Review: Silence
Dance review: Jarkko Mandelin’s Silence is the intoxicating dance event of the autumn
It is daring to call the proposal perfect. Still, I want to use this definition for Jarkko Mandelin’s work Silence for the Helsinki Dance Company and Kinetic Orchestra on the small stage of the Helsinki City Theatre. There’s nothing in it that you would like to be different.
Mandelin himself describes his work as visual music and symphonic dance performance, and that is what it is to a great extent. In a five-part work, there is no need to “understand” anything or look for meanings. You can only enjoy the intoxicating movement that transforms from one part to another in both rhythm and structure.
And what a movement it is! Mandelin’s movement language, which smoothly combines contemporary dance, contact improvisation, breakdancing, acrobatics and martial arts, is unique. It is very versatile, extremely physically demanding, full of details and yet very easy to follow. Especially in working in pairs, you can really see the focus on the moment.
Although the choreography is energetic and largely fast-paced, the performance as a whole creates an impression of calmness. And by this I don’t just mean the slower parts of the work, but a kind of general atmosphere. There is not a hint of effort in the performance, but everything radiates a peaceful certainty of being and doing.
THE ENTIRE GROUP OF 12 DANCERS is incredible. They have a virtuosic mastery of their bodies, movement language and choreography. They are one hundred and ten percent present. They don’t interpret, they live the movement. The dance flows and breathes in both super-fast and extremely slow scenes. Seamless contacts work both in the simultaneous parts of the whole group and especially in pair work.
Each performance of Silence is also unique in that the solos and duets created by the dancers themselves are drawn separately for each performance. They have their own choreographically defined place, but the performers change.
Even though the group of dancers is large, the arena-like space of the small stage does not feel cramped at all. In addition to choreographic ingenuity, it is certainly also influenced by the scarcity of visuals, which by no means means means emptiness or boredom. The color scheme is only black, white, and gray. The dancers are dressed in tailcoats, and the podiums in the background, which are distantly reminiscent of a rocky urban milieu, are grey. The lights (Aku Lahti) don’t play with colours either, even though they otherwise live with the performance.
The music created by Janne Hasti is at the same time very classical and, on the other hand, percussion-oriented playing with rhythm. The different parts of the music are clearly separated from each other, and the intervals between the different parts are used alternately as breaks for the dancers. However, the performative tension is not broken. Music and dance do not just live their own lives for a moment, but work in close cooperation all the time.
Silence has been produced with the support of the New Classics fund. The work has every chance of being shaped in accordance with the name of the support fund. The performance has a lot to offer to both dance connoisseurs and first-timers.