Review: Pieniä pääosia

Small Main Roles / Helsinki City Theatre 2.3.2016

What the hell! The choreographer, melted from deep ice, had been removed from the performance! And I was waiting for it so much… (should have believed Karttunen’s earlier tweet where he said that he had removed himself from the picture)

That didn’t bother us at all, because even without it, Helsinki City Theatre’s / Helsinki Dance Company’s new Small Main Parts worked brilliantly. Jyrki Karttunen was responsible for the script and choreography.

First of all, Little Lead Roles is a terribly funny show. So I really got to laugh at many points. Sometimes for movement language, sometimes for facial expressions, sometimes for chatter. So there was some talk here, in English.

Somewhere in the distant future, a few people (androids?) are hanging on to the rags of humanity and looking at the movie classic Sound of Music. Some obscure clips of the making of the film have been preserved. The sounds of helicopters on set, Julie Andrews in her iconic apron, alpine landscapes, snippets of songs… Then we try to put together a dance performance from them.

It was absolutely amazing to have seen this group in rehearsals , without suits, without lights, and now everything is ready. How different everything becomes when those missing elements are added! Karoliina Koiso-Kanttila’ssilver-toned gorgeous, gorgeous dresses are like the icing on the cake. And especially the iconic apron dresses, the material of which you would like to try on. Anyway, there are costumes like the ones you saw in the sci-fi movies of the 60s and 70s. Vesa Ellilä’slighting design was also beautiful and supports the dancers’ movements. And those lovely silver glitters on the face (by Anu Laaksonen). The set design is by Tuomas Antikainen (what an alpine landscape as a backdrop!). Mobile racks played a big part in this, and now a fabric/membrane had appeared on them too (which was not yet in the blocks). On which it was convenient to project different things, and play with the lights anyway. Those racks were rotated around the stage in many different ways.

And then the music! Fortunately, the permits were also obtained for three Sound of Music music clips, as they support the soundscape designed by Tuomas Fräntiwell . Brilliantly beautiful music, and all the other voices (and the vocals are by Leena Rapola). The music varies from fun and light to more serious tones. And the dancers go along with it.

The entire dance quintet of Jyrki Kasper, Aksinja Lommi, Heidi Naakka, Kaisa Niemi and Mikko Paloniemi are amazingly skilled. In the beginning, more robotic movements. But so smooth and beautiful. Julie, who is said in a questioning way. And this group not only dances beautifully, but also acts really well. BRAVO!

This group should always work together, if the result is gems like this! If I ever win the lottery, I’ll give a slice of it to Helsinki Dance Company to do one performance a year with this group, right?

From the exercises, I recognized a few pieces of movement language and dance clips, now as part of the whole. I, a layman, don’t understand anything about dancing, but the guy who was with me dances himself, and was also completely nuts about the performance. The cheerfulness and humor was so palpable.

The more I see Jyrki Karttunen’s choreographies, the more I like them. The man is a genius 🙂

A warm thank you to the whole working group – you guys are doing a hell of a wonderful job!

Luckily I happened to hit a performance again (half by accident), after which there was an artist meeting. The whole group of dancers and the choreographer were present, and there was quite interesting commentary and discussion from the audience. It turned out that there were many big twists and turns in making the proposal. During the rehearsal period, the performance changed many times and in many ways. In the end, the deep-frozen choreographer didn’t fit in and was therefore left out at the very last minute. But its effect on the performance clearly remained, i.e. these dancers have received guidance to polish their performance from somewhere (i.e. to make the Sound of Music).

The crowd on stage takes everything very literally; The Sound of Music is not about mountaineering or helicopters. But from the available fragments, we compile what we can get out of it, and understand them as they happen.

So why the Sound of Music? It was an important childhood memory for Karttunen; A movie that I saw dozens of times. It left a feeling like you could fly (what an important feeling for a dancer and choreographer!). And of course, it represents the most iconic part of musical films. It IS the musical movie that everyone recognizes. In other words, this work combines “incomprehensible” contemporary dance with an iconic musical. The original ideas and bases for the movement material come from Karttunen’s head, but the entire working group has edited and refined and been involved in the creation of the work.

However, the crew did not watch the film at any point during the process, and neither did Karttunen. It was a bit of an intention, but then it stayed. And the idea was that the creators would have only remembered different clips 🙂

By the way, it also turned out that Kaisa Niemi’s oracle-like character, who interprets old messages in the performance and passes them on to others (who can only say the word Julie), is into ancient languages (such as English) 🙂 We struggled with the rights to use the music until the very end, but luckily we got the permission from the Rogers & Hammerstein team. However, Karttunen said that the performance would have worked without them, because the film has so much more iconic imagery than music. But it’s great this way, because the pieces of music fit in wonderfully.

By the way, it was nice to hear from the choreographer that dance could sometimes be compared to visual arts, and not always to theater. So you don’t always even have to try to understand the work, you can just enjoy it. Absolutely true! Especially for a layman like me, it has been relieving to understand this.

There are 3 more shows, this week, and I couldn’t recommend more!