Review: Riemukupla
THE BUBBLE OF JOY SPARKLES IN DARK TONES
The Helsinki City Theatre’s dance group Riemukupla had its premiere last Thursday, which was delayed by illnesses. Studio in Elsa. In the end, the proposal did not go quite as originally planned. One of the dancers’ own mini-choreography was not performed at all, and smaller or larger changes and patches were made to the others.
One of the heroes of the evening was Valtteri Raekallio, who, in addition to his original duties, filled in for the main role in Harri Kuorelahti’s choreography in about a week. And he did it so skillfully that he wouldn’t have thought about it if he hadn’t known it beforehand.
The Jubilee Bubble consists of miniature works by four Finnish choreographers: Teemu Kyytinen, Harri Kuorelahti, Eeva Muilu and Mammu Rankanen . In addition, there is a minigraph by the company’s dancer Inka Tiitinen and a cariography by Kari Heiskanen , who started the evening.
The rejoicing that emerged from the collaboration between Heiskanen and the group was pure Bollywood. A colorful, humorous and hilarious episode with all the relevant clichés from the “upcoming masterpiece Postman”.
The difficulty of encountering
Although each choreographer was allowed to make their work entirely from their own starting point without any common theme, the first part of the evening was very interpersonal and even similar. Both Kyytinen’s choreography Urges and Kuorelahti’s work Act of Unknown were about encounters between people.
Kyytinen’s four-person relationship game, spiced up with the song Volver familiar from Almodóvar’s film, was simultaneously intense and uncertain. The participants themselves did not seem to know what they really wanted from each other. The four dancers of this seemingly headless relationship rush, Kirsi Karlenius, Mikko Lampinen, Jenni-Elina Lehto and Valtteri Raekallio, executed with a strong grip.
Considerably darker and more absolute in its intensity was Kuorelahti’s series of three duets, in which the same man meets another man and two women. Although the movement material in each duet was the same, their contents were completely different.
A giant, swinging metal lamp hanging from the ceiling and Bob Dylan’s wailing ballad forcibly took us to the harsh and poor conditions where the “man from the unknown” met and lost his best friend, his wife and his grown-up daughter. Or at least that’s how I interpreted the strong duets of Raekallio, Lampinen, Sofia Hill and Lehto.
The relationship and its end were also the subject of Inka Tiitinen’s minigraph Two Parts, the first of which is performed, which she danced with emotion with Kai Lähdesmäki’s speech and humming.
Wondering about life and oriental harmony
Eeva Muilu is one of the most interesting young choreographers of the moment. who has a completely unique style and attitude to make his works. Known above all for his solos Vermiculus and Too Many Voices for One , Muilu masters the means of indulgence, unexpectedness and the comedy that emerges from their combination. He can also marvel at life and the way the world is going from a completely new perspective.
All of these were enjoyably present in Muilu’s funniest performance of the evening, The Work of What Is. In it, Sofia Hilli and Kaisa Torkkel went through the very short syllabus of understanding life by examining both themselves and their environment.
The jubilee bubble ended with Mammu Rankanen’s Kajo for five dancers, which continues the Japanese time-space theme familiar from her previous works. The performance was definitely the most stylish and memorable of the evening. It combined tense energy, tightly controlled form and meditative calmness. A beautiful and harmonious end to the rather dark ensemble of the Joy Bubble.