Posthuman days

https://posthumandays.info

Choreography – Jenni-Elina von Bagh & performers
Performers – Jenna Broas, Karoliina Kauhanen, Anni Koskinen, Outi Markkula, Pinja Poropudas
Costume design and bacterial cellulose – Ingvill Fossheim
Lighting design – Ina Niemelä
Stage design and videos – Fabian Nyberg
Sound design – Tom Lönnqvist
Dramaturge – Otto Sandqvist
Photos – Katri Naukkarinen
Video documentation – Teemu Kyytinen
Production – Zodiak – Centre for New Dance, Jenni-Elina von Bagh

Supported by The Finnish Cultural Foundation, Alfred Kordelin Foundatin, Norsk- Finsk Kulturfond, RadArt Marked, CHEMARTS, Aalto studios

With thanks to Gary Numan for the use of Tubeway Army´s  ”I nearly married a human”

Premiere 18.10.2018 at Zodiak Stage
Duration 60 min
Performance language English

Link to full-length video here. Pw: post2018human

What is a post-human human being? What does it mean to let go of anthropocentrism? The world is breaking before our very eyes, but what is this inevitable state of change?

Posthuman days by choreographer Jenni-Elina von Bagh and her workgroup is an ambitious and impossible attempt to bring a topical philosophical notion of ‘post-human’ into the stage context.

Posthuman days explores questions relating to a breaking of categories such as subject/object, nature/culture, human/non-human and life/death. It assumes a form of embodied, choreographed question articulated by five young female dancers.

Posthuman days does not want to convey or represent anything. It wants to open an artistic platform for dissident thought. It admits to being awkward, emotional and melancholy while remaining superficial.

Photos – Katri Naukkarinen

The performance is based on a topical philosophic writing; it is the moment of translation between philosophical discourse and stage action. It plays side by side with works such as Rosi Braidotti‘s Posthuman (2013)and Donna Haraway‘s Cyborg Manifesto (1984). As a performance, Posthuman days is a network-based hybrid. It proves that the notion of post-human is already here.

In her recent works, von Bagh has explored questions of a state of dislocation on the stage and the performance as an event that does not fit neatly into any known category.

Von Bagh combines the body, the language and the action on stage into compositional textures where no element assumes a superior position in relation to the others. Simultaneously with this, she operates in the dynamic flow between different expressive registers, allowing the comic and the tragic to intertwine in radical, sometimes bewildering ways. (www.zodiak.fi)

critiques in finnish and swedish

Satubaletti

Choreography & Direction – Tomi Paasonen
Dance – Satu Rekola
Costumes and set design – Gabriel Walsh
Sound design – Tuuli Kyttälä
Lighting design – Ina Niemelä
Production – Zodiak – Center for New Dance, Tomi Paasonen & Satu Rekola
Residencies: ITAK (Kuopio); Dock 11 (Berlin)

Duration 70–75 min
Performance language Finnish

Once upon a time there was a fairy tale… which was partly true.

This Fairy Tale Ballet is a danced monologue, shaped through dialogue, personal chemistry and the creative back-and-forth between choreographer Tomi Paasonen and dancer Satu Rekola.

The performance jumbles together the performer’s identities, autobiographical narration and the choreographer’s fictive imagination, resulting in a playful, light-hearted and at times daft performance.

Satu Rekola plays a hostess who guides the audience through the themes and the structures of the piece.

What kinds of issues, relating to intellectual property arise, when Rekola dances through her curriculum vitae? Can movement be owned?  The choreographies imprinted in her muscle memory bring out key stages of contemporary dance in Finland from the last 20 years. What kind of somatic or art-political themes do these references evoke in the mind and body of the dancer?

Between the lines of the dance historical discourses, she gets carried away by her alter egos and plunges into various characters of her fairy tale. The only rules that are relevant in art at any given moment are the ones that the artists themselves find interesting. Is it possible to create art without any invented rules? And what do those rules tell us about our values? How does creativity turn into conventions, habits and legends? (www.zodiak.fi)

critiques in finnish

Aidatut unelmat

Choreography – Sari Palmgren
Sound design – Tuomas Norvio & Esa Mattila
Music – Mikko Perkola, Tuomas Norvio & Esa Mattila
Costume design – Riitta Röpelinen
Lighting design – Ina Niemelä
Performers – Pekka Louhio, Mikko Perkola, Marjukka Savolainen, Pauliina Kyttä & almost 80 volunteers
Production – Zodiak – Center for New Dance, Kanneltalo,
Sari Palmgren

Premiere: 24.8.2017, as a part of the Helsinki Festival.
Back by popular demand with 6 additional performances in August 2018

#aidatutunelmat, #fenceddreams

Aidatut Unelmat trailer, Sari Palmgren (2017)

Photos – Matti Kilponen and Jouni Ihalainen

Aidatut unelmat – making of, Sari Palmgren (2017)