Review: Aikuisten joulukalenteri
Fast-paced Christmas therapy with dance and music
Helsinki City Theatre kicks off the Christmas season with the dance theatre performance Aikuisten joulukalenteri (Adults’ Christmas Calendar).
The theatre’s own dance group, Helsinki Dance Company, is responsible for the show under the direction of choreographer Jyrki Karttunen. Together with Kari Heiskanen, he has directed the performance, and Sanna Niemeläinen is responsible for the dramaturgy.
Karttunen plays Christmas therapist Leo-Matti Kurkiainen, who has to cure the seasonal affective disorder that is spreading among the people. This means that you feel anxious about the Christmas season. Through a twenty-four-step therapy, the syndrome will be cured. In turn, the doors in the Christmas calendar are opened, and in each window there is a task for the characters to perform, which will put them in a better mood. There will be a lot of singing and dancing of course, and with each hatch the Christmas spirit is closer.
The characters we meet are familiar: a Christmas tree, a Santa Claus, Lucia, the Nutcracker, Santa Claus, an angel, and more. They all have their own personalities. The costume design by Laura Dammert is functional and gives the characters new looks; For example, Santa has a new look with glittering jeans and a gold jacket and Lucia does not have her usual white robe with a red belt. Granen’s dress breathes 20s and therapist Karttunen’s horribly tasteless Christmas patterned suit is perfect for the show.
The audience with
The performance has the format of a TV show and Karttunen acts as the host. The audience is involved and engaged in many ways, which is a good fit for a show like this. Among other things, a Finland 100 choreography will be created based on words thrown out by the audience: the dancers will improvise movements for the Finnish national symbols of the sauna, rally, lake, salty liquorice, Sibelius and the Moomins, and the audience will then be invited to dance along in the stands. Some even get to go up on stage and dance.
The performance varies from laziness and half-funny jokes to more serious and even artistic bits. The nicest are the calm solo numbers: Lucia (Heidi Naakka), who improvises what Christmas feels like in the body, and Jyrki Kasper’s beautiful dance in the midst of teddy bears and stuffed animals (he plays a child who only wants hard presents). When Emilia Nyman, who plays the magic of Christmas, sings Ave Maria, the atmosphere is unexpectedly dramatic, almost tragic – indeed, she bursts into hysterical tears a bit into the song – which gives the performance a different dynamic in the midst of all the fuss.
A few more times, the seriousness is on the surface: a child writes a letter to his absent father, who is on a ship in Kuala Lumpur, and wishes he will come home for Christmas. The quarrelsome married couple in another scene also shows the reality for many – stress that leads to discord and a bad mood.
But above all, Aikuisten joulukalenteri is still an entertaining, light-hearted show with sure, tried and tested jokes and clichés. Of course, for example, the company Christmas party is included, with all that it entails in terms of memory gaps, lost bras and other embarrassments.
The ending feels a bit flat; I would have liked to see a really fast-paced group choreography at the end. A live band could also have added a lot to the performance.