Review: HDC2
EMOTIONS, STYLE AND VIRTUOSITY THE WAY OF HELSINKI DANCE COMPANY
Daydream Junkies by Simo Kellokumpu, a young generation of Finnish choreographers, is an exciting dance piece. There is no need to worry about the opening of the name as much as there is in the field of modern visual art. Of course, you can get hints of “daydream junkies”, but the picture can be expanded to include a life-long journey, walking in everyday life, its established, safe, but also numbing patterns. When stimuli appear along the path, they are reacted to with varying degrees of intensity. In the case of an individual, such are great emotions, falling in love, passion, jealousy, while religions and ideologies can give rise to outright mass suggestion.
However, the most important thing in the choreography is the expressiveness of the instruments. It works excellently, the movements have spontaneous strength, surrender and defiance. The group is intact, but with strong soloist parts, it gives freedom to its members, encourages dreams, does not tame. Beautiful, convincing movement vocabulary.
The work by Norwegian Ina Christel Johannessen offers a link to the stage image or vice versa. Whether we take it up or not, it seems to matter as little as the name code “something scared the horses”. Rather, it may be that the code is not meant to be fully opened, as above. In any case, the set is pleasing to the eye, the bottle garden, the flower in each bottle. It is also utilised, by picking flowers randomly or purposefully, or by walking among them without seeing anything. The glass shards also probably have their symbolism.
The trio of dancers can be seen to embody both addiction and introversion, with the latter emphasized with angular, even spastic movements. The triangle drama, which exudes technical prowess, is not allowed to follow a predictable path, the dance is complete, the narrative is left open.
Helsinki Dance Company’s premiere night was full of quality and style. That’s good, but what I missed is comedy. Truthfulness and the harshness of movement in the art climate in general deserve warm laughter as a counterpart. This group is also known to stretch to that. And draws the audience with it.