Dance

Third Practice, a new production by the Tero Saarinen Company in collaboration with the Helsinki Baroque Orchestra, is a hybrid artwork exploring change, remembering and forgetting, all to the tune of the music of Claudio Monteverdi.

"The work, with choreography by Kenneth Greve and Pirjo Toikka, was an immediate success. Obviously this was much thanks to Kantelinen’s accessible music, written clearly with people of every age and background in mind."

As trends wax and wane, street dance is becoming globally more prominent with each cycle. In Finland, it’s at the height of its popularity and making inroads into uncharted territory, both artistically and socially.

Three internationally acclaimed Finnish choreographers - Marjo Kuusela, Kenneth Kvarnström and Tero Saarinen - describe how movement and music engage in dialogue in their dance works.

Schubert plays while you are threatened at gunpoint. A Saami yoik is refined into Japanese temple music. The soundscape for Le sacre du printemps is created from the rasping breathing of dancers. The sounds of contemporary dance works increasingly occupy a no-man’s-land between conventional composition and sound art.

"How does a performance by three dancers merge with, differ from, complement or disagree with an enormous symphonic monolith? After all, Shostakovich’s Leningrad Symphony has already been interpreted, explained and provided with a note-by-note narrative time and time again. Personal Symphonic Moment by Elina Pirinen embraces the challenge."

Artists choosing an art form outside the mainstream will find themselves frequently answering the question: Why? Kaari and Roni Martin have created many notable works of contemporary art using the language of flamenco.

Dancing and music used to be joined at the hip. In folk music, this symbiotic relationship was preserved for a long time due to the fact that the bulk of traditional music is actually dance music. Today the connections between these two art forms are being examined at the Sibelius Academy Folk Music Department and through the many and varied projects of the Tsuumi Dance Theatre.