Review: Kolme teosta kontaktista
Dance review: Three excellent performances about different kinds of contactsHelsinki Dance Company’s new series, Three Works from Contact, has another thing in common in addition to the theme. It’s a movement. Each of the three works is based on and has a strong focus on movement. Of course, everyone in their own way and in a very different way. At the same time, the performance is an excellent quick cross-section of the different lines of contemporary dance.
As the name suggests, the starting point of each piece is contact and specifically physical contact and communication between the dancers, which really cannot be handled remotely.
Physical dialogue
The first work of the evening, Mirva Mäkinen’s Luodos, focuses on the most abstract and, in a way, purely movement-based contact, which focuses on contact improvisation, which means a physical dialogue between two or more people.
Luodos’ dialogue includes three dancers, Jyrki Kasper, Misa Lommi and Heidi Naakka, as well as musician Tapani Rinne. The dancers react both to each other and to the music. Sometimes the dancers “talk” to each other in pairs, sometimes with the musician and sometimes just with their own movement.
This does not mean random improvisation. The performance has a clear structure, which is punctuated by a musical tapestry created and looped by Rinne with a bass clarinet and effects equipment. The whole is also occasionally commented on by Kim Saarinen’s and Elina Kolehmainen’s white line character projections on the floor or background font.
The atmosphere of the work is liberated, warm and even playful at times. The dancers are clearly at home in the movement that takes place largely at floor level.
The performance begins with the dancers rolling around like children playing almost in one pile across the stage. At the end, everyone slowly rolls off the stage in different directions while the music rumbles in a very dark tone. In the current world situation, it is forcibly associated with the events in Ukraine.
The instrument is used to strike over without a care
Of the performance trio, by far the most hilarious is Soidinmenot, created by Sari Palmgren together with the dancers. It has been inspired by the courtship of birds, which are very similar to human matchmaking behavior, especially when implemented with such an exhilaratingly overbearing attitude.
Sequins and colourful ruffles swirl as the males of Pekka Louhio, Mikko Paloniemi and Justus Pienmunne try, sometimes even desperately, to outdo each other and get Inka Tiitinen as the last representative of her species to take an interest in herself. There is also a sound from wistful rumors to all-conquering screams. The movement is tantalizingly caricatured bird-like, and there is certainly no shortage of energy or speed.
Whether all this will work on the female and which of the suitors will actually win remains open in the end. The ending is actually even a little wistful. Before that, however, we have been able to enjoy absolutely cheeky “bird dances” and vocal expression.
However, the performance is not just about fun, but is based on the idea of both the inevitable changes in nature and being left alone and being seen.
A great relationship journey
We dive into completely different worlds in the evening’s third work, Riia Kivimäki and Saku Mäkelä’s GLG, which has been created in collaboration with Cirko.
The performance is definitely the most serious of the evening in terms of atmosphere. It is a relationship journey where two people meet, form a couple and then try to both let go and hold on to what they have found at the same time.
The topic itself is not new, rather very well-known. What makes GLG perhaps the most artistically complete performance of the evening is the amazing skill of Kivimäki and Mäkelä and the wonderfully executed union of partner and aerial acrobatics and dance.
In this performance, acrobatics is not just skillfully executed tricks and movements, but a means of telling and expressing a story and emotions. Kivimäki and Mäkelä are also very open and almost bloody on stage as actors. And on the other hand, extremely controlled. They have also clearly wanted to look for the boundaries of acrobatics and the interfaces between it and dance. And they have also found them, both new movements and a new kind of movement expression.
The performance begins with a maritime atmosphere and ends there. The bow of a large ocean liner has just become a self-made yacht of its own life, which is now being built together.