Review: Lomonosovin moottori

Dance review: An astonishing overall experience – HDC’s Lomonosov engine is the dance event of the autumn

For understandable reasons, the state of the earth and the environment, as well as the impact of humans on it, have recently become more and more the subject of performances in both dance and other sports.

Of the dance works I’ve seen so far, Valtteri Raekallio’s Lomonosov engine, which premiered this week and deals with environmental issues, is definitely the best. It could even be called the autumn incident that everyone should see.

Not because it would bring a completely new perspective to the topic or a solution to problems, but because of the wonderfully functioning balance and amazing level of all the elements of the performance.

I haven’t read Antti Salminen’s book of the same name, which is the basis for the performance, so I can’t say how faithful Raekallio’s work is to it. But I don’t think it matters. The performance speaks to and touches you just as it is.

LOMONOSOV’S ENGINE moves in an apocalyptic imaginary future, where something revolutionary and irreversible has happened at a mysterious research station on its southern island in the remote area of Novaya Zemilja. As a result, the world order around us has changed, scientific laws of nature and beliefs have collided and even changed places. What role the Lomonosov engine plays in this, and what it actually is, the proposal does not give an actual answer to that. Everyone can decide for themselves. In any case, it seems to be destructive in one way or another.

The small stage of the City Theatre is dominated by Antti Mattila’s multifaceted installation, built of construction tarpaulins and a few machine-like metal parts, which is cut through by Jukka Huitila’s differently siloed lights. The view is beautiful and menacing, mundane and imaginative at the same time. The place is a space of both safety and destruction for the creatures that move there.

The eight equally shabby (camouflage Maija Sillanpää) dressed in dirty and worn-out clothes designed by Essi Huovila are, most likely, the remaining staff of the research station. In addition to them, the events are occasionally followed by strange creatures about a meter tall on wheels, which are puppeted by the dancers. The head of these characters is loudspeakers, which make both breathing and other sounds.

Pekko Käppi’s music and Erad Nazimov’s sound design intersect into an impressive whole, in which different sounds of nature are sometimes more prominent, and at other times Käppi’s compositions that refer to folk music are more distant. Sometimes silence or the rhythm of the dancers’ feet also speak.

HOWEVER, THE CORE of the performance is the dancers. They are both a close-knit group and individuals, both in their roles and as individuals. Each of the eight dancers is at the same time extremely natural, technically skilled and expressively strong. They have both porous sensitivity and steel. The choreography created by Raekallio together with them fits like a glove. There is energy and despair in the movements, persistent faith and submission. The movement language is so one with the subject and the whole that sometimes you even forget that you are following a “dance performance”.

Lomonosov’s Engine is a dense work with a tough subject matter, but which as a performance is even empowering. It is a complete experience that does not explain itself, but allows the viewer to enjoy itself to the fullest and make their own interpretations.