A “utopian experiment” will be seen in the heart of Helsinki, which will last exactly four hours – We asked what it means

Helsinki In the heart of the city, at Kansalaistor, on Thursday and Friday from 6 p.m., an exceptional dance piece will be seen. Contemporary dance group Kekoni Company brings a dance marathon to the venue. No time -work lasts four hours, and the audience is free to come and go as they please. In the dance marathon, twelve dancers take turns in different formations.

The performance was seen last summer at the Kuopio dansii ja soi festival.

For art characteristically, the introductory text of a contemporary dance piece is highly festive, even pompous. According to the authors, among other things, it creates “small beginnings and endings of a timeless circle”. In addition, “strong primitive bumps are compared to architectural spatial processing”.

We asked the leader of the group, the choreographer From Petri Kekonwhat the most crooked designs in the introductory text mean.

You write: “We as humanity are in transition, our perception of time will change, our work is a utopian experiment of an imaginary community without time-defining boundaries. As a viewer, you can jump into the flow of the work and then jump off at the bend of the river, changed.” What does that mean?

“The viewer can jump into the flow of the work, yes. The basic idea started from the fact that I wanted to make a work where there is no beginning and no end. It was a bit of an installation-like idea that you come to a gallery to look at a work, for example, or go to the forest to experience nature. In the same way, you can come anywhere in this four-hour dance piece and leave whenever you want. So the work flows smoothly forward, sometimes loudly, sometimes not, but all the time it moves forward.”

How does the viewer leave changed?

“Everyone through their own life thinks about how it changes them or not. But somehow always.”

Second point: “The work can be seen as pieces floating in the air, which will land on the day of the performance in a certain, partly unpredictable way. The pieces themselves are polished to clarity from their internal and external motives, in this work unpredictability does not mean ambiguity.” What are these flying pieces?

“They mean that I build pieces from the works that come together in a certain way. When we go to work as a group, we don’t even know in which position the pieces will end up. They float for quite a long time. I also think that the work should be able to decide for itself what it will become.”

Good, the last one: “We see the work as a continuation of the 22-year-long movement on the road to refinement, being a very physical and sometimes frenetic work, where the abstraction and primitive majesty of the movement are still striking.” How do the abstraction of movement and primitive brutality go hand in hand?

“Well, that boldness is probably based on a certain heaviness. That piece is moving and pounding. For example, at Kansalaistor, sometimes we go with weight and drill into the ground, and sometimes we fly into the wind.

Okay, so what does motion abstraction mean?

“I see it as such graphic gestures, as if I were writing in the air. I would mold it. For me, the body is a sign, a hieroglyph, or how I would say it, a hieroglyphic tool. That’s how I say things visually. That maybe my whole career has been about searching for such a meaningful movement. And we will continue on that path.”

Performances at Helsinki’s Kansalaistor on September 5 and 6. from 6 to 10 p.m. Free access.