Minä ja kuvani workgroup

The Minä ja kuvani (My Picture and I) workgroup includes choreographer Arja Raatikainen from Helsinki and dancer Maria Littow from Oulu. Together they are preparing an interdisciplinary work in which movement meets both still and moving picture.

What animal would I be if I were one? This is the question the choreographer posed to the dancer when their collaboration began last winter. Raatikainen is fascinated with all the layers that make up a human being as well as with the metamorphosis between different characters. Consequently, the choreographer invited the dancer into a game of transformation.

This modern dance piece challenges the dancer at times to engage their various self-images in an almost carousel-like whirlwind. The safe and familiar routes into oneself are substituted with ones that are unknown or slightly scary even; ones which endeavour to connect the innermost layers of the mind with the surface and with lightness.

The multilayered journey is given depth as the dancer’s movement is combined on stage with moving picture, simultaneously creating a visual changing mindscape.

In addition to Raatikainen and Littow, the work group includes light designer Saija Nojonen and sound designer Aake Otsala from Helsinki as well as costume designer Marianne Sotti from Oulu. Pirjo Lempeä from Oulu is the group’s photographer. The work’s production team includes Flow Productions, JoJo – Oulu Dance Centre and Kiiminkijoen opisto, all from Oulu, as well as Arja Raatikainen & Co. from Helsinki.

A stay at the Saari Residence enables close collaboration, the fine tuning of ideas and intensive focus on work. The first performances of Minä ja kuvani will be at Teatterkuoppa in Haukiputaa on the 11th and 12th of November 2011. The second round of performances will be at the Cultural Centre Valve in Oulu on the 8th and 9th of December 2011.