Review: Kuka pelkää tappajahaita

HCD dances in different colors of fear

A black blob rolls through the stage. Fear is dressed up as shapeless and reaching in all directions. Then the endless run begins. Helsinki Dance Company’s Who’s Afraid of Killer Sharks is a dance in the terrain of fear. Dressed in black and wearing boxing helmets, the dancers take turns running on stage. The viewer is dropped into the middle of the atmosphere of fighting games and martial arts. The sense of danger thickens from moment to moment, but also the threat wafts from the stage.

The dance is rough and unpolished. The movements of the bodies are concretely drawn as a chalk map on the floor, breaking the air and sliding over the boundaries of the stage. The dancers’ own personalities can be seen in the movements, but the group choreographies also flow elegantly with the power of the mass, creating the power of unity in the performance. The dance has jagged beauty, sensitivity to encountering others, but also frenzy and offensive ugliness.

The choreography plays with the movement language of martial arts. The dancers are like straight out of the world of elite sports, tuned in to perfect performance. The choreography turns the stage into a playing field, which can turn into a playground in an instant. In its physicality, the dance supports the harsh atmosphere created by the stage world, but in addition to fear, the dance also shows courage and comedy. High jumps and falls with a straight body also make the audience’s heart rate rise, while jerky movements and unruliness of the face make you smile. In part, the variability of the movement language creates chaos, which is certainly appropriate, but also challenges the coherence of the drama arc.

The sound design carries the work to the end and makes the work a whole. The rhythm and change of the music keep the intensity in a tight grip and also rhythm the choreography. At times, even the music seems to take away from the choreography and not the other way around. The visuals and lights also reinforce the flow of the drama throughout the performance.

As a whole, Joona Halonen manages to convey different shades of fear throughout a person’s life. From the threat of a children’s playground, we move on to the real threats and fears of the adult world, which in their tragic nature also appear comical. The mycelium of fears overlaps and intertwines, and the fears of children’s play, the growing pains of a teenager and the worries of an adult are mixed with the fears built by modern society. The name Who Is Afraid of Killer Sharks leads to thoughts of children’s play, where fear is denied while running away at the same time. Eventually, however, the helmets are taken off, the play ends – but does the fear disappear?