A Dialogue between a Poet and a Dancer

Dancer Satu Rekola had been granted a residency for the fall of 2009 to complete a dance performance. Ulla Koivisto came to the Residence to work on material for Satu’s solo. Soon a close collaboration began with the young poet Jonimatti Joutsijärvi who was also staying at the residence.

“Jonimatti and Satu were both fascinated with the unique environment of the residence and so we began to experiment with them. For example, Satu would move and Jonimatti would read his texts in the mansion’s cellar. We also tried an exercise where Satu would perform an improvised dance for about an hour and Jonimatti would simultaneously write about what he saw.”

A rock formation on the Saari Residence’s parking lot served as inspiration and the threesome continued experimenting in the vicinity of the rocks, beside them and on top of them.

“We played around with those rocks until one Monday morning at brunch some Japanese guy told us that the rocks on the parking lot were his rocks.”

As it turns out, the man in question was the Japanese artist Mineo Kuroda who had come to the Saari Residence to complete his stone art work, Wa – to relate. Another collaboration was born, this time with Mineo who drew in his reliefs images of Satu dancing in the stone barn.

The collaboration with Jonimatti and Satu worked so well that they decided to create a performance that would be based on their experiments at the Saari Residence. After their stay at the Residence, they locked themselves away inside Ulla’s house in Kemiö to prepare the performance. And so Vaeltava Valo (“Roaming Light”), a dialogue between a dancer and poet, was born and was premiered in June 2010 at the Olohuone (Living Room) city art event in Turku.