Review: (re)use

The viewer is allowed to watch


For once, Elsa at the Helsinki City Theatre, which has been converted into a gallery space, succeeds in bringing dance close to the audience.

To conclude his term as director of Helsinki Dance Company, Kenneth Kvarnström will recycle parts of his previous work and add something new to the mix. (Re)use is the third part of a trilogy that explores the roles of the performer and the spectator.

In the work, the viewer enters the world of dance through the space: the audience is directed to a rather narrow room where props related to the choreographer are on display. Strange figures walk among the audience, and a dancer in a black lurex costume emerges from the display case. Suddenly, the curtains that were on one wall of the space are opened and the lurex dress moves to the other side. You have to go after him.

The magical solo on a black fur carpet familiar from (Play) is a very bodily experience when viewed from a metre away from the floor. Then a huge display case is lit up, where Sofia Karlsson, dressed in a white rococo outfit, draws in, until Kai Lähdesmäki and Janne Marja-aho begin an energetic and flowing duet. The audience naturally gives way to it. When the curtains are closed again, everyone stays where they happen to be.

Kvarnström’s dance gallery works excellently. It even feels strange that he hasn’t done this before. The difference from other works brought to galleries is that everything in Elsa is built on the terms of a dance piece. On the other hand, most of the scenes are made to be performed from the stage, and now the audience can get close to them.

The scenes with varying moods give a picture of the choreographer’s earlier aggressive and dark works to the more relaxed and contact-inducing works of recent years. There is always absurd humour and strong music.