The Contemporary Performance Stage, which will open in May, invites the audience to an exciting and tense process of change in performance art
The Contemporary Performance Stage, which encourages diversity and dialogue between the arts, will start operating in the Helsinki City Theatre’s studio Pasila. In May, the programme will be opened by guest performances by performance artist and game designer Harold Hejaz, artist duo Biits, visual artist Ignacio Pérez Pérez and choreographer Eeva Juutinen. In August 2022, the programme will include the first premieres of the Contemporary Performance stage: Encounters of the Helsinki Feminist Secret Society, Sara Grotenfelt’s Last Hurrah and Kati Korosuo’s The Artist Is at Home.
“The starting point of the Stage for Contemporary Performance project is to be a bridge between a large institutional theatre and the freelance field of performing arts, so we were looking for works that could speak to audiences across these structural boundaries. The aim of the project is to provide artists with a concrete stage space and resources that they can use in the ways required for their artistic work. We have selected works that approach the stage in different ways. The selections for the guest performances in May focused on the pandemic and the topical artistic choices it has created, as well as works that have been overlooked due to audience restrictions. In the premiere selections in August, we paid particular attention to the diversity of the expressions of the performances,” say the project’s curators, performance artist, dancer Suvi Tuominen, director, doctoral researcher Tuomas Laitinen and curator Riikka Thitz.
The stage of the contemporary performance will begin its season with the video game performance Adventures of Harriharri – Episode III by Canadian artist and game designer Harold Hejaz on 19 May at Studio Pasila. The hip-hop fantasy adventure, which unfolds through interactive film and improvised rap and song, follows the life of Harriharri, who has just arrived in Finland, in Helsinki. Harriharri hopes to make new friends and a warm welcome to a new culture, but as the game progresses, he has to face constant setbacks as he tries to become a member of Finnish society.
The work Hopesija by the artist duo Biits, i.e. Heidi and Kaino Wennerstrand, was built in a private apartment located in the Tripla shopping centre. The grandparent’s memories echo in the space, and the parent draws on the screen, because there is no other way to communicate anymore. What happens to self-expression when Alzheimer’s completely changes your personality? If we do not seek gold but silver, will our competitive society become more equal? How is beauty made, with what forces and on whose terms?
The Silver Medal is a continuation of the critically acclaimed radio essay Hopeakulttuuri, in which Biitsi dealt with ageing Finland and the senior culture of the future.
Performance artist Ignacio Peréz Peréz’s solo performance The Longest Journey and choreographer Eeva Juutinen’s stage work olO will be performed during the same evening at Studio Pasila on 27 and 28 May.
The Longest Journey , which combines installation, painting, photography and performance, takes place in the lobby of studio Pasila and on the street in front of it. Pérez Pérez from Venezuela has taken a postcard of a waterfall from his father as the starting point for his work. In the performance, the card serves as a gateway that leads to an intimate and ritualistic journey – moments of transition, migration, transmigration of the soul, crossing borders and discovering new inner worlds.
Choreographer Eeva Juutinen’s stage work olO is based on Juutinen’s one-and-a-half-year drying process of plants and flowers, which inspired her to explore the liveliness and mortality of the body. olO plays with the relationships between large and small stage gestures and tensions, which can be approached as poetry, dance and bodily experience. The dancers in the performance are Terhi Hartikainen and Maria Mäkelä.
The first own productions on the stage of a contemporary performance, the art collective Helsingin Feministisen Salaseuran Kohtaamisia and dance artist Sara Grotenfelt’s Last Hurrah , which will be performed during the same evening, will premiere on 9 August on the stage of Studio Pasila.
The Helsinki Feminist Secret Society, represented by Laura Eklund Nhaga, Katri Naukkarinen, Amanda Palo, Olga Palo and Sophia Wekesa, presents the audience with two performers, borrowed bodies, who are connected to encounterers who remain hidden from the audience through headphones and microphones.
Encounters is interested in questions of power, representation, anonymity and empathy. What if facelessness was a tool for intimate interaction? How can you represent the other? Is representation the same as representation?
Dancer and choreographer Sara Grotenfelt’s jubilee performance Last Hurrah highlights the different emotional sides of partying. The bodily states of the main performer, the main performer of the performance, and the associations they lead bring the feeling of emptiness and discomfort to the stage. The festive songs and the concerto of snake whistles distributed to the audience create a tense atmosphere within which the performer tries in every way to please his guests.
The third premiere of the contemporary performance on stage, dance artist Kati Korosuo’s solo work The Artist Is at Home
will premiere on 23 August at Studio Pasila. Korosuo’s performance emphasizes documentarity and the use of the self as material. Our time is a stage where everything has already been said and done, shown and seen. What else can the performer’s body mirror?
The stage of a contemporary performance
Helsinki City Theatre’s new Contemporary Performance Stage will bring various forms of contemporary performance into the theatre’s repertoire, increase job opportunities for independent artists and develop cooperation in the performing arts. The theatre has reserved the studio Pasila stage for the two-year pilot project in 2022 and 2023 from mid-May to the end of August.
The activities are divided into a visiting stage as well as premieres and stage residencies aimed at preparing them. The visiting stage will take place in May, the residency work in June-July, and the premieres of the works produced at the residency will take place in August.
The stage design and repertoire of the contemporary performance are the responsibility of a three-person curatorial team, consisting of performance artist and dancer Suvi Tuominen, director, doctoral researcher Tuomas Laitinen and curator Riikka Thitz. At the City Theatre, the project is coordinated by Antti Lahti.
The stage for the contemporary performance was created on the initiative of artists working in the independent field of performing arts. In the spring of 2019, a working group assembled by Lauri Antti Mattila submitted a proposal to the management team of the Helsinki City Theatre, which was signed by 885 performing arts professionals. The proposal asked the theatre to respond to current changes in society and in the field of performing arts.
The Helsinki City Theatre accepted the challenge of the free field and aims to develop a new kind of production framework for the field in the form of a pilot project, which could contribute to changing the structures that create inequality and slow down the development of the arts. The purpose of the project is to provide an example and share experiences with other theatres funded by VOS.
The Stage for Contemporary Performance project is supported by Kone Foundation in 2022–2023.
Guest performances on the stage of a contemporary performance 19.5. – 28.5.2022
19. – 21.5.2022 Harold Hejazi: Adventures of Harriharri – Episode III
20. – 22.5.2022 Beach: Silver place
19. – 28.5.2022 Ignacio Peréz Peréz: The Longest Journey
27. – 28.5.2022 Eeva Juutinen: olO
Premieres on the stage of the contemporary performance in August 2022:
9. – 15.8.2022 Double bill: Helsinki Feminist Secret Society: Encounters and Sara Grotenfelt: Last Hurrah
23. – 29.8.2022 Kati Korosuo: The Artist Is at Home
Helsinki City Theatre ticket office, First Line 2, Mon-Fri 9 a.m. to 5.30 p.m., Eläintarhantie 5 Sat 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. and one hour before the performance and Lippupiste Mon-Sat 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., Sun 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., tel. 0600 900 900 (2 €/min + local network charge) www.hkti.fi
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Kaisa Pelkonen, Communications Manager, kaisa.pelkonen@hkt.fi, 040 552 3788
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