Review: Keijukaisneuvos Koo
Keijukaisneuvos Koo lived “learned thoughts for understanding fairies (and other spiritual beings)”.
I’ve noticed that I really like theatre performances that somehow include the movement language of dance. I’m not talking about big musicals with spectacular dance numbers, but slightly smaller productions. It’s a miracle that it was only now that I found my way to see dance theatre! Better late than never…
As soon as I stepped into the auditorium, I was overcome by the same feeling as I had more than 35 years ago when I was able to see the play Little Red Riding Hood for the first time with the school at the Hämeenlinna City Theatre. The fascinating, magical color scheme immediately tickled the imagination in a nice way – I wonder what will happen soon, because everything is possible!
Keijukaisneuvos Koo (Jyrki Karttunen) himself is a slightly silly gentleman, who leads us on a journey together to time and the world of fairies. It came as a complete surprise to me that there are different fairies for different days of the week, which are supposed to pop up in just the right order, because otherwise the week will be completely messed up. Well, Lauantai (Jenni-Elina von Bagh) always popped on stage mischievously at the wrong time, and the children in the audience always remembered to shout, rejoicing and warning about this. And of course, when it was Saturday’s turn to arrive, he wanted to have a Rokuli day. Typical!
The adults seemed to be especially amused by Monday (Sofia Ylinen), who fell over right from the start and anyway this fairy seemed to need more support than the others to get going. Tuesday (Mikko Paloniemi) and Thursday (Eero Vesterinen) carried small irritable figures in their hair. On Tuesday, these enemies caused unrest and pressure to succeed, because on Tuesdays you can no longer afford to fall like on Mondays. For Thursday’s fairy, on the other hand, the little figures brought more enthusiasm and strength.
There was also a boxing match on stage, which was actually a choreographic variation of the boxing scene from Chaplin’s film City Lights. Torstai also fell in love and literally soared through the air with light steps. The atmosphere was often very dreamlike. Even in my dreams, I often take a few bouncy steps and fly over the road. In the flying scene, I heard a delighted sigh behind me: “How cool it would be to know how to fly like that!” Yes!
I enjoyed this show immensely! Lovely and unique movement language on each fairy (my own favorite of these was the funny Tuesday), butterflies and fireflies and stars. Colors and beautiful patterns in the costumes, you can see that they had invested in these properly. Sometimes I realized that I was rocking on the bench with the movement from side to side. Charming music that took me away! It was wonderful to see the empathy and joy and joy of the child viewers. There will certainly be enough to tell about this for a long time. The performance sunk in nicely with viewers of all ages (although someone nearby was fiddling with their mobile phone throughout the performance, arrrrgh!) and different things amused and moved. At the end, all the weekday fairies danced happily together and in good harmony, because otherwise the weeks would be chaos all the time. However, what stuck in my mind was that it doesn’t always go as predetermined. You can stumble on Wednesdays and it can rain on Sundays, and even if you have the opportunity to do whatever you feel like, you still don’t always feel like it.
“Impressive and enchanting!” says my inner Jormauoti with satisfaction with what he has seen and experienced. I’m definitely going to go to see dance theatre in the future as well!