Review: Kaksivärinen fuuga

Gentle and warm Two-tone fugue

Last Christmas, I bought a ticket to The Two-Colour Fugue, Carl Knif’s new work with the Helsinki Dance Company. The performance date was 1.4.2020 – aptly April Fools’ Day – which, of course, did not materialize as the world had time to change at times. But now, finally, in Studio Pasila, the work was to be experienced.

Knif cites Shostakovich’s 24 preludes and fugues (op. 87, 1950-1951) as the source of inspiration for the work, a sample of which has been selected together with sound designer Janne Hast . Knif also says that she has returned to movement and dance and music from the more narrative work of recent years.

The movement has a lot of familiar and versatile richly detailed Knifi, such as smooth dimension, lots of talking hands, startling stops, android-like jerkiness, intense and expressive looks. There are group scenes by all seven dancers and a couple of more soloist parts, but the main part is made up of various duets and episodes for small groups, which have a strong connection and community.

One of the finest is the duet between Eero Vesterinen and Pekka Louhio on the table: abundant and close connection, fun physical contact also with the feet. The delicate feeling is mixed with a slight sense of danger: lest anyone fall off the edge of the table… The activities of Heidi Naakka, Jonna Aaltonen and Jyrki Kasperi , while holding on to each other, create an interesting joint movement. At the beginning, Anna Stenberg’s movement is manipulated by poking her with metal tubes, until finally the dancer, the metal tube and the piece of wood merge cyborgically. Mikko Paloniemi also produces sound for his physical solo by tapping on the backstage, his head and knee while Jonna Aaltonen shadows her jacket looking worried.

There was a lot of shading, following, imitation – there was a lot of social mirroring: In the beginning, one person moves with the microphone stand and the others follow its movements or are somehow guided by it. Later, the rest of the group follows one of the dancers with large coats, as if trying to catch, but still somehow benevolent, protecting, not preying?

In addition to the jackets, the costumes (Karoliina Koiso-Kanttila) do not come to the fore much, leaving room for Knif’s movement – with the exception of a couple of black ghost figures that occasionally glide around the stage. The set design and lighting (William Iles) are also quite functional: there are really only a couple of tables on the stage, sometimes upright. Seemingly random props are used in ways that seem random, even evoking a slight hilarity.

Despite the non-narrative nature – or precisely because of it – it is easy for the viewer to project the themes and stories they want into the performance. The work somehow left me with a warm and serene feeling. When I try to feel what caused this, I think that it was largely due to the connection between the characters, the almost innocently gentle image of humanity written into the work. There is no oversupply of such a thing in this day and age.