a space, a theater performing arts center, very small though, but very active, kind of to give this all and let's see. First time I came here with Artslink was 1995. This is how New York looked like 1995. It's almost looks the same. Contemporary art was in a front line also back then. This is the cover of the New Yorker. The artist is Anita Kunz. As you see, not much have changed. Also you recognize the place. It's a photographer Tom O'Connor and so this all was in 1995. You can just imagine what a person coming from a Soviet ruled country and not Soviet ruled country like let's say there are many countries who are Soviet too, but where the Soviet time ended just some years ago before it. It ended in 1991, so it only took four years after that when I came here. And why I came here was that in 1992 we started to work in Estonia in Tallinn with an idea that contemporary dance, contemporary dance especially was sort of non-existing art form in Soviet time. If somebody would call even 1991 or 1992 to the Minister of Culture in Estonia and ask something about contemporary dance or modern dance, back then it was called more modern dance, then the answer would be that we don't have modern dance. And so we started with a couple of friends to organize a thing called a dance information center in Estonia in 1992 and really the main idea was to just spread information about it. 92 no internet. Fax. Fax was the communication and phones. So the only idea was that really to get contacts to that somebody would send you a dance magazine from different countries and you could pick up from there something and then translate it and make your own sort of flyers or some kind of things. Very soon after that we started to do organized workshops for the dancers because the country was full of dancers. They were all folk ballet and so on. So but not obviously not modern or contemporary. In 92 something has started to change because Tallinn is only 86 kilometers away from Helsinki, Finland and there the local TV started to show performances I don't know by Ayle Naley, Maurice Béjar and so on and so on. So some people already started to know what is it. I was chosen, I don't know why, to be the Arsling fellow and come here to New York to be in residency or organizing residency because by no means I'm a choreographer or dancer. I was just interested and very fascinated about the new for me the new and very progressive art form as modern or contemporary dance back then was. I was hosted here in New York by American Dance Festival and legendary Charles and Stephanie Reinhardt and those who know them obviously also understand that I I got I got free tickets to absolutely everything but what was going on all sold out performances everything everything but because I had so so good friends I got everywhere in everywhere so imagine then that you are here in New York where artists like I don't know Mark Dendy, Elizabeth Streeb, Paul Taylor, Mary Scanningham, Yoshiko Chouma, Marta Graham were actually they were not just history but they were part of it and so a guy from no I don't know black and white or maybe better to say red and white world coming here and understanding that the world around us is so much buried there there can be so many different versions of expressing yourself throughout that the and most most importantly for me that the measure of artistic quality is not skillfulness or trained body we're talking still about dance but your message and the way you have originally chosen the way to express your message in the measure is the measure of for an artist and today to this day I have mainly after that worked with artists who have that message to deliver not the truth but an idea a new way of shedding light to the world I could not have discovered that without this first experience in America the idea of how colorful the world actually is this is also part when we started our our projects then back in Estonia we open cannot the gildizal which is the which this is how it looks like outside it's an old very old building in the very very center of old town Thailand medieval town that this was established in a way that we knew that this place this building is free there was nobody there were some homeless people living on the third floor making open fire in the winter because it gets very cold so we understood that there is a possibility to to start to use that the building and actually what really happened was that the back then the community of modern dance or contemporary dance all 20 people came together and we decide we had to decide like okay are we taking it there is no money about are we are we the city said that they could give us the building but no money involved and after three four hour discussion we decided that okay we will do it and that's how it started now 19 years ago now it looks inside it looks like like this at the moment and from the beginning everything was done by volunteers volunteers meaning either dancers choreographers or dance students and by by this day all the for example the front door ticket everything this is done by the by volunteers oh fortunately my time is over I very quickly very quickly show you a couple of other pictures this is the same looking for the special performance as you see it has turned into a slide and as many people here today talked about the responsibility I have one one very short story to tell you about the responsibility two weeks ago a state theater as the theater which is supported 100% by the state ensemble theater in in Estonia called theater number 99 which is the most touring internationally most touring theater in Estonia and the idea of the theater was to do a 99 premiers in and then and two weeks ago when they had 30 more premieres to do and 14 years they had existed to do this 70 productions they decided to stop to give money back to the government to give the building and the theater space back to the government and say next time the next guys can do it what they want we don't have any more ideas this is the responsibility of our strength