Fantasy, imagination and an incredulous look at reality are twisted on many layers
Choreographer Valtteri Raekallio is known for his works that are based on Finnish prose and poetry. Lomonosov’s engine is also inspired by fiction, Antti Salminen’s prose work of the same name (2014).
“Lomonosov’s engine masterfully mixes carnivalesque sci-fi and a strange new fantasy world, with the undertone being heavy issues related to environmental destruction,” Raekallio says.
Raekallio became particularly interested in the multi-layered nature of the work and began to think about making a performance based on the book. “The idea stayed in the drawer for many years, because it requires the production resources of a large company, which was not possible to get in our own independent group,” Raekallio says.
After eight years, the work feels even more topical. “It is very strongly written in the book that cheap energy was not cheap after all, and that the price of growth will be paid when an environmental catastrophe is revealed, which is unfortunately cruel today.”
From prose to dance
The transformation of fiction into a non-linguistic form takes place through many work phases. During the first readings, images of scenes or situations in the performance begin to emerge in Raekallio’s mind, even though he does not try to imitate the work on the level of a narrative in his performances.
“It’s more important to look for pre-linguistic, experiential emotions or miniature narratives through which I try to understand what fascinates me about this and where that feeling comes from,” Raekallio says.
After that, she looks for music that evokes similar emotions, and in the rehearsal hall, she begins to improvise to find bodily equivalents to the reading experience and the language of the book.
Based on these, Raekallio develops improvisation tasks that she then commissions the dancers during the first few weeks of rehearsal. The rehearsals are videotaped, and Raekallio uses the material to plan the movement-based script for the performance.
“Most of the performance is the dancers’ movement material, which I just develop further. The eye starts to pick up things from the videos that feel meaningful,” Raekallio says. 90% of all material goes to the trash, but a small part is started to be structured into scenes. The final performance is created together with the dancers.
Meaningful landscape
Salminen’s book is not story- or character-driven: the person is not the main character, but the essential thing is the place and landscape in which we move. Lomonosov’s engine is located in the remote areas of Novaya Zemlya, where the Soviet Union once conducted nuclear tests.
“For us, too, the place, the landscape and the atmosphere will be more in focus. When making a performance, the biggest oddity is related to where these people are and why they act this way,” Raekallio says.
The landscape is arctic, but the frost is starting to thaw and ancient seeds are awakening here and there.
Instead, much of the Eurasian continent is still sleeping catatonic sleep, dreaming of cheap oil, champagne effervescence, and antidepressants. I’ve heard that there are still a lot of people in the cities.
In a way, the performance is about imagined cultures of the future or the past, and the music is transrational folk music composed by Pekko Käppi. “We started thinking about the people who have moved to Novaya Zemlya and are living in voluntary isolation,” Raekallio says.
Raekallio often works site-specific and makes performances that are essentially related to a space. “Theatre spaces, on the other hand, are made for performances, and they claim to be empty, neutral spaces, which I strongly question,” Raekallio says. That’s why he wanted to make Lomonosov’s engine a multimedia performance that starts before the audience sits in the stands.
Viewers can explore an exhibition related to the world of the work in the foyer before or after the performance. The work is also accompanied by a dance film to be released later, which the working group filmed in the summer of 2022 in Svalbard, on the island next to Novaya Zemlya.
In the work, beliefs become reality and facts are revealed as beliefs, and behind it all lies the question of what is Lomonosov’s engine and how it affects all this. “Fantasy, imagination and an incredulous look at reality are in a spiral on many layers,” Raekallio says.
Ida Henritius