Review: XPSD

Dancing at your own limits

In their work XPSD – Exposed – Helsinki Dance Company danced fascinatingly on the limits of corporeality on Wednesday at the Posthof Dance Days.

Two dancers hatch from the twilight of the stage to the rhythm of thumping music, which monotonously pulsates and penetrates the auditorium, spreading something threatening there.

One by one, all six dancers – four men, two women – appear. Not much seems to happen then. The movements seem calm but intense. Gradually, the movements begin to flow, as if the dancers had been caught up in an incessantly intensifying vortex. Like a danced crescendo that lasts about forty minutes. Forty minutes, during which almost every six dancers are on stage and in motion non-stop: A performance that requires top fitness and also takes the viewer’s breath away.

Fascinating aesthetics

The group’s synchronized movements, executed with incredible precision, the energy-draining duel parts with airy lifts, the floor parts – it is fascinating to see how the Finnish choreographer Kenneth Kvarnström uses the possibilities of dance and space with very small means and creates smooth transitions that ultimately have a great impact on the whole.

Again and again, a reference to the Baroque way of dancing appears in the dancers’ harsh, broad steps, which could be descended from the court minuet.

The flow of movements is more and more reminiscent of a flowing river, to which the dancers surrender. Physical strain is foreseeable and tangible. But even when the dancers are really approaching their limits, when they are completely “XPSD”, bare in front of their limits, fatigue in their movements is barely noticeable. What kind of endurance such a long-lasting, non-stop and intense movement required! And how dancers can remember all these steps and combinations! Each movement is like a thread in a carefully woven warp, there is no sign of improvisation. The aesthetics of the movements are fascinating, but the discipline of the dancers affects the viewer just as much. Can this go on for a whole hour?

The crescendo must be followed by a decrescendo, a gradual return to the starting point. It can be seen in the stopped, danced encounters and human touches before the dancers disappear again into the darkness of the stage. Though only for a moment. The ecstatic crowd calls them out again and again with their venomous applause. An intriguing evening.

(Translation: Multiprint Oy / Multidoc)