Västerbottens-Kuriren, 20111205
Arvio
Ann Enström
Wild play in exquisite dance work
Lue lisää
Västerbottens Folkbladet, 20111203
Arvio
Annika Burholm
Man is also a human
KENNETH KVARNSTRÖM mixes high and low and plays beautifully, totally wild and silly with the man’s role in his new dance ballet (play), which had its Swedish premier to a full-house at NorrlandsOperan last Friday evening.
Instead of recorded electronic music, Kvarnström is working this time with live musicians on the stage: Violinists Karin Eriksson, Pontus Björk and Pär Lindqvist, Pelle Hansen, cello, Asuka Nakamura, piano and Jonas Nordberg, theorbo, a lute with a 1.5 m long neck, who play Mozart, Chopin, Bach, Vivaldi, Glass, Shostakovich and more.
To splinter the public’s vision further (as K says in the programme sheet) the dancers, Kenneth Bruun Carlsson, Sofia Karlsson, Kai Lähdesmäki, Janne Marja-aho, Cilla Olsen, Valtteri Raekallio and Terhi Vaimala, are dressed in designer clothes and masks.
EVERYTHING STARTS so quietly, with music played on the long lute and the performers coming and going on the neutrally illuminated stage. Overall, the role of the lighting is subdued in this performance, which is fortunate, as there are so many impressions even so.
With Mozart, the promenade transforms unnoticeably into dance. Suddenly, they lift each other, oh, so lovingly. Gently the movements swell round in their shared dance body; I would have liked to be part and be caressed by the notes’ affection.
After this warm up in tracksuits and colourful T-shirts, the contrast arrives. Chopin’s funeral march, danced by a woman in a black corset lying on a black Rya mat. Like an animal, she twists in anguish and sorrow. Like a striptease queen, she caresses herself. A physical music balancing between furtive vulgarity and the art of dancing, where the classical turns of the feet and legs cancel out the banality of the music hall. Both honest and melodramatic and finally rather funny, as she becomes entangled in the mat.
A play with a female stereotype? A attraction to the low and to mix it with the high? These thoughts swirl round in my head. Moreover, they gather speed as three male underpantsless dancers in kilts dance a macho-feminine caress and war dance with smacking of naked buttocks, waving their naked tackle, but in the wrong (?) direction, caressing, stamping and bellowing, while the music calmly and elegantly picks out its classical sonata – and the remarkable happens, the music blunts the shock of the powerful freaky spectacle. The ear is stronger than the eye (which K also says in the programme sheet).
Most of the sections, ten in total, are more simple, beautiful and gentle. Many movements recur, such as the lift, the twirls and the arm swings above the head, the first few times as dear friends, then slightly monotonously, but then one could take a peep at the musicians who played until their strings smoked. Or take pleasure in the sweeping costumes and the colours of the awesome masks.
At the end, a male dancer in a jacket and underpants stands alone on stage. He has just taken off the sad panda mask. He looks nakedly out at the audience. As if he wants to say that even a man is a human. Ecce homo.
”PLAY” WAS the second act of NorrlandsOperan’s Kvarnström visit. Act I consisted of the symphony orchestra’s performance of Marcus Fjellström’s Degenerator and Mats Larsson Gothe’s Symphony no 2, conducted by Shi-Yeon Sung. Tempestuous, painful and bewildering works that moved with precision between the elephantine steps of armies and a mosquito swarm’s vanishing.
(Translation: Multiprint Oy / Multidoc)
Lue lisää
Uutispäivä Demari, 20111130
Arvio
Annikki Alku
Elegant and playfuplayfull
Lue lisää
Turun Sanomat, 20111127
Arvio
Kaisa Kurikka
Steady, unvarying dance
Lue lisää
Hufvudstadsbladet, 20111126
Arvio
Jan-Peter Kaiku
Playful Meetings
When seven dancers and six musicians take possession of the City Theatre’s main stage in a concept uniting modern dance, live classical music and fashion, we are served an event that does not belong to the everyday. Kenneth Kvarnström’s (play) is a joint production in the largest format between his own company, the Helsinki Dance Company and NorrlandsOperan and after three performances in Helsinki it is being put on in Umeå twice before going on tour in Germany next year.
The title of the work is descriptive. Play and playfulness permeate the entire piece as well as the details. It also characterises the narration in the individual scenes that mirror various outcomes and meanings of the term play. Play does not mean they have saved on the quality or ambition. On the contrary, it is just this playful meeting between the seriously designed and performed individual elements that is the whole point. Without the play, the meeting between classical music from five centuries and the movement-orientated modern dance could easily have been both bombastic and introspective.
The work is structured into nine scenes, each featuring its own music by composers such as Bach, Chopin, Vivaldi and Shostakovich. The series also includes more rarely heard music such as baroque music for the theorbo -lute, in itself a visually peculiar instrument.
The individual scenes could stand as works in themselves but of course they are tied together sequentially by the same musicians and dancers featuring in them in different combinations. Another unifying factor is Jens Sethzman’s scenography – a white background element and two luminous mobile elements that act as benches.
The aspect most obviously tying together the scenes and concretising the playful concept in the work is the dancers’ short illuminating speeches to the public between the scenes. One of these is a recording of the dancers’ comments during a rehearsal situation. This in particular gets the audience laughing heartily.
The movement vocabulary in all of the scenes consists of material characteristic for Kenneth Kvarnström. Individual dancers rise or fall in groups as well as other formations that come together and dissolve in an unbroken flow that we recognise again. Likewise the carefully structured pair scenes, which here mirror the awareness and congeniality rather than submission and dominance as many times before. Overall, the movement material is characterised by maturity and trust without any need to prove or achieve something. This has also been snapped up by the dancers, who emphasise this in their performance. Everyone is well aware of the aesthetics, as well as the material, to which they clearly take their own approach.
The suite includes zippy comedy, rather á la Carmen?! from the 1990s, when Kai Lähdesmäki, Janne Marja-aho and Valtteri Raekallio in kilts put on a peepshow with drive. In a brilliantly coloured scene, to Bach’s Goldberg Variations with masked groups in fanciful red and black dresses, the play bursts into flower with visualisation and movement to become afterwards more minimalistic and stylised in the scene accompanied by music of Glass and Kasberger. A crystal clear duet for Kenneth Bruun Carlson and Cilla Olsen etches itself in the memory not just for the interpretation but also for the material’s sake. The finale’s mask game and caricatured rhythmical material to Shostakovich’s hectic tempos brings to mind Asiatic drama as well as commedia dell’arte.
The playfulness makes the whole piece entertaining and finally it turns into a functioning entry into this scenic matter.
(Translation: Multiprint Oy / Multidoc)
Lue lisää
Helsingin Sanomat, 20111126
Arvio
Hannele Jyrkkä
“The performance, made for the large stage, is good entertainment with no need for deeper analysis. After all, both the skilful visuals and the music majestically interpreted by Norrlands Opera’s string quartet and the lute and grand piano players is salve for the soul in November.”
(Translation: Multiprint Oy / Multidoc)
Lue lisää
Hufvudstadsbladet, 26.11.2011
Arvio
Jan-Peter Kaiku
Playful Meetings
When seven dancers and six musicians take possession of the City Theatre’s main stage in a concept uniting modern dance, live classical music and fashion, we are served an event that does not belong to the everyday. Kenneth Kvarnström’s (play) is a joint production in the largest format between his own company, the Helsinki Dance Company and NorrlandsOperan and after three performances in Helsinki it is being put on in Umeå twice before going on tour in Germany next year.
The title of the work is descriptive. Play and playfulness permeate the entire piece as well as the details. It also characterises the narration in the individual scenes that mirror various outcomes and meanings of the term play. Play does not mean they have saved on the quality or ambition. On the contrary, it is just this playful meeting between the seriously designed and performed individual elements that is the whole point. Without the play, the meeting between classical music from five centuries and the movement-orientated modern dance could easily have been both bombastic and introspective.
The work is structured into nine scenes, each featuring its own music by composers such as Bach, Chopin, Vivaldi and Shostakovich. The series also includes more rarely heard music such as baroque music for the theorbo -lute, in itself a visually peculiar instrument.
The individual scenes could stand as works in themselves but of course they are tied together sequentially by the same musicians and dancers featuring in them in different combinations. Another unifying factor is Jens Sethzman’s scenography – a white background element and two luminous mobile elements that act as benches.
The aspect most obviously tying together the scenes and concretising the playful concept in the work is the dancers’ short illuminating speeches to the public between the scenes. One of these is a recording of the dancers’ comments during a rehearsal situation. This in particular gets the audience laughing heartily.
The movement vocabulary in all of the scenes consists of material characteristic for Kenneth Kvarnström. Individual dancers rise or fall in groups as well as other formations that come together and dissolve in an unbroken flow that we recognise again. Likewise the carefully structured pair scenes, which here mirror the awareness and congeniality rather than submission and dominance as many times before. Overall, the movement material is characterised by maturity and trust without any need to prove or achieve something. This has also been snapped up by the dancers, who emphasise this in their performance. Everyone is well aware of the aesthetics, as well as the material, to which they clearly take their own approach.
The suite includes zippy comedy, rather á la Carmen?! from the 1990s, when Kai Lähdesmäki, Janne Marja-aho and Valtteri Raekallio in kilts put on a peepshow with drive. In a brilliantly coloured scene, to Bach’s Goldberg Variations with masked groups in fanciful red and black dresses, the play bursts into flower with visualisation and movement to become afterwards more minimalistic and stylised in the scene accompanied by music of Glass and Kasberger. A crystal clear duet for Kenneth Bruun Carlson and Cilla Olsen etches itself in the memory not just for the interpretation but also for the material’s sake. The finale’s mask game and caricatured rhythmical material to Shostakovich’s hectic tempos brings to mind Asiatic drama as well as commedia dell’arte.
The playfulness makes the whole piece entertaining and finally it turns into a functioning entry into this scenic matter.
(Translation: Multiprint Oy / Multidoc)
Lue lisää
Helsingin Sanomat, 26.11.2011
Arvio
Hannele Jyrkkä
“The performance, made for the large stage, is good entertainment with no need for deeper analysis. After all, both the skilful visuals and the music majestically interpreted by Norrlands Opera’s string quartet and the lute and grand piano players is salve for the soul in November.”
(Translation: Multiprint Oy / Multidoc)
Lue lisää
Elle.fi, 20111124
Arvio
Mirjami Pullinen
(play) is a play on the noble and the humble
The impressive work of modern dance met all expectations.
I had the pleasure of being a fly on the wall when the modern dance work (play) was being created this fall. Namely the work, created by Kenneth Kvarnström and performed by the Helsinki Dance Company, took fashion to places where it is rarely seen: the costumes were made by three talented fashion designers. Esteemed Swedish fashion designers Martin Bergström and Helena Hörstedt created costumes for some scenes and the go-to designer of Finnish opera, modern dance and ballet, Erika Turunen for some scenes. 24. The opening night on November 24th showed what rehearsals full of laughter, tomato red fabric, and black masks can create.
And create they did.
Lue lisää
Västerbottens-Kuriren, 05.12.2011
Arvio
Ann Enström
Wild play in exquisite dance work
Lue lisää
Västerbottens Folkbladet, 03.12.2011
Arvio
Annika Burholm
Man is also a human
KENNETH KVARNSTRÖM mixes high and low and plays beautifully, totally wild and silly with the man’s role in his new dance ballet (play), which had its Swedish premier to a full-house at NorrlandsOperan last Friday evening.
Instead of recorded electronic music, Kvarnström is working this time with live musicians on the stage: Violinists Karin Eriksson, Pontus Björk and Pär Lindqvist, Pelle Hansen, cello, Asuka Nakamura, piano and Jonas Nordberg, theorbo, a lute with a 1.5 m long neck, who play Mozart, Chopin, Bach, Vivaldi, Glass, Shostakovich and more.
To splinter the public’s vision further (as K says in the programme sheet) the dancers, Kenneth Bruun Carlsson, Sofia Karlsson, Kai Lähdesmäki, Janne Marja-aho, Cilla Olsen, Valtteri Raekallio and Terhi Vaimala, are dressed in designer clothes and masks.
EVERYTHING STARTS so quietly, with music played on the long lute and the performers coming and going on the neutrally illuminated stage. Overall, the role of the lighting is subdued in this performance, which is fortunate, as there are so many impressions even so.
With Mozart, the promenade transforms unnoticeably into dance. Suddenly, they lift each other, oh, so lovingly. Gently the movements swell round in their shared dance body; I would have liked to be part and be caressed by the notes’ affection.
After this warm up in tracksuits and colourful T-shirts, the contrast arrives. Chopin’s funeral march, danced by a woman in a black corset lying on a black Rya mat. Like an animal, she twists in anguish and sorrow. Like a striptease queen, she caresses herself. A physical music balancing between furtive vulgarity and the art of dancing, where the classical turns of the feet and legs cancel out the banality of the music hall. Both honest and melodramatic and finally rather funny, as she becomes entangled in the mat.
A play with a female stereotype? A attraction to the low and to mix it with the high? These thoughts swirl round in my head. Moreover, they gather speed as three male underpantsless dancers in kilts dance a macho-feminine caress and war dance with smacking of naked buttocks, waving their naked tackle, but in the wrong (?) direction, caressing, stamping and bellowing, while the music calmly and elegantly picks out its classical sonata – and the remarkable happens, the music blunts the shock of the powerful freaky spectacle. The ear is stronger than the eye (which K also says in the programme sheet).
Most of the sections, ten in total, are more simple, beautiful and gentle. Many movements recur, such as the lift, the twirls and the arm swings above the head, the first few times as dear friends, then slightly monotonously, but then one could take a peep at the musicians who played until their strings smoked. Or take pleasure in the sweeping costumes and the colours of the awesome masks.
At the end, a male dancer in a jacket and underpants stands alone on stage. He has just taken off the sad panda mask. He looks nakedly out at the audience. As if he wants to say that even a man is a human. Ecce homo.
”PLAY” WAS the second act of NorrlandsOperan’s Kvarnström visit. Act I consisted of the symphony orchestra’s performance of Marcus Fjellström’s Degenerator and Mats Larsson Gothe’s Symphony no 2, conducted by Shi-Yeon Sung. Tempestuous, painful and bewildering works that moved with precision between the elephantine steps of armies and a mosquito swarm’s vanishing.
(Translation: Multiprint Oy / Multidoc)
Lue lisää
Uutispäivä Demari, 30.11.2011
Arvio
Annikki Alku
Elegant and playfuplayfull
Lue lisää
Turun Sanomat, 27.11.2011
Arvio
Kaisa Kurikka
Steady, unvarying dance
Lue lisää
Ylen Puntari, 20111126
Arvio
Jere Nurminen
The Master’s New Clothes
Lue lisää
Etelä-Suomen Sanomat, 20111126
Arvio
Sara Nyberg
”(play) is a mixture of enchanting dance and music, with a dash of Kvarnström’s sparkling humour.”
Lue lisää
Ylen Puntari, 26.11.2011
Arvio
Jere Nurminen
The Master’s New Clothes
Lue lisää
Etelä-Suomen Sanomat, 26.11.2011
Arvio
Sara Nyberg
”(play) is a mixture of enchanting dance and music, with a dash of Kvarnström’s sparkling humour.”
Lue lisää
Elle.fi, 24.11.2011
Arvio
Mirjami Pullinen
(play) is a play on the noble and the humble
The impressive work of modern dance met all expectations.
I had the pleasure of being a fly on the wall when the modern dance work (play) was being created this fall. Namely the work, created by Kenneth Kvarnström and performed by the Helsinki Dance Company, took fashion to places where it is rarely seen: the costumes were made by three talented fashion designers. Esteemed Swedish fashion designers Martin Bergström and Helena Hörstedt created costumes for some scenes and the go-to designer of Finnish opera, modern dance and ballet, Erika Turunen for some scenes. 24. The opening night on November 24th showed what rehearsals full of laughter, tomato red fabric, and black masks can create.
And create they did.
Lue lisää
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