Review: Veren häät
Dance review: Brilliant, tough and fierce Blood Wedding
Helsinki Dance Company and Compañia Kaari & Roni Martin’s Blood Wedding at the City Theatre’s studio in Pasila is simply a blood-curdling performance.
Created jointly by Kaari Martin (choreography), Roni Martin (music) and Atro Kahiluoto, the ensemble is based on the life of Federico Garcia Lorca when he wrote his play Blood Wedding. The texts to be heard as speech or songs are by Garcia Lorca, but the performance is not a version of the play.
It is a wild and intense, painful and vulnerable stage experience. It is at the same time rough and ugly beautiful, but also elegant and finished. It doesn’t idle for a second and it doesn’t apologize for a moment for its existence.
And even though I’m not an expert on flamenco, I would argue that Blood Wedding is more flamenco than many of the more traditional performances of the genre I’ve seen. The spirit and heartblood of flamenco are fully present in this performance.
The surreal scenes have reminiscences and points of contact with a traditional Spanish wedding, with its sturdy tables and surrounding chairs. On the other hand, visual associations can also lead thoughts to the Last Supper in the Bible. The characters include reluctant brides who seem to be taken to the slaughter, but also humiliated young men who are hooked on meat.
In general, there is much more than a hint of comparing a person to a beef cattle and comparing war to a slaughterhouse. On the left side of the stage, above the orchestra, hangs a map of pig carcass parts shaped from red neon tubes. The parallelism and closeness of life and death is also indicated by Jukka Huitila’s lights, in which blood red is strongly present.
The costumes of the performers who drag themselves from one place to another (Elina Kolehmainen) and disguise (Hanna Piispanen) also make us think of war and refugees. Hippunen’s Dali-inspired black and white, ragged outfits and emaciated appearances with traces of blood are strongly and harrowingly symbolic.
Joy and joy are not really present at this wedding, but the power and depth of emotions are. They can be seen in the entire group of performers, but they reach their peak in the solo parts.
Choreographically, the performance follows the basics of flamenco, with everyone getting a different solo that looks like their own role and themselves. The most frenzied of them is Justus Pienmunne’s solo that develops into an almost wild rampage of a young man, which also plays an important role in the lining of the dried blood of a black flamenco skirt, into which the dancer eventually becomes entangled.
In the first part, Unto Nuora’s anxious solo part of an older man, which takes place almost exclusively at floor level, is also strongly remembered. Aino Seppo’s solo is short, but its harsh distress about a motherless child is touching.
None of the dancers in Blood Wedding is a flamenco specialist, but that is not essential in the work and choreography. More important is the flamenco spirit, and each of the eight performers reaches it one hundred percent. The movement language is very physical and rough. Flamenco is present above all in the use of hands and gestures, but also in the rhythm of the feet.
The music of the performance, both compositions and arrangements of traditional songs, is by Roni Martin. You can hear from the music and see from the performance that it and the choreography have been created in very close collaboration and feeding each other, as is part of the flamenco tradition. The orchestra, on the other hand, radiates close cooperation. Victor Carrasco, Sanna Salmenkallio, Juan Antonio Suárez “Cano” and Roni Martin are a dream team that couldn’t play better together.
The Wedding of Blood is a tough and violent work that fits the current world situation almost self-evidently. It doesn’t impose itself, but it doesn’t leave you alone either. And I think it’s one of the best performances made by either group.